The Fat Lady’s Aria

Listen closely. Do you hear that faint singing? No, it’s not the neighborhood Chazzan practicing his favorite holiday nusach in preparation for Pesach. Listen closer, what you hear is the proverbial fat lady signaling that Mitt Romney will be the Republican candidate for president.

Though they can no longer win the nomination, Santorum and Gingrich are unlikely to concede the race before early June (to put that in perspective, in 2008 Hillary Clinton dropped out on June 7th). The fact remains that it is impossible for either Gingrich or Santorum to gain the 1,144 delegates needed for the nomination, and almost no chance for an open convention.

Santorum’s campaign has privately admitted that he cannot win the nomination outright. In a strategy memo, Santorum advisor John Yob argued that the only way he could win is a contested convention. The problem with that strategy is it’s hard to see any scenario that ends with a brokered convention.

If one objectively looks at the remaining contests, the former Massachusetts Governor will probably have the nomination wrapped up by the end of May at the latest.

Romney has won 568 delegates so far, 55% of those chosen. He needs only 46% of the remaining delegates to cinch the nomination. The former Pennsylvania Senator needs 70% of the remaining delegates for 1,144. Gingrich needs 80%, meaning the only way for him to win is if Romney and Santorum are caught in bed with a prostitute--and each other.

With the Louisiana primary last weekend, the action moves north to the Mid-Atlantic, New England, and Western States, all areas where Romney will do well.

Many of those remaining primaries are winner-take-all contests with many delegates. Next Tuesday, three of those winner-take all primaries, DC, Maryland and Wisconsin, take place. Polls show Romney will win all three and add 98 delegates to his total.

He will also take the winner-take-all primaries in the liberal leaning states of California and New Jersey (where Governor Christie is a strong supporter) and the heavily Mormon Utah bringing Romney to within 216 of his goal and needing only 22% of the remaining delegates.

The former Massachusetts Governor will also do well in the end of April primaries where 236 delegates will be committed from Delaware (winner-take-all), Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York and Santorum’s home state of Pennsylvania. In this group Santorum’s best chance at a victory is his home state. But a win on his home turf is not a given as Santorum is more conservative than Pennsylvania’s voter base (Obama won the state by 11% and Santorum lost his 2006 re-election bid by 18%).

Romney will be within 100 delegates by the end of April, and proportional primaries In May should put him over the top by the end of the month. Even if he is still a bit short, the super delegates will rally behind the leader, just as they did in the 2008 Democratic campaign, putting him over the top.

National polls of GOP voters show Romney’s lead surging over recent days. Gallup reports Romney building his lead to 14% over Santorum, a ten-point jump in one week.

Over the past week or so, conservatives have begun to coalesce behind the front-runner, most notably former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and the leader of conservative Republicans in the Senate, Jim DeMint. Freedomworks, one of the few national tea party organizations, dropped its objection to Romney and suggested that Republicans rally around Romney (not an endorsement but a major step), and the leader of the Senate Tea Party caucus Mike Lee (Utah) announced his endorsement of the Governor this past Monday.

While not endorsing Romney on this week’s Sunday morning news shows, Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham all said they believed that Romney will be the nominee and it was time for GOP voters to rally around Romney.

This movement will continue. And a gaffe Santorum made last week may even accelerate the process.

Santorum’s gaffe was not simply a mistake but showed him too immature to be President of the United States. He said that the former Massachusetts governor is not conservative enough to offer voters a clear choice in the fall election and that only he can provide that contrast. If he had stopped there all would have been fine but he went on to imply that if he wasn’t the nominee, people might as well vote for the incumbent.

"You win by giving people a choice," Santorum said during a campaign stop in Texas. "You win by giving people the opportunity to see a different vision for our country, not someone who's just going to be a little different than the person in there."

Santorum added: "If they're going to be a little different, we might as well stay with what we have instead of taking a risk of what may be the Etch A Sketch candidate for the future."

Santorum did try and walk back on his statement but instead of admitting it he went over the line and denied the meaning of his quote. Especially to party leadership, Rick Santorum committed the ultimate sin for a 2012 GOP candidate--saying Barack Obama would be preferred over his opponents.

The effect of this gaffe will be to motivate more party leaders to rally around Romney perhaps sooner than they might have to prevent the party from being fractured, and to turn attention to what they see as their real task: the defeat of President Obama. Despite what you may hear from the mainstream media, when the time comes to support a nominee, Republican voters will enthusiastically support their party’s standard-bearer. By the looks of it that nominee will be Mitt Romney.

Jeff Dunetz is the Editor/Publisher of the political blog “The Lid” (www.jeffdunetz.com). Jeff contributes to some of the largest political sites on the internet including American Thinker, Big Government, Big Journalism, NewsReal and Pajama’s Media, and has been a guest on national radio shows including G. Gordon Liddy, Tammy Bruce and Glenn Beck. Jeff lives in Long Island.