Get ready for the post-Romney campaign

Reuters has taken notice of the fact that Rick Santorum is currently leading Mitt Romney in Michigan, Romney's home state and a state that elected his father governor.  Overall the article is an attempt to lower morale among Republican voters by beating the "brokered convention" drum.  The idea is that Santorum is such a weak candidate that if he gets the nomination the GOP establishment insiders will have to go behind closed doors in the proverbial smoke filled room and chose another candidate to unite the party and give it a chance to beat Obama.

Of course if the GOP establishment insiders have their way they would choose another even more "moderate" RINO in the John McCain/Bob Dole/Mitt Romney mold. 

The truth is that Santorum is handling the social conservative issues very well.  He is standing up for his beliefs but making clear that he does not wish to impose his Roman Catholic theological views upon the nation as a whole.  He has then forcefully pointed out the mainstream media's hypocrisy in questioning him closely about remarks made by a supporter with no connection to the Santorum campaign while giving Obama a complete pass on his association with a vicious hate-filled antisemitic racist "pastor" in whose church Obama sat for 20 years - even letting the unhinged purveyor of hatred baptize his two daughters.

And then he turns the discussion back to the central issue of this campaign.  Barack Obama's abject failures as a president.  To our economy with its persistently high unemployment (if the unemployment figure was calculated today with the same formula that was used on the day Obama was sworn in the unemployment rate would be over 11%) and anemic growth.  Every time the MSM homunculus tries to drag Santorum back to the issue of contraception he is only reinforcing to every member of the audience who is not already a batshit crazy MSNBC viewer the fact that the media is consciously running interference for Obama.  That they are deliberately attempting to deflect the public's attention away from Obama's failure as president an onto a completely irrelevant area.  Irrelevant not because birth control is not important to many women but irrelevant because no one - not even the Pope - is trying to outlaw it.

Of course we can't count Romney out yet.  He has a huge amount of money and a well organized campaign (after all he's been running for president for over 5 years).  And a loss in Michigan would be bad for him but not the total disaster that Reuters seems to think it would be:

"It's hard for me to see how Romney rights the ship if he loses Michigan," said Republican strategist Matt Mackowiak. "There is no level of spin that can overcome that disaster."

 The truth is that Ann Coulter, who is risking the good will she has built up with conservatives by becoming little more than a Romney shill, has already begun distributing the Romney loses Michigan spin.  As a guest on the Glen Beck show Miss Ann said that a loss in Michigan would come as no surprise because Romney opposed the government bailout of the auto companies.  Clearly the Romney campaign is planning to spin a potential loss in Michigan as proof that Romney is too a conservative because the UAW doesn't like him.


That the Romney campaign is already coordinating an effort to prepare for a loss in Michigan with Coulter, its most visible surrogate , indicates that their internal polling is telling them that Michigan may well be out of their grasp.