to be in a plane crash? what struck me about his campaign for a guy who was speaker of the house, led republicans to one of the most victories of the 20th century, the establishment hates him. they will not let that guy be president. he led them to one of the greatest victories they ever had and made the brand politically poisonous like it s never been before and they remember that and we had reminders of that twice during the campaign when he was surging in the polls, both times, wasn t just romney, wasn t the romney super pac, every republican influential opinion-shaping republican who remembered the 1990s, they joined the pile-on or watched it happen and didn t speak up for gingrich. the weird thing about his role in the primary, he says he s there to take out mitt. he says he s like a mitt-seeking missile. and nevertheless, it helps mitt every day newt gingrich does not drop out because it splits the conservative anti-mitt romney vote.
and even though rick santorum won mississippi last night, even though he won the popular vote there, barbour boosted romney to 13 delegates because he is a super delegate. his vote is one delegate. that made it a tie. they have two more super delegates, he will have eeked out a win in delegates despite losing the vote and counties. the same was true elsewhere last night as well. in terms of how many delegates were awarded, mitt romney won more than rick santorum did. chuck todd counted 42 delegates for romney, 38 for santorum. that means romney won the night or part of the night he needed to win in order to move closer to the nomination. now, romney hasn t always seem so strong in the primary he has won a lot of nights like that one. he is way ahead in the delegate count. it isn t even close. now, that is part of the new truth in the republican primary.
mattering, one reason for that, one reason that rick santorum despite being strong in the polls, despite piling up victory, why he s expected to lose the race he hasn t built a campaign for delegates. as dan boll wrote, the absence of a good delegate operation is a signal of a campaign ill-prepared for whatever might be coming. the failure of santorum to qualify for tuesday s ballot in virginia is an example what can thoop a small, under funded or disorganized campaign. in a place like ohio, you can see this playing out even though rick santorum lost to mitt romney by less than 1% of the vote, it was pretty much a tie, he got trounced when it came to delegates. thor than a quarter of ohio s delegates were off limits because he didn t have a delegate his campaign didn t fill out the paperwork. from this point forward in the
vote to a larger amount of the delegates to exert power. i know you were involved back in 08, what can the ron paul campaign do here? i talk about the conventions that occur in the caucus states. and even in some of the primary states in the democratic side we had a few delegates who would be selected through that process. but i think that in his case, the problem is just that he doesn t have quite enough support to really have that kind of impact. perhaps a rick santorum, if he manages his delegates at these various conventions around the country, he could perhaps have a significant impact on the outcome from the caucus states through good management practices at the conventions. if you were advising the
proportionally we have four times as many as the republicans, so it will have less of an impact on their race, all things being equal. so the ron paul campaign has essentially been lying in wait for weeks now waiting for the state and county conventions, they feel they can move what has been a very small amount of the vote to a larger amount of the delegates to examinert power. i know you were involved back in 08, what can the ron paul campaign do here? i talk about the conventions that occur in the caucus states. and even in some of the primary states in the democratic side we had a few delegates who would be selected through that process. but i think that in his case, the problem is just that he doesn t have quite enough support to really have that kind of impact. perhaps a rick santorum, if he