Republican Presidential Contest Heating Up
After a couple of victories in key southern states last week, Rick Santorum has become the clear challenger to frontrunner Mitt Romney. Last Tuesday, Alabama and Mississippi held their primaries, putting 90 delegates up for grabs. Newt Gingrich desperately needed wins in both states to get himself back in the race and he certainly had a chance given his favorable poll numbers entering the two races and the fact that he already won two other key southern states, South Carolina and Georgia, earlier in the race. But, once the votes were all counted, Rick Santorum ruled the day and cemented himself as Romney’s only serious challenger.
In both races, Santorum finished a few percentage points over 30 percent and in first place. Gingrich finished a close second and Romney a close third in both races as well. For a frontrunner to finish third this late in the race in two GOP strongholds such as Alabama and Mississippi is not a good sign for the Romney campaign, but the news wasn’t all bad for Romney.
Romney easily and unsurprisingly carried Hawaii and American Samoa last Tuesday and overwhelmingly took Puerto Rico Sunday. His landslide victory in Puerto Rico may in part be attributable to comments made by Santorum that English should be the “main language” of Puerto Rico if they want to become a state.
Looking ahead, conventional wisdom says that Romney is the inevitable nominee, but there is certainly a possible yet unlikely path to the nomination for Santorum. Santorum has consistently won states in the Midwest and has now shown that he can win states in the South, both areas were the GOP voters are more socially conservative. If Newt Gingrich were to drop out of the race, Santorum would likely take most of the delegates Gingrich would be taking simply because they appeal to very similar voters.
Having said all this, Santorum still needs to go beyond his socially conservative base and take a state in Romney territory. One of his best chances to do this comes Tuesday in the Illinois primary where 69 delegates are up for grabs. The limited poll numbers coming out of Illinois last week show Romney with a lead in the mid to high single digits but Santorum has proven in the past the he is capable of outperforming his poll numbers.
A win in Illinois, on top of an almost certain victory for Santorum later in the week on Saturday in Louisiana would give Santorum considerable momentum and be a serious cause for concern for the Romney campaign.
Obama Campaign Releases Documentary
The Obama campaign released a documentary last week, chronicling the President’s first term in office. The documentary, which can be seen here, gives us some clear insights into what the Obama campaign will run on and was directed by Academy Award-winning director of An Inconvenient Truth, David Guggenheim. If you don’t have time to watch the documentary, TPM sums it up in a nice chart here.
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