Santorum sweeps all 3 contests changing campaign dynamic overnight

Rick Santorum swept Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri contests clearly establishing his potential as a top-rung contender armed with winsome populous oratorical skills in contrast to Mitt Romney’s drab business-like rhetorical pitch.

Romney suddenly looked incapable of getting the die-hard conservatives to coalesce around him. The campaign dynamic changed instantly as Maine, Michigan, and Arizona battles loomed ahead signaling a protracted nomination battle for supremacy with 11 primaries ready to assign 437 delegates on March 6th –the Super Tuesday.

Countering the obvious downward slide, Romney-coming third behind Ron Paul in Minnesota-- reminded everyone that the three caucuses were non-binding “sideshows” and the path forward to the Convention clearly pointed to his victory. Not so fast, seemed to be Newt Gingrich’s response insisting that he would win the Southern primaries on March 6th. He was campaigning in Ohio where early primary voting had already begun.

As to which of the three Republican protagonists would have a realistic climb to the top for good became the hot-button issue. In a memo released to the press, Romney political director Rich Beeson dismissed the non-binding caucuses held this week as being inconsequential and repeated that the path forward in the 2012 primaries was clearly via a Romney victory. He pointed out that Arizona’s 29 delegates to be decided on February 28th would be bound in a winner-take-all contest and Michigan, the state where Governor Romney grew up, similarly carried 30 delegates. So the lead in delegate count most likely would go to Romney even after a few loses. John McCain lost 19 states in 2008.

The main focus emphasized by all is that victory would ultimately hinge on the resources and organization available to keep winning over the long run. The winning message also counted immensely. The rest would depend hard campaigning, and old-fashioned delegate math based on a steady gain of delegates in every state.

There are others who pointed out that although some of the caucuses were non-binding, it would be also too late for Romney to argue that these non-binding contests have no significance whatsoever. They asked --if that's the case, why bother spending time and surrogate energy to compete in them? Perception of a winning trend by Romney rivals may cause a shift in support they added.

It’s the economy stupid

Meanwhile the impact of a television Ad by General Motors during last week’s Super Bowl starring the persuasive Clint Eastwood, watched by 111 million suddenly dwarfed all other issues. The Ad showed that auto industry’s successful turnaround would become pivotal--the economy is climbing back it proclaimed—a poignant moment for the United States as it worked towards economic recovery.

In the final three minutes of the Super Bowl game, there were an average of 10,000 Tweets per second on that commercial-- something President Obama and Republican Clint Eastwood can agree on … @twitter: the economy is gaining momentum.

It seemed a stunning blow to those prosecuting the pessimistic economic message against Obama—who got blamed for the loss of jobs. Romney’s slogan came into sharp scrutiny—“Obama's been trying to take a bow for unemployment at 8.3 percent.” That might soon get replaced by “we could do better on jobs.”

So far Romney has rested his platform for election on the sluggish economy. The TV chatter about a recovering job status seemed to have challenged his campaign to re-state the case. He is yet to come up with any reaction at all. The pessimism projected may not be as effective a before if economic recovery keeps on growing—and the pitch that “economy is beyond redemption under Obama” may become obsolete. The state of the economy in the coming months would be crucial to Obama’s re-election prospects.

Ignoring Romney’s charge that recovery is sluggish Obama cast himself as the instrument of fairness in an age of anger, saying he would be the bulwark against a yawning wealth gap and Republican policies that he said would widen inequality.

We will be watching two election bids in the 2012 election---Obama’ portraying his economic policies as a foundation for growth and opportunity while Republican nominee would vouch the jobs would be a plenty during his watch.

- Asian Tribune -

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