The Santorum campaign has attacked Mitt Romney in recent days for arguing that delegate math makes his ultimate nomination a fait accompli. “This isn’t about math,” Santorum said Sunday, “this is about vision, it’s about leadership.” But on Monday Santorum returned with his own set of numbers, detailed in a strategy memo outlining the former senator’s path to the nomination; in short, an intricate interpretation of the delegate count.
The memo, written by John Yob, a recent hire by the campaign to oversee its delegate strategy, echoes the argument Santorum has been pushing in recent days: that he has vision and delegate math on his side, and that Romney is too weak to seal the deal. Facing what could be two disappointing primaries in Mississippi and Alabama, the memo is meant to affirm why the campaign believes Santorum has a good shot at the nomination, regardless of what happens Tuesday.
Yob, who was brought on because the campaign was still “learning the rules” about delegates, uses the nuanced delegate rulebook to argue various ways Santorum will gather enough delegates to arrive at the convention in August with momentum on his side and Romney lacking the requisite number of delegates to take the nomination outright.
Yob argues time is on Santorum’s side, and says his campaign should embrace, rather than fear, a drawn-out campaign. The memo also argues, as Santorum stressed over the weekend, that the delegate allotment is not set in stone. Yob uses the example of Iowa to prove that Santorum could end up with more delegates than currently predicted since delegates from caucus states are generally allotted at state conventions:
The Real Calendar (TRC) officially kicked off this weekend in Iowa where activists
gathered to begin the process of electing national convention delegates. It is clear to anyone who understands this process that a moderate candidate like Mitt Romney is going to have a difficult time winning as many delegates to the national convention in an Iowa County and State Convention system as the media calculated based on the Open Caucus system that took place in January. This system will play out in state after state, and although there will be hiccups in certain states, on average Rick Santorum will gain far more delegates than Mitt Romney through this delegate election process.
Add Newt Gingrich’s delegates, unbound delegates, and even some bound delegates to that equation and Santorum could force a brokered convention — which they claim would hand them the nomination.
Josh Putnam, a political scientist who runs the blog FrontloadingHQ, finds “both fact and fiction” in the memo. Putnam told TPM in an email that his own generous delegate predictions for Santorum don’t get him to the point the memo does. When it comes to state conventions, Putnam finds the memo lax with the rules and Santorum’s potential advantage there exaggerated. But perhaps most notably, Putnam takes issue with Yob’s assertion that April will be a good month for Santorum.
“They are absolutely correct to question the Romney team’s ability to get their candidate to 1,144, but Santorum’s argument is only going to work as long as he is winning and cutting into Romney’s lead. If Romney does well in April, then the task becomes all but impossible for Santorum,” Putnam said.
Romney, predictably, gives the memo even less credit. On Fox News, Romney said that the idea of a brokered convention would be a “gift to President Obama” that Republicans can’t afford. “If he is able to pull off a miracle, he will be the nominee,” Romney said. “Can you imagine anything a bigger gift to President Obama? That will not happen.”
Campaigns like to set expectations and exude confidence, and Yob’s memo is meant to do that. But there is a downside. When it looks like a campaign may fall short of expectations, it likes to reset them. That’s harder to do when you have a hard document laying out, in some detail, how you’ll make it to the nomination.
