Romney Flees Mainland to Win--Hawaii and American Samoa

"We're going to win today." Romney was right. He won Hawaii--45-25 over Santorum and he won the American Samoa.

After his loss in states with 75-80% evangelical voters, Bishop Willard is facing a rocky road forward in Missouri (Saturday), Louisiana (With exorcist governor Vishnu Jindal) and then Illinois, where he has dumped a ton of money.

The media story today is how Willard has picked up a few more delegates and that Newt Gingrich needs to drop out so that it becomes a two-man race. Sneaky. The second choice of Gingrich voters has been Mitt Romney. His dropping out does not automatically benefit Santorum. Besides Newt is still bellowing that he will not drop out.

Rick Santarium's strategy has become clearer the last two days. He is on record for wanting a "brokered convention". His view is that Willard will not make the number of delegates and he believes the convention will opt for an "pure conservative". His and Newt's thinking is that two-thirds of the delegates don't want "the moderate" Mitt Romney and they will come behind a conservative candidate. In terms of raw math at this point, Romney is way ahead but he faces a difficult road ahead and is likely not to roll up the delegates in the races remaining. He has failed to deliver the crushing blow needed to make the Republicans toe the line.

What last night showed was the center of gravity--ideologically--in the Republican Party has moved to the deep south. This is a consequence of the Nixon "Southern Strategy", which aimed to neutralize the Wallace supporters and corral the disenchantment with LBJ's Great Society. Over the years, this has solidified, especially with the infiltration of the fundamentalists into the Republican Party structure.

As we stand, Romney "could" win the nomination without having won the southern states. This creates a divide between the raw, Obama-hating base and the nominee. Republican operatives may see this as an opportunity for Romney to pick up independents on the faulty premise he is a moderate. The way things look right now the "base" is intolerant of this argument and wants an open convention and process.

So for the media, the drama becomes Illinois--a make or break primary for Romney. Romney starts out with a huge money advantage, an Illinois Republican Party that is more moderate than in other states, and a current polling advantage of 4 points. But we have seen that Romney can't seal the deal in the Midwest and he has to resort to muscling local parties for delegates as we saw in Michigan. Southern Illinois tends more to the Southern profile of social conservatives. It will be close. And at this stage close might not be psychologically enough.