Associated Press
Only one of these two has focused on campaign infrastructure.
Of all the Super Tuesday contests tomorrow, Ohio's Republican primary is arguably the highest-profile race, and the results will garner the most attention. Polls show Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum running neck and neck.
But even if Santorum fares well tomorrow in Ohio, his campaign's logistical and organizational weaknesses will apparently cost him dearly.
Rick Santorum was already known as starting from a deficit, delegate-wise, in Ohio. He failed to qualify for any district delegates in three Ohio congressional districts because he didn't turn in delegate names there.
But his delegate troubles go deeper. According to the Ohio Republican Party tonight, the former Pennsylvania U.S. senator filed incomplete delegate slates in six additional Ohio districts.
Altogether, this means Santorum, who until this week had a fair lead in polls in the Republican nominating race, could be ineligible for 18 Ohio district delegates.
Ohio has 66 delegates total, 63 at stake next Tuesday. The candidate with the most delegates wins. Santorum therefore goes into the Ohio primary election with a 29 percent deficit.
This dovetails with a point we discussed a few weeks ago -- campaign organization matters and Santorum's is awful. When a candidate has a weak and disjointed operation, it's inevitable that it will struggle in ways that have nothing to do with the candidate's message or appeal.
In Santorum's case, we're talking about a campaign that, as recently as mid-February, didn't have a national press secretary, a national headquarters, a pollster, or any paid advance staffers to ensure his campaign events run smoothly. Team Santorum failed to get a slot on the primary ballot in Virginia, and also apparently forgot to do its due diligence when it comes to delegate selection in Ohio.
Putting aside everything else we know about these candidates, serious national campaigns don't screw up like this.
The Romney campaign, not surprisingly, pounced on this, and for a change, this is a Romney attack with merit. The former governor's aides were only too pleased to note that Santorum also failed to file a complete slate in Tennessee, failed to get on the ballot at all in the District of Columbia, and failed in four of the upcoming Illinois congressional districts.
Of course, the next question for Romney and his team is a little awkward: why haven't you already beaten this woefully unorganized candidate with no campaign infrastructure?
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The Romney express is back on track, freshly fueled with an endless supply of super-PAC money from all of Mitt's hedge fund pals and ready to steamroll over the competition. Mitt remains a pathetically weak candidate, one that will win the nomination through sheer bullying and the ineptitude of his scattered rivals. How the Republican Party will sell Mitt to the greater public is a real mystery, considering his record and his penchant for the most unfortunate of gaffes. The conservative wing of the GOP has failed to stop Mitt, showing the limits of their power. http://www.sunstateactivist.org
The Romney express has straddled too many rails at one time and will lose its wheels as more and more people awaken to who is running the show on the right. Not all right leaning people are insane paranoid bigots filled with evangelical spirits of 100 proof stupidity, but those who are not do not have a candidate.
If nothing else, it probably will not be Santorum's turn in 2016.
I don't think the last question is awkward. I think the answer is, though, for a lot of people. I think there are two main reasons Romney hasn't "already beaten this woefully unorganized candidate".
The first is because he's a Mormon. A lot of people on the right either won't vote for him or will only do so as a last resort, kicking and screaming all the way.
The second is because of his flip-floppy stance on issues, which is, to be fair, common among politicians, but he seems to take it to an extreme or at least does it more publicly than the rest do.
This creates another problem for the uber-right-wing. Their "get Obama out of office at any cost" mantra conflicts with their "Romney-isn't-that-different-than-Obama-on-a-lot-of-issues" perception, in large part because they realize not one other candidate is electable. If Santorum won the nomination, I think Obama would win in a landslide.
The right power structure has put up candidate after candidate, increasingly strident, ill-informed, ill-educated on the facts of "social issues" and well behind the times for the majority of voters (much like their voting base), in a desperate effort to nominate Palin, Bachmann, Paul, Gingrich, Santorum, ANYONE but Romney.
