their new theme is the war on women. women are going to make up their own minds in this election. there is no war on women. i believe this is the year of the woman. they could have carried mitt romney over the ohio finish line. if santorum did better with women, he could have pulled it out in ohio. it is mathematically improbable that rick santorum can be the nominee. we need a person running against president obama. newt gingrich needs to drop out right now for that to happen. lots money to run through, i m the tortoise, i take one step at a time. newt won his home state and nothing else yesterday, why is he staying in the race? seriously, michael steele, what is going on with mitt romney? this is the guy, this is who he is. and in 2012, we re going to get him out of the white house. he won the most states, he won the most delegates. you have to give him his due. why does mitt romney still look like a big bowl of cold mashed peas? you don t need peopl
for the middle class. and independent voters. he s destroyed his ability to beat barack obama. more people showed up for barack obama than showed up for the republicans, that s because of the negative campaigning that s been going on. let me put this calculation on the table. the hurdle for newt gingrich or rick santorum to catch up with mitt romney is only equalled by the hurdle of mitt romney to arrive at the convention with the proper number of delegates. it is not in rick santorum s interest to drop out of this race. it s in his interest for newt to stay in the race and collect as many delegates as rick should do to keep mitt romney from getting the requisite number of delegates to arrive in tampa. in doing that, after the first ballot which mitt romney will fail to win, then rick santorum would have a genuine chance at winning an open floor fight. he doesn t have a chance otherwise, he has no ability to beat mitt romney and his organization and his money.
well, what jumps out at me, the interesting thing about ohio is there are 88 counties there. they re actually aren t that many swing counties within ohio. i think there are only six that changed hands between 2004 in the kerry/bush race and 2008 in the obama/mccain race. when you look at those six counties last night for clues, there s one that was a good sign, ham until ton county where cincinnati is. haven t voted for a democrat since lbj. that s good, but the four of the other five swing counties last night web with the for santorum. one problem area for romney jumped out at me, when we go to the northwest part of the state where toledo is, toledo is more dependent on detroit and the auto industry. romney was winning the cities in ohio, he was winning the blue cities. he lost toledo, he lost the three counties around toledo that went for bush in 08.
for me, what is most dangerous, hor fig here, isn t the language of slut per say, as disgusting as it was, and as much as it was directed at an individual person. i want to keep our eyes on the fact that what the right has a monopoly on right now is a set of policy positions that actively remove the ability of women to make choices for themselves around their own health care, and around their own family planning decisions. i worry both around race questions and gender questions, when we get so fundamentally up in arms about the language. i hear you, that maybe ween cat find radical leftists who say mean things, but look, i have been called extremely nasty names from both the left and the right that are deeply gendered. what i care about are the policies around the veilability health care for women. and what the right has a monopoly on is their willingness to silence women and exclude them from their own health care decisions.
i am hugely impressed that over a half a million people in ohio went out and said, i m going to cast a vote for president obama, even though i know he doesn t need any votes at all. right. there s some real energy out there. it s a continuation of what we ve been seeing in other primaries so far, not just with the turnout for obama, but the high turnout for obama but low turnout for the republican race. this is the low turnout, in the year of the tea party rage against the president. right. this tea party needs to change america, bring back america, all those slogans, they re not sure literally what the republicans are left with out of this process, there s going to be no energy for that nominee. they really are banking on all the energy being opposition to obama. these guys are flirting with, roughly a third, a little more than a third of the electorate in the states, that s what they call a win. and when you re campaigning in ohio in a primary like this, you want to