Mitt Romney’s night from hell
A stunning sweep by Rick Santorum pushes the GOP race closer than ever to complete chaos
Topics: Opening Shot, Politics News
Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks at his Colorado caucus night rally in Denver, Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2012. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) (Credit: AP)Don’t be fooled by the fact that no delegates were directly awarded – what happened in the Republican presidential race on Tuesday night is very significant.
The headline is that Rick Santorum won monster victories in the Minnesota caucuses and in Missouri’s non-binding primary and that he completed the sweep in Colorado, where his surprise victory over Romney was made official around 1 a.m.
But the bigger story is what amounts to a meltdown for Romney, who would like us all to believe that he’s the candidate of inevitability. But the inevitable candidate isn’t supposed to get crushed by 30 points, as Romney did in Missouri. And he’s not supposed to finish a very distant third, 10 points behind Ron Paul, as he did in Minnesota. And he’s certainly not supposed to let a candidate like Rick Santorum, who before tonight had barely been relevant since the Iowa caucuses, post the clean sweep Santorum just did.
Romney’s campaign knew trouble was coming, which is why they started Tuesday by releasing an expectations-lowering memo that pointed out that John McCain lost 19 individual contests in the 2008 race and emphasized the long game. And they hoped that the fact that no delegates were directly at stake in any contests would lead the media to downplay the results.
But the delegate situation was mostly a red herring. Really, there was no difference between the caucuses in Minnesota and Colorado and those that were held in Iowa on Jan. 3. In all three states, Republicans gathered at precinct caucuses that officially functioned as the first in a multi-step process to choose national convention delegates. At the local caucuses, Republicans were polled on their presidential preference, with the results not tied to delegate allocation. So if the political world is going to treat Iowa as a legitimate nominating contest, there’s no reason not to extend the same treatment to Colorado and Minnesota.
And while Missouri’s primary truly was a beauty contest (no delegates of any type were selected or allocated), 250,000 Republicans voters still turned out for it. That number is considerably lower than the 2008 total, but it still represents a significant statement by that state’s Republican electorate, especially when you consider that Romney only mustered a quarter of the vote without one of his chief foes on the ballot.
Steve Kornacki writes about politics for Salon. Reach him by email at SKornacki@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @SteveKornacki More Steve Kornacki.




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