Off-Topic

Santorum's 3 year old daughter is in the hospital and fighting for her life. Trisomy-18, it's a miracle she even made it this long. Just terrible. Hits a little too close to home for me.

You could tell something was wrong at the last debate, he got a major frog in his throat on the question about his wife when he said "she can't be here, she's at home....being a mom"

Most politicians are sociopaths.

NBC has Romney +15 and Rasmussen has him +16. I was going to say that I'm struggling to think of a race that's seen a 20+ point swing in less than a week....but then I remembered that this race went from Mitt +15 to Newt +9 in about a week also. Other than this though.....I got nothing.

So right now, if Santorum stays in it virtually guarantees a Romney victory. If he drops out, the race probably goes back to around 50/50 and Gingrich could realistically win. A win in Florida could end Romney as the Republican establishment would abandon him and desperately search for a plan B. Gingrich would become the Republican frontrunner and would see an infusion of $ and support. So basically, Santorum controls Florida right now, and Florida could decide the nomination.

Here's the part where it gets interesting. Romney knows this. Gingrich knows this. Santorum knows this. What do you think Santorum can leverage out of either campaign?

Perhaps, but that would require that people who are older stop having sex ... because Rick Santorum doesn't exactly believe in birth control, let alone abortion.

While this is probably a pretty good prediction of what would happen if Santorum drops out, I just find it funny that the ultra social conservative supporters would flock to Gingrich...then again I wouldn't really expect logical thought from that voting bloc.

I do not believe that the "social conservative" vote of Santorum would break in Gingrich's favor enough to overcome Mitt. An article from the LA Times has the poll showing Mitt ahead in double digits, plus this comment,

"Romney has opened up a huge gender-gap advantage over the thrice-married Gingrich, whose second wife recently made controversial remarks about her ex-husband. Women voters are essentially deciding the Florida race, according to the Mason-Dixon poll. It showed women favoring Romney over Gingrich by 19 points. Men divided evenly between Romney and Gingrich in the Mason-Dixon poll."

All of your delegate questions answered in one chart...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-race-for-delegates-stepping-up-to-the-nomination/2012/01/29/gIQA6yt4aQ_graphic.html

4th place doesn't get many (and in most instances, any) more delegates than 5th or 6th place...

What a terrible color scheme for how delegates are allocateded. Light grey, darker light grey, more darker light grey, dark grey. Who is the dolt who came up with that?

Yeah, that is true in the primary. The difference is of course, in the Governors race, they had been planning for months their ground games around early voting turnout. The Presidential campaigns have had much more on their minds than just FL.

Sarah Palin chiming in on this race has reminded everyone how much of a relief it is that she stayed out. She is attacking "the establishment" for spending millions on ads to try and stop Newt, moves she describes as "Alinsky-like." First of all, Newt is firmly a part of "the establishment" even if neither he nor they are comfortable with that fact. Second of all, I'm pretty sure spending millions on attack ads (by "the establishment," no less) was actually NOT an Alinsky tactic.