The Republican presidential primary is effectively over.
Yesterday, Rick Santorum handed Mitt Romney a clear path to the GOP nomination when he surprisingly quit the race.
In a hastily called 12-minute speech inside a small hotel meeting room, Santorum dashed the hopes of conservatives by announcing that his campaign was over.
“We made a decision over the weekend that while this presidential race for us is over, for me, we will suspend our campaign today, we are not done fighting,” Santorum said with tears welling in the reddened eyes of his wife, aides and supporters who were gathered in the room.
For weeks, it was clear that Santorum’s momentum to seize the nomination was a long shot. He was barely leading in the polls in his home state of Pennsylvania, which could have been a career ending embarrassment had he stayed in the race and lost at home. Also, a series of “foot-in-mouth” gaffes, including cursing at a NY Times reporter, brought question to his decision making. But it was the recent illness and hospitalization of his daughter which provided the writing on the wall.
Santorum made it clear that his retreat from the political stage is only temporary, leaving the door open for another run for the presidency in 2016. Republican leaders had been urging Santorum to step aside for the sake of party unity and to wait his turn for next time — advice Santorum apparently accepted over the weekend.
Despite the math being virtually impossible to construct, both Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul announced they will remain in the race all the way to the convention. Good Luck with that!
My guess is whatever *lead* Santorum may have had early on in Pennsylvania (my home state) his own recent internal polling was showing that *lead* evaporating quickly setting the stage for a embarrassing loss to Romney on April 24th.I did a quick drive-by the right-wing blogosphere…so-called "real conservatives" a few minutes ago. The general consensus appears to be depressed and angry but resigned to Romney being the GOP nominee. Will the majority of Sanotum's supporters (mostly southern evangelicals) get behind Mitt?We shall see.