Republican Insiders begin to prepare for post MI primary meltdown [View all]

[grantcart]

Last edited Sat Feb 18, 2012, 10:40 PM - Edit history (1)

edited to add PPP latest tweet "Santorum leading on the first night of our new Michigan poll, but much closer than we found there a week ago."

Romney's inevitable meltdown is coming earlier than predicted. Even if he wins Michigan it will be at such a cost in treasure and reputation that it will become the new political definition of Pyrrhic Victories.

The establishment is begining to forsee a process that would go to Santorum or Gingrich.

Fear is palpable in the country club class. Multiple senior sources are begining to leak alternative plans if Romney fails in Michigan;

http://www.politico.com/playbook/

THE CONVERSATION: A tippy-top Republican, unprompted, yesterday sketched the germ of a plan for a new candidate if Rick Santorum upsets Mitt Romney in the Michigan primary on Feb. 28. Our friend brought visual aids: chicken-scratched versions of prosaic documents that are circulating among GOP insiders like nuclear-code sheets: In case of mayhem, break glass!

Most reporters still think Romney “will find a way to win Michigan.” Nevertheless, some of the nation’s most powerful Republicans are poring over filing deadlines and pondering worst-case scenarios.

Our friend handed us a printout of FEC deadlines for ballot access, with five of them circled and starred: California (March 23), Montana (March 12), New Jersey (April 2), New Mexico (March 16) and South Dakota (March 27). The point: Even after Feb. 28, it might be possible to assemble a Hail Mary candidacy that could garner enough delegates to force a CONTESTED convention (a different nuance than BROKERED, which implies that someone is in charge).

At the same time that they were meeting they literarrly bumped into this reporter who had his own official leak from another Republican Senator

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/02/top-gop-senator-says-if-romney-loses-michigan-we-need-a-new-candidate/


A prominent Republican senator just told me that if Romney can’t win in Michigan, the Republican Party needs to go back to the drawing board and convince somebody new to get into the race.

“If Romney cannot win Michigan, we need a new candidate,” said the senator, who has not endorsed anyone and requested anonymity.

The senator believes Romney will ultimately win in Michigan but says he will publicly call for the party to find a new candidate if he does not.

“We’d get killed,” the senator said if Romney manages to win the nomination after he failed to win the state in which he grew up.

“He’d be too damaged,” he said. “If he can’t even win in Michigan, where his family is from, where he grew up.”