Daily Santorum: The delegate hunt
While all the talk in the GOP race is about Romney and Gingrich, Rick Santorum (and Ron Paul) could stay in this race for a good long time, even if they get trounced a week from today in Florida. Both are using the 2008 Barack Obama model for the primary, in which he racked up small wins (and lots of delegates) even while Hillary Clinton won Pennsylvania and other big states.
Writes Ben Jacobs in The Daily Beast:
After failing to convert his eventual win in Iowa into much momentum in South Carolina, Santorum has been forced by necessity to shift into a somewhat similar strategy. Although he’s still investing some time in Florida, he’s not spending any of his limited campaign funds on television advertising in the broad and vastly expensive state, with its 10 separate media markets. His strategy now seems to be to keep his head low and be ready to pounce if both Romney and Gingrich emerge from Florida having bloodied and bruised one another.
Brabender said the race is about “which candidate survives and which candidate pulls away.” The Santorum campaign is targeting Western states like Nevada, which has only two major media markets, and Colorado, where the former Pennsylvania senator has already been endorsed by leading social conservative James Dobson. Santorum’s goal, said Brabender, is “not necessarily that we’re going win [every state] but finishing second in a lot of states where we’re doing well.”
(Jim O'Toole had more from Brabender here yesterday.)
Santorum was the only candidate to hit the spin room after last night's debate, and sounded similar themes to ABC. Media attention is getting him money (including $170K on Sunday alone), and will help propel him beyond Florida:
“I’m not wasting time if you guys put cameras in front of me and you talk about what I’m saying … this is a national race and we are going to be around for a long time in this race,” Santorum told reporters. “We are going to be working in a lot of different states and as we — as I said today if you were waiting for something to happen in this race wait for tomorrow, wait for the next day, this race is going to change. People have been up, people have been down and I’ve been here.”
He was on Fox News this morning saying Romney's lobbyist attacks on Gingrich were "over the top." (GOP12) Of course Santorum himself is all but a lobbyist for Consol Energy, though he's not registered on state or federal sites as such.