Super Tuesday was not so super. A day that has in the past brought great surprise, triumph, and decisiveness on the campaign trail for presidential nominees merely perpetuated the trend this year in the race for the GOP’s nomination.
While 24 states held primaries and caucuses in 2008, only 10 did so on March 6. Romney won six states (MA, VT, ID, VA, OH, and AK), Santorum won three (ND, TN, and OK) and Gingrich won one, his former home state, Georgia.
The spotlight of the night fell on the ever-volatile Ohio. The Buckeye State proved to be quite the contest, as news stations waited late into the night to call the victory for Romney. According to CNN, he outspent rival Santorum four-to-one in the battleground, only to come out on top by one percent of the vote.
Despite reason for doubt, Romney’s campaign remains assured in the public eye. On Super Tuesday night, Romney said, “These times may be tough but our citizens still believe in the promise of America and they need a candidate who believes in them. Real change is finally on the way.”
Romney’s message of change sounded very similar to a presidential candidate of four years ago who was battered much of the night by his most successful challenger thus far. “When he was campaigning President Obama said he would create jobs but for the past 36 months unemployment has been over eight percent…he said he’d halve the deficit and he’s doubled it.”
The MA moderate’s strong campaign funding and considerable poise have left him in an auspicious position now that the race is winding down. According to realclearpolitics.com, Romney’s 404 delegates accumulated after Super Tuesday outnumber the totals for the other three candidates combined. However, there is still a possibility for some controversy.
“Let’s say Romney keeps on winning 40 percent of the proportional delegates—which is his average. In that case, he comes in at 1,022 at the end of this. That is a path to a contested convention in Tampa,” CNN analyst John Avlon said.
“The voters are saying Romney isn’t conservative enough, Santorum is too extreme, and a convention fight will make the party look totally disunified,” social studies teacher Mr. Thieke said.
A split party going into the Republican National Convention on August 27 is exactly what challenger Santorum is hoping for. The former PA senator has been making waves in the conservative faction of the party with traditional values and support for the blue collar worker.
When asked about the strength of his campaign, Santorum boasted just that.
“I was the guy who was in Steubenville, Ohio last night. I wasn’t in Boston; I wasn’t in Atlanta. I was in the heart of blue-collar America talking about the jobs and the opportunities for those river and mill towns in the heart of America,” he said.
Despite the fervor some social conservatives are displaying for Santorum, most Republicans agree that Romney is the clear choice if electability is the major issue in selecting a nominee. According to MSNBC, he led polls across the country in terms of electability—even in states he did not win. In Georgia, where Gingrich won forty-seven percent of the vote, only thirty-six percent of voters considered him the most electable, while forty-three percent assigned that title to Romney.
In the past few elections, Super Tuesday has decided the candidates for president, but this year that end seems nowhere in sight. With no one willing to back down and the party’s electorate divided between an electable moderate and a strong conservative, it seems the only man benefiting from the turmoil is the man all Republicans desire to defeat: Barack Obama.