I recently saw a few polls that indicated that both Santorum and Romney were either neck and neck or slightly ahead of Obama if the election were to be held today. The problem for them? Obama hasn't run yet. As he quipped (paraphrasing) about the Latino voters and the immigration issue (but it could be said for a majority of issues at the moment), "We don't have to run attack ads. All we have to do is show clips from the Republican debates."
I think the problem facing Republican voters is that, while Rick Santorum seems to be at ease talking about socially-conservative values (and that appeals to one part of the conservative voting bloc) he has thus far not articulated very often what he might do about other concerns, like jobs, international diplomacy, oil prices, or environmental concerns (among other things). As such, I'd guess that he is either unable to talk about those issues as comfortably as he does the social issues, OR he has not gotten sufficient training from his (fairly new) media team about what to say.
Conversely, many who support Mitt Romney do so on the grounds that he has experience in business and is therefore the most qualified Republican candidate to run for office against the President. However, he has also tried to avoid commentary on a number of issues-- either because he seems not to want to pass judgment, or because he has no sense of the popular opinion on the subject. But in other cases (health care, gay rights including marriage), his own history in Massachusetts will now be regarded as "too liberal" and as such, painting himself as at least willing to offer same-sex rights to health benefits (as he did) or in favor of a state health option.
Romney seems aware that he would have trouble touting the positive public reception he has gotten in his own state (overall), for fear that voters of a more conservative persuasion than he will be tempted to go for someone else-- whether it is a poorly-funded Santorum or someone with a prickly personality and troubled history like Newt Gingrich.
Unfortunately many, once their candidate is nominated will close their little minds until November. Thomas Sowell's column today was titled "Any Republican better choice than Obama" This mindless propaganda sells too well in east-central Fla. It would make sense down here for the Dems. to do more ads while the GOP may still be listening watching.
Oooo, can we keep this GOP circus going for a few more months? You just can't make this stuff up! The one candidate that looks good "on paper" isn't trustworthy, and he's a Mormon- so the "good Christians" won't vote for him; the other candidate is Catholic, but he's so batshyt crazy even the religuluous reich isn't all the way for him! Decisions, decisions, what do you do when you're between a rock and the edge of the cliff?
Home schooled math skills are suspect. Counting to 66 is difficult if not impossible.
I think many people felt a connection with Santorum the night he "won" Iowa. But since then he has proved to be just another clown in the clown car. I think he really doesn't want to be President. How else can you explain the series of idiotic statements and moves he's made since winning those three states a few weeks ago? He is a complete fool if he thinks he can win by continuing to talk about his extreme social positions.
This does it! Now I'm completely sold in voting for Romney since he knows the very touching Davy Crockett hymn I used to so enjoy singing as a kid. Unbelievable! Now I sound like the lamebrain I asked some years ago why he was voting for Bush, and through a puzzled look he replied. "I don't know, I guess because he was the owner of the Texas Rangers."
Santorum was in my hometown today.. I decided to stay indoors out of fear he may try to enter my uterus again...The sun came out as he was leaving :)
I haven't heard anything about yet another primary snafu here in Arizona. I live in a rural part of Mohave county. There have always been polling stations set up in the small towns here for the primary elections. This year there was none. As president of the local Chamber of Commerce, I was the one many voters contacted to ask where they were supposed to vote on primary day. As a registered Democrat, I didn't know, so had to call the county elections board to find out.
It turns out that these rural voters who were registered Republican or Green were sent mail ballot and this ballot was the ONLY WAY these rural voters could vote. It is to be assumed that this was stated somewhere in the paperwork accompanying the ballot, but many, many people never saw that small notice. They may have thrown the ballots away as assumed junk mail. They may have thought they were samle ballots. I know that many knew they were real ballots but assumed they could--as they had done in the past--hand deliver them to the town poling place on election day.
At least one of these rural towns is a 130+ mile round trip from the nearest place to physically drop off the ballot and by the time these voters realized there WAS NO polling place to vote in their town or deliver their mail-in ballot, it was too late to drive it to the county drop off.
Therefore, many hundreds (likely thousands) of registered voters in rural Mohave County were disenfranchised in this election. They never got to enter a ballot. They are not happy.