Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Gingrich is angling

Newt Gingrich, after his impressive win in South Carolina, has only won one state since. His home state of Georgia was a must win and he did win it. Yet after winning SC he failed to capture the conservative banner that was ripe for the picking. Rick Santorum has taken up that banner, and is clearly the conservative answer to the more moderate Mitt Romney. So the question is, why is Newt still in the race.
He is hoping to win Louisiana, other than that he has very few contests in which he appears to have any hope of winning. It appears that the longer this goes on that the possibility of Romney not achieving the magic number of delegates to win the GOP nomination outright gets closer to reality. That means that we will see a convention where dealmaking will be the word of the hour.
To this observer, it seems like Gingrich is possibly angling for three things. First, he is trying to stay in the race to prevent Romeny from achieving the needed delegates as revenge for the negative campaign Romney started in Iowa. Second, could be that Gingrich is trying to spoil Santorum's chances as the conservative choice because Santorum is the "junior partner" as he has stated. Thirdly, he could be angling for a cabinet post or even the Vice presidency in a Romney administration, which would be offered to get Gingrich's delegates.
Either way Gingrich is angling for things outside of victory. He should get out and let Santorum and Romney fight it out the rest of the way. This is about conservative victory, not vendettas, grudges, or cabinet posts which are the only reasons Gingrich has to stay in the race.