Santorum campaign holding Thursday afternoon conference call with State AGs "to discuss the breaking election scandal in Michigan"— @samsteinhp via TweetDeck
In a stunning bit of chutzpah, Michigan Republicans decided to ignore their own delegate selection rules and decided to hand Romney one of Santorum's delegates for no apparent reason. Thus, rather than a 14-14 delegate tie in the state, Romney now wins the delegate race 15-13.
Whichever Romney ally thought this was a genius idea needs to be drummed out of politics forever. Because of one ultimately insignificant delegate, the Santorum campaign now has a new cause to rally around—a Republican establishment breaking its own rules to help the patrician Mitt. For a campaign that feigned so much outrage over Operation Hilarity, it is now essentially saying "fuck it, we're taking those delegates whether we earned them or not."
For one delegate, the Michigan Republican Party is pulling third-world voting shenanigans. For one delegate, the Romney camp is confirming the narrative that he's a rick prick bully. That one delegate will be worth more to Santorum than his or her single vote at the convention would've been.
2:43 PM PT: The response from the Santorum camp:
"There's just no way this is happening," said Hogan Gidley, national communications director of the Santorum Campaign. "We've all heard rumors that Mitt Romney was furious that he spent a fortune in his home state, had all the political establishment connections and could only manage a tie Rick Santorum. But we never thought the Romney campaign would try to rig the outcome of an election by changing the rules after the vote. This kind of back room dealing political thuggery just cannot and should not happen in America."
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