Mitt Romney Holds Serve .... Just Barely !

Guy Smiley Takes Arizona and Michigan .... Sort Of.


     A win is a win is a win, right?  Well yeah, and no.  Confused yet?  We are too.. Last night was one of those nights where a lot of the candidates had reason to feel good and bad at the same time.  In short, we got a mixed bag and if you think Super Tuesday is going to clear it up, don't bet on it....


    First, let's talk about Mitt Romney - aka last night's 'big winner'... he can lay claim to having won both Arizona and Michigan.  Arizona's 20 point shellacking was good news, because for a while, Rick Santorum got really close there.  The bad news for Romney and good news for Santorum is that he only beat Rick by 3 points in the states he claims as home.  Looking at an electoral map, it's pretty clear that Santorum has a stronghold going across the Rust Belt, which is laden with delegate-rich states.  


   Yeah, Santorum would have much rather won Michigan outright, but as far as delegates, he actually tied Romney with 15 delegates each, based on his winning more congressional districts overall.. Overall, it wasn't a bad night, but his fall from both of them from a week earlier shows that he might want to get his message back on track, be not quite so serious and whiny, and reload...


   Newt Gingrich is limping along so badly at this point that he may not even win Georgia, and has been passed by Santorum in much of the Deep South. Basically, if this holds up, his entire strategy to at least get to Tampa has been shot to hell.  If he doesn't win anything but Georgia, or at least a solid second in all of them, the calls will start for him to drop out...and he may have to listen to them, hubris aside.


   As for Ron Paul, despite his dull showings in both states, we kinda like his chances on Super Tuesday.  No, he won't win anything, but he doesn't care about that.  he just wants a few delegates, and being the only other guy on the ballot in Virginia helps.  Add to that nice Granola states like Washington, Vermont, Idaho, Alaska and Tennessee - where they are very big on their personal freedoms - and he could bag a few of them...


   Right now, without having really looked at a single poll, we'd give Washington, Virginia, Vermont, Massachusetts, Idaho and Alaska to Romney.  Santorum wins Tennessee, Oklahoma, Ohio and North Dakota.  We'll give Gingrich Georgia for now, but that may change.  Stay tuned...

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