Rick Santorum’s victories in Alabama and Mississippi Tuesday came close to making the contest a two-man race. Newt Gingrich was counting on those Deep South states to revive his near-dead campaign. Instead, they deflated Mitt Romney’s hope for wins that would have made his nomination inevitable and left the Georgian to write his epitaph.
What those primaries also did was demonstrate how wide the ideological gap in our nation has become.
Both Santorum and Gingrich went after the far-right votes — and between them won nearly 70 percent of votes cast.
Three-quarters of those who cast ballots told exit pollsters that it mattered to them that they share their religious beliefs with the candidates they support. Santorum won 41 percent of their votes, despite the fact that he was a fervent Roman Catholic seeking support in Southern Baptist country.
As a nation, Americans place themselves on the ideological scale this way: 11 percent are “very conservative,” 30 percent are “conservative,” 36 percent “moderate,” 15 percent “liberal,” and 6 percent, “very liberal.”
Santorum and Gingrich both pitched themselves to that 11 percent of “very conservative” voters and were rewarded for it, because that was the ideological segment which dominated Tuesday voting in those two states.
Santorum took his victories to be an argument for “conservatives to come together” to take the nomination away from Romney and put a conservative candidate against President Obama in November.
The obvious weakness in this plea — conservatives don’t make up the American majority — was not lost on Tuesday’s voters. They agreed that Gingrich and Santorum were real conservatives, but also told pollsters that Romney was the most electable.
Really?
So Deep South voters are willing to give their delegates to very conservative candidates who, they agree, can’t win? Ideology first; realism second.
If that philosophy carries the day in Tampa come August, November can’t come soon enough for the Democrats.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
