Independent News and Politics

April 10, 2012

Well, it is official:  Santorum has dropped out of the 2012 Republican primary race, and Romney stands alone as the only candidate to have won a significant number of state contests.  Although Gingrich and Paul are still technically in the race, there’s no way they can win outside of an incredibly rare and unlikely brokered convention.

However, this victory for Romney is a Pyrrhic one:  every nationwide and state-by-state poll shows Obama winning in November by a comfortable margin.  According to the state electoral tracker at Real Clear Politics, Obama already has the 271 electoral votes required to win re-election.  Even if Romney could carry every single toss up state, it wouldn’t matter in the slightest.

The big shift in this election may be looked back on as the time when the evangelical-led, socially conservative movement finally died.  Before birth control resurfaced, Romney had a slim margin among women voters.  After the ridiculous attack from the right against womens’ reproductive rights, this marginal support turned in to a 2:1 landslide in Obama’s favor.