Romney Fighting All The Way To The Convention?

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

MITT ROMNEY

After talking to some Romney people, there are no signs of relenting. One source friendly to Romney says that "the speech tomorrow at CPAC will give the direction one way or another."

Apparently the word is going around Team Romney that McCain will need 77 percent of the delegates remaining to win.* (I'm pretty sure that's wrong, if the numbers 720-256-194 are accurate. And if McCain, the guy in the 600-700s needs to win an extremely high percentage, doesn't Romney, the guy in the 200s, have to win an even higher percentage?)

However, if Romney stays in, it's very plausible to see a scenario in which he denies McCain the nomination on a straight delegate victory. This would result in some really, really rough coverage and criticism. I'm hearing some fans of Mitt talk about doing something like this to "keep McCain honest" and to broker concessions in St. Paul.

We'll see. If the sense is that his campaign isn't being run to win, but being run to make a point, I think you'll see his support in subsequent states drop... I'm not sure the Romney campaign was built to be a protest candidacy...

UPDATE: Ah-ha. Here's the relevant section in a Team Romney memo:

Even assuming that McCain reaches 700 delegates once counting finishes in California, he would still need to win 77% of delegates from upcoming states to secure the nomination by April 1.

That seems like a rather arbitrary deadline. After April Fool's Day, there is Pennsylvania (April 22, 74 delegates).

May 6 has plenty of delegates at stake in North Carolina (69 delegates) and Indiana (57 delegates).

Then a bunch of smaller ones. May 13, Nebraska, 33 delegates. May 16, Hawaii, 20 delegates. May 20, Kentucky (45 delegates) and Oregon (30 delegates). May 27, Idaho, 32 delegates. The last two are on June 3, New Mexico (32 delegates) and South Dakota (27 delegates).

Based on yesterday, Team McCain has to feel good about their chances in every state that isn't in the South and that Mitt Romney never lived in.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Or perhaps "every state that isn't in the South, that Mitt Romney never lived in, or is a caucus."

02/06 02:43 PM Share