Why, of course not. The only victories that matter, when we’re dealing with an “inevitable” nominee, are those he wins. Which number is less than the wins by at least one opponent whose victories don’t matter. His not being inevitable and all — and so can be dismissed as a one-off winner who has now won one-off victories in more states than has the frontrunner. Who is a frontrunner not because he’s won more, it follows, but rather because he has more money, a better organization, a more advanced ground game, and besides, it’s his turn — and Ann Coulter and Chris Christie and Tim Pawlenty and Donald Trump and the Bush family have all told us he’s the guy!
That is, he’s the frontrunner by way of narrative — a pre-crafted and establishment-backed narrative that many have already signaled they will continue to adhere to, regardless of real results on the ground; and he’s the frontrunner by way of a technicality of the process, because the caucuses haven’t yet assigned delegates, though this is largely a matter of semantics: if Santorum stays in the race and is able to raise money and continue his campaign he’ll be awarded delegates from the states he’s won, barring some tremendous scandal.
What he isn’t anymore is a frontrunner on the basis of having won more than anyone else against whom he’s running.
And this has some nuanced and savvy politicos very very concerned. For instance, here’s a comment from one NRO reader about Santorum’s big (largely unimportant) night:
Santorum is the 21st Century’s William Jennings Bryan, and if nominated, will lost in the biggest landslide in history.
To which I’ll respond this way: if Santorum is nominated and loses in the biggest landslide in US history to a Marxist collectivist who is actively working to rewrite the Constitution into a document that institutionalizes its precise opposite intent (which, thanks, textualists!) — one that transfers the provenance for fundamental rights from beyond the reach of man to the control of man — then the United States, as Benjamin Franklin and de Toqueville other evil white patriarchal miscreants predicted, is lost anyway.
The rest is just about who wins the looting contest.
The progressives will indicate just how much the victories matter to themselves by means of the attacks on Santorum they either indulge or refrain from making in the next few weeks. I suspect, on no particular evidence as yet, that the attacks will be furious, vicious, unrelenting and joined too often by many a Republican establishment type.
That’ll be the U.N. blue helmets sent in to ‘calm’ what remains of the populace, after the riots that spark the Second Civil War.
Meghan Kelly’s guests are minimizing Santorum’s triple.
That idiot commenter doesn’t know what said idiot commenter is talking about. Mike Huckabee is this century’s William Jennings Bryan.
Well, anything that the chatterati fail to predict is by definition unimportant. If it weren’t they would have predicted it.
Jeff, your last full paragraph states the core issue as well as I’ve seen it put.
Well, that’s just plain stupid. 1984?
Romeny is ahead by 48 delegates … because they didn’t officially award Santorum any of Missouri’s 37 delegates (which, I know, I know, aren’t assigned for another month, but whatevs).
Knock out the outlier of Florida *and* don’t include Missouri, and Santorum leads by 2. Which is really unfair, because he’s not inevitable at all.
OUTLAW!
Pablo, wasn’t 1972 kinda brutal, too? We’ve had some doozies.
[…] see Jeff Goldstein about this unimportant night for […]
For the establishment, every cycle is another 1964 in the offing.
That’s their dream. That’s their nightmare.
It’s semantics, I recognize, but there are 20 states that no Republican presidential candidate is going to lose: Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Wyoming, and probably West Virginia. Throw in Arizona and Missouri as McCain states that Obama is likely to lose, and at a minimum the Republican nominee – and again, that’s whoever the nominee is going to be – will win at least 22 states. That, ummm, a bit more than Goldwater, Landon, Mondale and other flameouts.