Rick Santorum Can't Win

Jamelle Bouie
March 7, 2012

It's hopeless for the former Pennsylvania senator.




About the Author

Jamelle Bouie is a writing fellow at The American Prospect.

Frontloading HQ’s Josh Putnam crunches the numbers and finds that under the most optimistic scenario, Rick Santorum is limited to a delegate haul of 1,075, which falls somewhat short of the 1,144 needed to win the nomination.

Putnam notes that you could goose that even further and assume big wins for Santorum in the remaining primaries. Even still, the most he could win is 1,152 delegates. By contrast, Mitt Romney’s minimum 1,162 delegates while his maximum extends to 1,341 delegates.

In other words—at this point—it’s mathematically impossible for Santorum to win the nomination through delegate accumulation. Of course, there’s always the question of a brokered convention. But as Putnam points out, of the people to win the nomination through negotiation, Santorum is at the bottom of the list:

The bottom line here is that Romney has enough of a delegate advantage right now and especially coming out of today’s contests that it is very unlikely that anyone will catch him, much less catch him and get to 1144. The latter seems particularly far-fetched given the above scenarios. And that is a problem in this race. Well, a problem for Gingrich and Santorum anyway. If all either of them can take to voters is an argument that all they can do is prevent Romney from getting to 1144, then neither has a winning strategy. That sort of strategy has a half life; one that will grow less effective as, in this case, Romney approaches 1144.

Complicating this scenario even further for Gingrich and Santorum is the fact that if neither can get to 1144 or even close to it, neither is all that likely to be the candidate to emerge as the nominee at any – unlikely though it may be – contested convention.

At this point, Romney doesn’t need delegates, he needs the okay from the Republican base—permission to focus his attention on the general election, and pull back from the fight with his doomed competitors. Unfortunately for the former Massachusetts governor, the base doesn’t seem ready to give up the quest for a more “acceptable” standard-bearer.

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