Romney Appeals To White Collars, Santorum To Blue

Rick Santorum won big victories in three small contests in the Republican presidential race last Tuesday. In doing so, he reshaped the oft-reshaped nomination battle once again. But he has not installed himself as the favorite, and neither he nor Mitt Romney has established himself as the candidate who can do best in the general election.

These were small contests not because the states involved were small — Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado all actually have populations near the national average — but because the primary in Missouri and the caucuses in Minnesota and Colorado are nonbinding, and so their results don’t give any candidate any national convention delegates.

So the contests weren’t really for keeps, as all three were in 2008, when Romney won them all. It says something negative about Romney that he wasn’t able to motivate many people to come forward to vote for him. But it doesn’t say everything that Santorum was able to motivate more, with overall turnout tanking in Missouri and lower in Colorado and Minnesota than in 2008.

The one candidate who took a clear loss was Newt Gingrich, who failed to get on the ballot in Missouri, finished a miserable fourth in Minnesota and beat Ron Paul by 1 percent in Colorado. Those are dreadful results 16 days after his big win in South Carolina. It’s not clear how he maintains the visibility he needs to recover.

Both Santorum and Romney can reasonably claim that he would be a stronger candidate in the general election. Republican voters in contests that count may want to examine and evaluate their claims.

Read More at Human Events By Michael Barone, Human Events