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SALT LAKE CITY — Rick Santorum just won Alabama and Mississippi, but that is not what has the internet buzzing about his campaign. Instead, dozens of articles in the past few days have expressed everything from surprise to stupor regarding a Santorum campaign confession that the former Senator from Pennsylvania cannot win the party nomination outright.
A six-page strategy memo released to the public Monday includes this paragraph about the national convention in August:
"Mitt Romney must have a majority on the first ballot in order to win the nomination because he will perform worse on subsequent ballots as grassroots conservative delegates decide to back the more conservative candidate. Subsequently, Santorum only needs to be relatively close on the initial ballot in order to win on a later ballot as Romney’s support erodes."
In other words, Santorum doesn't expect to win, he wants to come "relatively close" to Mitt Romney and hope delegates come his way after a few rounds of voting at the party convention.
"Mitt Romney must have a majority on the first ballot in order to win the nomination because he will perform worse on subsequent ballots as grassroots conservative delegates decide to back the more conservative candidate."
It's a strategy that Washington Post writer Jennifer Rubin dismissed as "nonsense", alleging that, "Santorum seems to have given up on winning and is simply trying to inflict the most casualties on the eventual nominee."
That is Santorum's strategy exactly, writes Buzzfeed's Zeke Miller, who broke the story about the Santorum strategy memo. "Santorum's campaign asserts that they will outperform their caucus- night delegate shares because convention-goers are by-and- large more conservative than the average Republican voter. But they are making the (weak) assumption that Ron Paul's libertarian army won't try the same thing."
Michael Brendan Dougherty argues two more faulty assumptions in the Santorum strategy in his article for Business Insider: "It assumes that policial forces, like the rest of the Republican party, will just allow Santorum to destroy the presumptive nominee on the tiniest hope that after breaking the Republican convention into pieces Santorum can reassemble it himself," he wrote. "It also assumes that Santorum is going to continue scoring embarrassing victories against Romney."
It is the need for big victories that made skeptics of ABC News' Michael Falcone and Amy Walter. Writing before last week's Super Tuesday contests, they conclude that "Santorum’s only hope to reaching 1144 delegates — the magic number needed to win the nomination, is to win every single one of the remaining 44 contests — including Romney strongholds like Utah and New Jersey — and win them with at least 50 percent of the vote statewide and in every single congressional district. That is, of course, impossible."
Related:
Utah matters in the GOP presidential election
When the primary schedule was finalized for the Republican presidential election, Utah's primary date fell as the last state to vote. Few expected Utah to matter in the delegate count, particularly given the front-runner status of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney leading up to primary season.Impossible or not, Santorum isn't paying any attention to his skeptics. At a campaign stop in Mississippi on Monday, he talked with reporters about his strategy. "I think you've been listening to math class and delegate math class instead of looking at the reality of the situation," he said. "The reality of the situation is that it's going to be very difficult for anyone to get to the number of delegates that is necessary to win with the majority at the convention. The only way, really, I believe that someone is going to get there is if the conservatives unite."
This isn't the first time the Santorum campaign has publicly questioned their own ability to win the nomination. Ahead of the vote in Michigan on Feb. 28, Santorum appealed to state democrats with an automated robocall aimed at beating Romney in Romney's home state. Santorum lost Michigan by 3 percentage points.
Dallin Kimble holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from BYU in Economics and is currently studying Public Administration and Urban Management at Arizona State University. He lives with his family in the Queen Creek, Arizona, area.
