They say the opera isn’t over til the fat lady sings.  In this case the fat lady is the arrogant group of main stream media pundits who think they get to decide things for the rest of us.  A lot of pundits apparently think the race for the Republican nomination will be over soon.  It may be, but only if we let the main stream media make the choice.  Choosing a winner based on Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina is like awarding the Super Bowl trophy after the first quarter.  There is a reason they make people play the entire game. 

The following chart shows the election schedule and the number of delegates per state.  I added a couple of columns to show how many votes someone would have if they got 100% of the available delegates, 75% of the available delegates and 50% of the available delegates.  As you can see, the earliest someone can actually clinch this is March 13^th, but that would require someone getting all the delegates.  That is not very likely.  The next earliest date is April 24^th, and that would require someone to get 75% of the delegates.  If someone gets 50% of the votes, it won’t be over until the convention.

That used to happen a lot.  Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan fought it out at the convention.  Robert Kennedy was shot right after he won the California primary election in 1968 and the Democrats were headed toward a convention fight.  It used to be rare for Presidential campaigns to be decided after just a couple of primary elections.

What the early contest measures is who can get enough money to stay in the race.  That is why candidates drop out.  They run out of money.  The only candidate who definitely won’t run out of money is Romney.  Santorum is raising some cash right now, but that could change.  He wasn’t raising anything before Iowa.  There are a lot of signs that his “surge” has already run out of steam.  Gingrich already has a big problem raising money and he is in serious trouble.  He could end up behind Huntsman in New Hampshire, and Huntsman is near the end.

But Rick Perry does not have that problem, at least not yet.  Even if he does poorly in New Hampshire, South Carolina, he may still stay in the race.  The reason is that what really matters is how Santorum and Gingrich do.  The smart people with money who are backing Perry know this.  Chris Wallace admitted this last night when he said only Perry has the kind of money and organization it takes to run a nationwide campaign.  It is hard to take anyone seriously who is running in single digits in national polls.  But ultimately the real question may be:  “given a choice between Mitt Romney and Rick Perry, who would you choose. Neither Santorum nor Gingrich can win the nomination; they can only guarantee that Mitt Romney is our nominee.  As long as Romney has two or three people splitting the conservative vote, he wins.  In 2008, Mike Huckabee refused to bow out even when it was obvious he could not beat Mitt Romney.  As a result, we nominated John McCain, a disastrous mistake that resulted in the election of Barack Obama. 

Saturday night, Rick Perry said he would send the troops back into Iraq.  He said he could not stand by and watch the sacrifices made by our military thrown away for short term political gain.  The moderators thought that was a huge mistake.  But I had the opposite reaction.  There is something very refreshing about a candidate willing to tell the American people the truth even it is not politically popular.   I wonder if anyone else noticed.