US ELECTIONS/ Santorum gains ground

Last week was an exciting one for Rick Santorum. The winner of the Iowa Caucus won three important races.  Any time that a candidate can beat an opponent by double-digits in a state, it is a very big deal. Santorum beat Romney in Missouri by 30% and won every single county. Santorum then beat Romney in Minnesota by nearly that same percentage and won nearly every county there as well.  In the most surprising upset of the night, Santorum beat Romney in Colorado by 5%. Romney had won that state in 2008 with over 60% of the vote. A political earthquake through the Heartland and the West had just occurred and it radically changed the dynamics of the race.

Quickly following these events, Romney won both the CPAC straw poll and the Maine Caucus this last weekend. Santorum did not even compete in Maine but garnered 18% of the vote. There were actually several important developments that came out of this last week for Santorum.

The first was an enormous boost in fundraising for the Santorum campaign.  In just a few days he earned over $3 million dollars, which reflects great support and momentum for his candidacy. The upcoming races in late February going into Super Tuesday are going to be expensive. Money, an obscene amount of it, is a necessity in modern politics. It does not guarantee victory though. Look no farther than the millions in the bank for Romney, but it does ensure survival, life for another day. Without money your campaign is dead, which brings me to the second important development of the Republican race.

Santorum crushed Gingrich in all the above races. That is very significant because Santorum has now become the last conservative in the race facing Romney. Romney has always needed multiple conservatives in any state to break up the votes so that he could win a plurality of them. Gingrich has not formally quit the race as of yet, but political and financial reality is staring him straight in the face. It is reported that Gingrich's campaign is $600,000 in debt and that his major donor for his Super PAC, Sandy Alderson, has now turned off the tap. Another nail in his coffin came today when the most prestigious conservative publication in the country, National Review, called for Gingrich to leave the race. How long he stays in the race is anybody's guess. The longer he stays only helps Romney to continue to divide and conquer in upcoming states.   

There is only one debate between now and Super Tuesday. It is a CNN Debate in Arizona on February 22. Gingrich, Santorum and Romney have all had strong debate performances and they do make a real difference. Gingrich's strong performances in South Carolina propelled him to a victory there and Romney's strong debate performance in Florida guaranteed his victory in Florida. Santorum consistently strong debate performances, winning a few in fact, kept his campaign very much alive and provided the strength so that he could have the 3-state sweep mentioned above. The importance of the February 22 debate cannot be underestimated because of the two races which follow it.