not a path forward. you had a great run. you were bankrupted. your entire staff quit. you came back twice. you made it deep into the process. you have been a candidate that s contributed a lot to the dynamic in the race right now, but you re not going to be the nominee. and when a candidate stays in the race too long, when they have no chance to win, they really start to get diminished. and i suspect t path. i ll look for a graceful exit. if he can t win both of these states, it s tough to see how he was able to put together the southern strategy he s talked about is necessary to put together. you know, lawrence, to your point about the phone calls that will get made, almost as interesting as the calls to the gingrich campaign will be the calls that go out from the republican establishment to sheldon attelson. that s a discussion that s been going on. isn t romney going to call him and say, stay in there, i need this three-way to continue? certainly i m sure those calls will be m
florida, there was some discussion about eric cantor being an emissary from, quoted, establishment from attelson to stop putting money into the suicidal campaign. i think those calls will escalate tonight a lot especially if gingrich doesn t win mississippi. two quick factors on that. we don t know that sheldon doesn t want to been at this time from gingrich staying in the race. he said he doesn t like santorum and he does like romney. he may think he s doing romney the most effective thing he could be doing to help romney. as of tonight he is. as of tonight he is. it should also be noted sheldon has just been hit with a multizillion lawsuit by gaming interests in macau. we ve all been hit by gaming interests in macau. it would be as much of a great thought experiment as if i were newt gingrich.
banging their jaws together in a never ended quest to avoid what they know is going to happen any way. they re going to lose. and according to intrade, if your name isn t romney, it s a wrap. so wouldn t it be better if they went away? yes. we re one week in the election year and i m tired of it. i remember the international root canal. barack obama and hillary clinton. a vicious knife fight for delegates that i thought would never end and when it did, the country had a clear case of fatigue. here s the question. how much faith do you have in an online betting site to pick the winner of the republican primary? post a comment on my blog or our facebook page. wolf? unlike you, as you well know, i love this kind of political thing. i know you do. i hope it keeps on going and
joe, for the romney campaign has always been try not to make news no matter what, for about the past year and a half and they kind of have done that by not doing a lot of interviews. they stepped it up recently when there were began to build this sort of why isn t romney out there, is he passionate about this debate? but you re perfectly right that that 2008 structure that he put in place with his $10 million that he sunk into the iowa caucuses and then placed a disappointing second was still there. and so he kind of superimposed on to that and now it looks like a strategy, a careful strategy that is working well for him. do you get any sense from the romney people what they would consider victory? i know romney said, well, fist place. but it seems to me that if a ron paul or rick santorum is in the round out the top three as they do in the polling and we don t know what will happen in the caucuses that that would be okay with mitt romney.
the counterpunch is. the thing about newt, he ll think up something in realtime from that counterpunch, how to do a rebuttal, a slammer right back at him, whereas mitt romney will be like one of those english spiders, like chuck webb, they ve got one punch in their entire arsenal and they just fall on their face. they re lead-footed. isn t romney more lead-footed than mitt? mitt can move around that floor much faster. i think there s a pretty decent amount of consensus and i think it s appropriate that there s been a consensus that mitt romney has actually emerged as a pretty good debater and he s done a nice job. i think he s been the class of the field by far, that may not be saying much, but class of the field so far in this republican field on every debate stage he s been on. newt gingrich is no doubt a more nimble intellect, or at least a more gumby-like intellect than mitt romney s, but that can be a strength and it can be a weakness. and you never know what you re going to get