While Newt wins South Carolina, Paul campaign celebrates

I am sure many don't understand why the Paul campaign would be fairly happy with the results of the South Carolina primary tonight. Sure a stronger showing would have been a happier occasion but considering the portrait of Romney being the inevitable nominee has just been toppled, it is cause to not be too unhappy about their 4th place finish in the state. The other reason to not be crying in their soup may be quite interesting for many voters that are not aware of the current situation. Not only did Romney go down to defeat in South Carolina but he got beaten by someone that mathematically has no possibility of being able to win the nomination before the convention anyway.

You see, both Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum are not on several states' ballots as it seems maybe they were mostly running for book sales or better name recognition or possibly propping up their lobbyist credentials and speaking fees. Oh, I know many will be upset with that analogy but quite frankly it is the only plausible explanations to ponder as Newt Gingrich was not even able to get on the ballot in Virginia which is his home state. He does not live in Georgia anymore. He has been working on the lucrative K Street in Washington, DC for many years now.

Since Mitt Romney and Ron Paul actually are the only candidates that have had serious national campaigns planned and organized from the very beginning, they will be the only 2 candidates that can effectively even compete for the actual nomination as they both have full ballot access for opportunities to collect delegates. While it was preferred that Newt and Santorum just be honest with the American people and get out of the race at this point which is exactly what the Paul campaign had urged them to do as both of them can not even compete for delegates to the tune of 564 which are in states that they absolutely are not on the ballot and can not get on the ballot at this point.

So, the current situation is this. Newt taking away delegates that Romney did not get really only helped Ron Paul's campaign at this point. The Paul campaign has been trying to inform voters of this problem but of course the media does not want to give much play to them. After all the other candidates lost their court decision to get on the ballot in Virginia and then you add up the other states that Newt and Santorum also failed to get onto, they are basically wasting voters' time and money but don't seem to mind doing so apparently. Paul's senior advisor, Doug Wead appeared in a segment on MSNBC talking again about this very subject except this time he was pretty tickled that Newt got the win instead of Romney in South Carolina.

The only way that Newt or Santorum could possibly win the Republican nomination would be at a brokered convention in Florida. The problem with a brokered convention is that after the first vote fails to nominate a candidate, then all bets and will of the voters are off and cast to the wind. Then it is a battle and anything can happen. The will of the voters that voted in the primaries will not even be a thought as any candidate at that point could become the nominee including even a candidate that may have not even competed at all this year. And that is a scenario that many are very concerned about since this time around the GOP seems to have been doing everything possible to create this possibility. With changing the rules and having all the state primaries up until April 1st apportion their delegates proportionally instead of "winner take all"(except Florida), it sets up an even higher probability of ending up in a brokered convention scenario. At this point, that scenario could be changed if Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum dropped out. I don't suspect that either one of their egos are going to allow that to happen and this will be most likely a long-term 3 or 4-way race all the way to probably a brokered convention or Paul or Romney are able to get enough support to win it outright before the convention. At any rate, both Newt and Santorum are not being honest with voters at this point since their campaigns have not been out there even uttering a whisper regarding the current situation.

If Newt or Santorum really had integrity, they would be the ones explaining this situation to the voters and preferrably just drop out as Huntsman and Perry did recently. To do anything else, when they can't even compete for 564 delegates shows their failure to plan should be looked at as either a lack of organizational ability or lack of real leadership ability. The bottomline here is that they both did not have sufficient real support or organizational ability to even accomplish the minimum things necessary to lodge an honest campaign for the Republican nomination which is being able to achieve ballot access in enough states to actually win it.

All the other campaigns had this same problem except Ron Paul and Mitt Romney, the two campaigns that were obviously the only ones serious about this contest from the very beginning. I would hope that more news sources would finally get this story out but I am not exactly holding my breath to see that develop. In the meantime, these 2 gentlemen are the only ones in the field that deserve to eventually receive the nomination as they each took running for the Office of President, seriously.




http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-washington-dc/while-newt-wins-south-carolina-paul-campaign-celebrates