Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Democrats for Santorum?

I know; the headline sounds a little like “Chickens for Col. Sanders,” but apparently Rick Santorum’s Michigan campaign is reaching out to the state’s Democratic base to vote for him to keep Mitt Romney from winning in his nominally home state.

Michigan’s primary rules allow Dems to vote in the state’s GOP primaries. The liberal site DailyKos and other progressive partners have been trying to drum up enthusiasm for “Operation Hilarity” – an effort to get Democrats to vote in the GOP primary and tilt the vote against Mitt Romney. The Santorum campaign evidently decided they’d take votes from any legitimate source.

Following some speculation that the robocall may have been a “false flag” effort designed to harm Santorum, a spokesman Hogan Gidley confirmed to TPM that they were indeed footing the bill, and reaching beyond party lines. “If we can get the Reagan Democrats in the primary, we can get them in the general,” he told TPM.

I get the strategy, but I’m one of those people who takes my vote seriously, and I don’t use it as a gambling chip. I would rather dive headfirst into my own vomit than cast a vote for someone whom I would not want to see in office, even if it’s part of a plan to put up the weaker candidate against the person I really want to win. I’m funny that way.

That said, if Rick Santorum wins the Michigan primary — and Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight seems to think it could happen — it would really call into question the viability of the Romney campaign. He’ll probably win Arizona in a walk, but the trends in places like Ohio, Oklahoma, and Tennessee are leaning to Santorum, and he could, at the most, turn this into a primary battle that makes the Clinton/Obama race in 2008 look like a love-in.

My advice to my Democratic friends in Michigan: stay home and enjoy the show.