Within the Margin

The Minnesota, Colorado and Missouri contests come up next on the Presidential calendar. Minnesota and Colorado present Caucuses where Rick Santorum and Ron Paul are likely to profit at the expense of Mitt Romney. Caucuses present a strength for Paul, despite his disappointing third place showing in Nevada.

Minnesota and Colorado offer Santorum a lifeline to his campaign. With little in the way of coverage after his Iowa showing (winning it over Romney), the super-conservatives who have taken hold of both state parties should be more palatable to Santorum than Romney, who continues to have a conservative problem…he just can’t seal the deal. Santorum has led in polling in both states in recent weeks, though only just above Romney. Wins, even slight wins, are needed here for team Santorum. Santorum can reboot his flailing campaign and return to fundraising to make the “anti-Romney” case more convincingly. Grabbing delegates away from Romney will help my favored outcome: a fractured convention. Losses here, however, should signal the end of the Santorum campaign and people re-remembering that he’s a joke.  Minnesota’s GOP is hyper conservative after the more tea-flavored wing of the party swept into legislative power in 2010. Minnesota offers a great opportunity for Santorum to rebound. Polling has Santorum winning Minnesota with Paul coming in second. This would be a huge shot in the arm for Santorum and for my continual laughter at the state of the GOP. Colorado also offers a 2010 tea fueled base and the endorsement of former Rep and all out crazy man Tom Tancredo should also provide a needed boost to Santorum in the Centennial State. Public Policy Polling has Romney at 40% in Colorado and Santorum second at 26%. This continues the enthusiasm gap meme that’s growing (I’ll write about this later), GOP voters know Romney’s the best of the bunch, they just don’t want to actually vote for him. Turnout in CO will be interesting, low turnout may help Romney, but perpetuate the enthusiasm problem. Santorum may benefit from very high turnout, but it seems more likely that Romney will win here picking up a good number of Colorado’s 36 delegates.

Missouri will be a primary featuring Santorum and Romney, it’s symbolic in that it won’t award any delegates for the convention (they instead will have a later caucus, hence why Paul isn’t playing here for this symbolic primary; by the way, this no delegate primary is just plain stupid). Santorum needs to both play for and ignore this primary; that is it’s meaningless in the long run but a win helps him boost fundraising to stay in the race. This is the first example of Romney going one on one with another candidate and the more conservative Missouri electorate is more likely to support Santurom. Polling from PPP (a Dem leaning firm but one of the best in the business) has Santorum ahead in Missouri right now. This is a news cycle filling primary and nothing more to me: whoever wins can say they won a primary, and nothing more.

I have failed to mention Newt Gingrich because, well, I just can’t take him seriously as a presidential candidate. After the Iowa Caucus, all Newt has done is simply throw bomb after bomb at Romney. I don’t see a guy that wants to actually govern, he’s out for blood. Gingrich has never been anything close to a legitimate candidate in my mind…I’ve actually questioned if the GOP rank and file was serious about nominating this guy. One would think that if h were serious or wanted to be taken serious he would have garnered more endorsements than Rick Perry and Sarah Palin, both of whom have become train wrecks to the American people. Not one member from either house in, especially those who served with him, have endorsed him. Actually former Congressman Duke Cunningham, in jail for corruption, has endorsed him. No statewide elected officials of not have endorsed Newt. How is he supposed to be taken seriously at this point even though he’s won one primary…it’s just crazy to think that this guy possibly has a shot. I just don’t get it. Then again I don’t get the appeal of Mitt Romney.