United Liberty

The dust from Super Tuesday is still settling. Some conservatives are trying to downplay Mitt Romney’s wins and Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich are arguing about who should drop out of the race. But there is one common theme — observers are sensing that the writing is on the wall for anti-Romney candidates.

Despite being the conservative alternative to John McCain just four years ago, Romney has been their boogeyman in 2012. Some of the criticism is justified and understandable, specifically that dealing with RomneyCare and ObamaCare. But in the face of the criticism, Romney now holds a 1.2+ million vote lead in the primary and the delegate math says that he should coast to the nomination.

Of course, Romney path to the nomination may still have a bump in the road. As noted above, Santorum’s “super PAC” has called on Gingrich to drop out. He declined, and there is certainly a case to be made to backup his decision. But that doesn’t mean that Gingrich would deal with reality if he performs poorly next week and if Santorum does well.

And, as expected, it doesn’t look like Ron Paul is going anywhere, though his team is wondering why campaign enthusiasm hasn’t translated into any wins. He is already running ads in Hawaii and will no doubt continue along until Romney becomes the presumptive nominee or the GOP convention, whichever comes first.

The big question in all this, however, is whether or not Romney or Santorum can defeat a sitting president who, based on the numbers, should only have a 34.7% chance of winning re-election. Not only that, but 50% of Americans define his presidency as a failure.

The fact that Obama is even still being considered by voters for re-election is really an indictment of the GOP field. And if Republicans are still debating the nominee come the end of April, at the latest, there is no doubt in my mind that he’ll be re-elected. Perhaps at this point, rather than trying to keep Romney from winning the nomination, conservatives should start working to retain their majority in the House and gaining one in the Senate.