Why won’t Rick and Newt
quit?
By Wesley Pruden
PrudenPolitics.com
Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich are as irrelevant
now as Ron Paul to the selection of the Republican
presidential nomination, and they both know it. They
both know that Mitt Romney can start planning his
coronation in Tampa.
The latest round of primaries, in Wisconsin,
Maryland and the District of Columbia, revealed in
starkest terms the unforgiving arithmetic. Mr.
Romney now has just over half of the 1,144 delegates
he needs to insure his triumph. He already has more
than twice the number of delegates as Mr. Santorum,
who has almost twice as many delegates as Newt
Gingrich.
He can reach for the knockout April 24 when five
states, all in the Northeast, choose their
delegates. The chief battleground is Pennsylvania,
because this is where Mr. Santorum is counting on
forlorn native-son status in his quest for one last
splash for old times’ sake. But Mitt Romney might
well win them all – Pennsylvania, Connecticut,
Delaware, New York and Rhode Island. Newt Gingrich
can only count on posting the usual row of goose
eggs. (But he gets to talk a little longer.)
So why won’t they depart now, and leave with grace
and taste, while such an exit is still possible?
Newt sort of departed that way on Sunday, with a
valedictory – or at least a few words for Mr. Romney
that were sort of graceful. “I hit him as hard as I
could,” Newt said, “and he hit me as hard as he
could. Turns out he had more things to hit with than
I did. That’s part of the business.”
Rick Santorum, who has demonstrated uncommon savvy
and skill in keeping alive a candidacy that looked
doomed weeks ago, recognizes the scent of a dead
horse, too. He hears the word “irrelevant,” as
thrown at him by Sen. John McCain. “I’ve endured
about eight months of people saying that,” he told
the New York Times. “I’ve never been the party
establishment’s candidate, and that holds true
today, and that’s nothing new.”
Now they’re saying worse than that. “I think it’s
lights out for Santorum,” says Ron Bonjean, a
Republican strategist. “He can run a sideshow
campaign for the next couple of months, but the
spotlight is on Romney now.” In fact, President
Obama is treating him as if he’s already the
candidate and the leaves of autumn had already
turned to scarlet and gold.
After Mr. Romney described the Republican budget
devised by Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin as
“marvelous,” the president mocked him. “Marvelous is
a word you don’t often hear when it comes to
describing a budget.” In return Mr. Romney mocked
back about a new Obama television commercial: “So
the president put out an ad yesterday, talking about
gasoline prices and how high they are. And guess who
he blamed? Me! Maybe after I’m president I can take
responsibility for things I might have done wrong.
But this president doesn’t want to take
responsibility for his mistakes.”
This is the exchange of fire and brimstone that
speaks volumes, and identifies Mitt Romney as the
last obstacle between Barack Obama and four more
years, the prospect that stokes the fire under
Republicans. The campaign conversation of insult,
invective, jawing and abuse is what Rick and Newt,
like all candidates, are desperate to get in and
stay in. “Irrelevant” is the most dreaded lick with
the rough side of the tongue.
From here on to Tampa the crowds at Santorum and
Gingrich “rallies” will be made up mostly of camp
followers – aides, advance men, reporters and
technicians, though the camera crews will grow
progressively fewer. The notion of a deadlocked,
brokered convention is now mere fantasy, the dream
of political correspondents and pundits stuck at
conventions where nothing any longer happens. The
smoke-filled rooms, which produced Abraham Lincoln,
Rutherford B. Hayes, FDR and Harry S. Truman, are
gone with the wind. What we see emerging now is what
we’ll get.
Newt is trying his best to love Mitt Romney. “We’re
both grandparents,” he said on Sunday. “We really
see this as the fight for the future of our
grand-children’s country. We are absolutely
committed to defeating Barack Obama. This is the
most important election, in some ways, since 1860.
Obama is a genuine radical.”
The conservatives who regard Mr. Romney as an
imposter, another in the line of uninspiring
retreads imposed on the party by the Republican
establishment, hoping to hit the jackpot on a stolen
nickel, will soon have to decide whether disdain for
Mitt Romney outweighs scorn for Barack Obama – and
act accordingly.
Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The
Washington Times.