How Santorum would drag down the GOP ticket

North Carolina's John Hood, president of the conservative John Locke Foundation (a think tank in Raleigh), had quite an interesting take on the Republican presidential primary race today. He took note of the "probability calculus" showing that despite all the cat-fighting that's going on now among GOP contenders, and the less than warm reception Mitt Romney gets from conservative conservatives - "the base" - Romney will be President Barack Obama's opponent come November.

That "probability calculus"? "Romney leads in delegates. He leads in the popular vote to date. He leads in fundraising, endorsements, and organization," Hood writes. "Unless something bizarre happens – some embarrassing new disclosure or gaffe on his part – Mitt Romney will be Barack Obama’s general-election opponent."

Most pundits (and non-pundits) assume the same. Just take a look at Josh Putnam's Frontloading HQ (Putnam is a visiting professor at Davidson College specializing in election campaigns). His website calculates how neither Santorum nor Gingrich has a real path to getting the 1144 delegates needed to get the Republican nod. "It isn't mathematically impossible, but it would take either Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum over-performing their established level of support in the contests already in the history books to such an extent that it is all but mathematically impossible." Putnam's modeling is intriguing both in his calculations of how Gingrich and Santorum can't reach the magic number and how Romney can.

Back to Hood's analysis. The really interesting part is what he predicts for election day:

"While Romney’s ability to defeat Obama may remain debatable, there is little doubt that many Republican politicians wanted him at the top of the ticket rather than Santorum or Gingrich because they thought a Romney candidacy posed less of a risk to their own electoral prospects. While losing the presidential race would disappoint them, they’d rather live through another 1992 or 1996 – when GOP losses for president were accompanied by some offsetting GOP victories elsewhere – than go through another disastrous cycle like 1964 or 2008.

"Their statistical assessment of the 2012 election is entirely defensible. I continue to think that current trends predict a very close presidential contest in November. It might well come down to a point or two difference in the popular vote and key battles in swing states such as Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, and our own North Carolina.

"Under those circumstances, one plausible scenario would be an Obama reelection combined with a Republican retention of the U.S. House, takeover of the U.S. Senate, and net gain of three to four governorships. Another plausible scenario would be a Romney victory combined with Republican losses in U.S. House seats and Democratic retention of the U.S. Senate.

"Right now, in other words, it looks like the 2012 cycle won’t be a wave election like 2006 and 2008 were for the Democrats and 2010 was for the Republicans."

Sounds about right. The U.S. electorate has said in several votes now that they like divided government, not wanting to give one party all the keys to the car. They have good reasons. Too often, politicians holding all the keys tend to try to drive the car off the cliff. Even with some of the keys, they can and have stalled traffic.

Ah, the wisdom of checks and balance.

Fannie Flono