Observers cite the possibility of a brokered convention as the only reason for Newt Gingrich to remain in the race for the Republican nomination. If Mitt Romney cannot accumulate a majority of committed delegates prior to the convention, then Newt’s delegates give him bargaining power, with the possibility of throwing them behind Rick Santorum or even forging a Santorum/Gingrich ticket.
But why wait for the convention? If Gingrich and Santorum can strike a deal why not do it right now? There are tradeoffs.
1. If all primaries awarded delegates in proportion to vote shares there would be no gain to joining forces early. Sending Newt’s share of the primary voters over to Rick gives him the same number of delegates as he would get if Newt collected those delegates himself and then bartered them at the convention. But winner-take-all primaries change the calculation. If Santorum and Gingrich split the conservative vote in a winner-take-all primary, all of those delegates go to Romney. Joining forces now gives the pair a chance of bagging those big delegate payoffs.
2. Teaming up now solves a commitment problem. If both stay in the race and succeed in bringing about a contested convention, the bargaining will be a three-sided affair with Romney potentially co-opting one of them and leaving the other in the cold.
Those are the incentives in favor of a merger now. Working against is
3. A candidate has less control over his voters than he would have over his delegates. Newt endorsing Santorum does not guarantee that all of Newt’s supporters will vote for Rick, many will prefer Romney and others would just stay at home on primary day.
Gingrich and Santorum are savvy enough, and there is enough at stake, for us to assume they have done the calculations. Given the widespread belief that any vote for Rick or Newt is a really an anti-Romney vote, they surely have discussed joining forces. But they haven’t done it yet and probably will not, and this tells us something.
The huge gain coming from points 1 and 2 can only be offset by losses coming from point 3. Their inability to strike a deal reveals that the Gingrich and Santorum staffs must have calculated that the anti-Romney theory is an illusion. They must have figured out that if Gingrich drops out of the race what will actually happen is that Romney will attract enough of Gingrich’s supporters (or enough of them will disengage altogether) to earn a majority and head into the convention the presumptive nominee.
Newt and Rick need each other. But what they particularly need is for each to stay in the race until the end, collecting not just the conservative votes but also the anti-other-conservative-candidate vote in hopes that their combined delegate total is large enough come convention-time to finally make a deal.
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March 15, 2012 at 12:17 am
James Lee
Both Santorum and Gingrich are in it for themselves. Why are they in the race in the first place? Because they love their country and they want to serve the people, or do they want to benefit themselves? By staying in, they build up their own “brands”, giving them more lobbying, speaking, and other money-making opportunities down the road. Unless there is diminishing prospect of future earning power by staying in, they are in it all the way through the convention.
March 15, 2012 at 10:39 pm
Jibleldinnick
KABUL (Reuters) – Twelve people were killed on Friday in the bloodiest day yet in protests that have raged across Afghanistan over the desecration of copies of the Muslim holy book at a NATO military base with riot police and soldiers on high alert braced for more violence.
The burning of the Korans at the Bagram compound earlier this week has deepened public mistrust of NATO forces struggling to stabilize Afghanistan before foreign combat troops withdraw in 2014.
Hundreds of Afghans marched toward the palace of Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul, while on the other side of the capital protesters hoisted the white flag of the Taliban.
Chanting “Death to America!” and “Long live Islam!,” protesters also threw rocks at police in Kabul, while Afghan army helicopters circled above.
Friday is a holy day and the official weekly holiday in Afghanistan and mosques in the capital drew large crowds, with police in pick-up trucks posted on nearby streets.
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Armed protesters took refuge in shops in the eastern part of the city, where they killed one demonstrator, said police at the scene. In another Kabul rally, police said they were unsure who fired the shots that killed a second protester.
Seven more protesters were killed in the western province of Herat, two more in eastern Khost province and one in the relatively peaceful northern Baghlan province, health and local officials said. In Herat, around 500 men charged at the U.S. consulate.
U.S. President Barack Obama had sent a letter to Karzai apologizing for the unintentional burning of the Korans at NATO’s main Bagram air base, north of Kabul, after Afghan laborers found charred copies while collecting rubbish.
Muslims consider the Koran to be the literal word of God and treat each copy with deep reverence. Desecration is considered one of the worst forms of blasphemy.
Afghanistan wants NATO to put those responsible on public trial.
In neighboring U.S. ally Pakistan, about 400 members of a hardline Islamist group staged protests. “If you burn the Koran, we will burn you,” they shouted.
To Afghanistan’s west, Iranian cleric Ahmad Khatami said the U.S. had purposely burned the Korans. “These apologies are fake. The world should know that America is against Islam,” he said in a speech broadcast live on state radio.
“It (the Koran burning) was not a mistake. It was an intentional move, done on purpose.”
Most Westerners have been confined to their heavily fortified compounds, including at the sprawling U.S. embassy complex and other diplomatic missions, as protests that have killed a total of 23 people, including two U.S. soldiers, rolled into their fourth day. The embassy, in a message on the microblogging site Twitter, urged U.S. citizens to “please be safe out there” and expanded movement restrictions to relatively peaceful northern provinces, where large demonstrations also occurred Thursday, including the attempted storming of a Norwegian military base.
The Taliban urged Afghan security forces Thursday to “turn their guns on the foreign infidel invaders” and repeatedly urged Afghans to kill, beat and capture NATO soldiers.
Germany, which has the third-largest foreign presence in the NATO-led war, pulled out several weeks early of a small base in the northern Takhar province Friday over security concerns, a defense ministry spokesman said.
(Additional reporting by Amira Mitri in TEHRAN, Imtiaz Shah in KARACHI, Sabine Siebold in BERLIN, Writing by Amie Ferris-Rotman; Editing by Michael Georgy and Ed Lane)