Rick Santorum created the narrative that he was a force to be reckoned with during last month’s nonbinding primary contest in Missouri. But he is looking to add delegates in this month’s caucuses and is widely viewed as the likely winner.
The difference – this time Missouri’s 52 delegates are at stake.
Santorum spokesman Hogan Gidley told Red Alert Politics that he expects the former Pennsylvania Senator to do as well in the caucuses as he did in the Feb. 7 primary when he won with 55 percent of the vote. That was considered a “beauty contest” in which no delegates were awarded.
Frontrunner Mitt Romney finished in a distant second with just over 25 percent of the vote.
The senator’s staunch traditionalist conservatism does well in Missouri because of its large base of conservative Evangelicals, particularly in the Ozarks.
“It seems like he’s got a lot of morals, which is good for the Christian base,” Roger Wright, 45, of Macks Creek, told the Los Angeles Times after a Santorum speech Friday night. “A lot of the things that are happening to this world are because of the wickedness in it. We need to get back to moral statutes.”
But the county caucus process, which kicked off today, is only a part of the complicated process of nominating the state’s delegates to the August Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla.
The registered Republicans caucusing in each of the state’s 114 counties today elected representatives to attend congressional district conventions on April 21 that will elect 24 of the state’s delegates. This in turn will be followed by a statewide convention in June that will pick the remaining delegates.
University of Missouri political science professor Marvin Overby told the Los Angeles Times this complicated process could potentially result in the former Pennsylvania senator walking away empty-handed even if he wins the vote because of Romney’s potentially superior resources at the conventions.
Gidley said the senator nonetheless remains optimistic that Romney is overestimating his delegate lead because he has failed to take party rules for awarding delegates into account.
“The delegate total is a little different,” Gidley said. “It will get a lot more interesting before this whole thing shakes out. Counting delegates right now is as the rules dictate and not as the Romney campaign would like.”
Santorum made similar comments himself during a Missouri campaign stop, according to ABC News:
“We’re in this fight. We’re going to be in it till the end. We’re going to win. The Republican party’s going to nominate a conservative. You’ve just got to believe that, and I hope you that give us the opportunity here in Missouri to have a great delegate count and then go home and call your friends across the river and make sure we have the same opportunity in Illinois.”
