Rick Santorum Googles himself (Brian Losness/Reuters)
If I didn't have unbounding confidence in their capacity for absolute idiocy, I'd say that Rick Santorum campaign was intentionally
making a mockery of their own campaign:
The Santorum campaign denied that it's focusing on what it sees as faulty delegate math today — during an hour-long conference call with reporters explicitly devoted to discussing their complicated new delegate count that puts Santorum within spitting distance of Romney.
"First of all, listen to news stories from last two weeks," said Santorum communications director Hogan Gidley. "We're the only campaign not talking about delegate math."
Basically, Santorumworld is
claiming that everybody has got the delegate count wrong, and that Santorum is actually about 100 delegates closer to Mitt Romney than anyone outside the Santorum campaign believes. Given that delegate counts are inherently squishy, it's obviously an attempt at spreading FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) about the delegate totals, but I have no idea why they thought today—when everyone expects Santorum to get crushed by Romney in Illinois—would be a good day to try and spread that FUD.
In fact, I can't figure out why they even think it is necessary to spread FUD about the delegate math in the first place. Everybody already understands that as long as Rick Santorum is winning enough contests to hold Mitt Romney to less than half of the delegates up for grabs in contests that Romney won't be able to secure the nomination until every state has voted. Nobody, not even Romney himself, disputes that.
Obviously, that's not the same thing as saying Rick Santorum can win the nomination simply by blocking Romney's ability to win the delegates he needs in upcoming contests. Romney could still cut a deal, and super delegates could put him over the top. For Rick Santorum to have a shot at the nomination, he'd have significantly over perform, allowing him to claim a clear mandate from victories in the second half of the GOP primary. But if Santorum can't even block Romney, no amount of delegate math can help him. What Santorum should be talking about is why he thinks he has a shot at winning the popular vote in upcoming states. The fact that his campaign isn't doing that suggests that they don't believe he can. And once he stops winning, the nomination battle is over, delegate math be damned.