Staying power

As the presidential election looms ahead and the August GOP convention remains just around the corner, the battle for the Republican nomination continues to rage. That was, until Rick Santorum dropped out of the race last Tuesday. Before that the delegate count stood at Romney with 660, Santorum barely trailing second with 281, Gingrich with 135, and Paul with a hardly mentionable 51.

This situation begs the question of exactly how long one should stay in such a race.

When one considers that a candidate needs to reach that magic number of 1,144 votes to clinch the GOP nod, and with Romney already receiving 58 percent of the caucus and primary delegates so far, one wonders what Gingrich and Paul’s purposes are and why.

Neither Gingrich nor Paul have shown any signs of lessening their campaign ambitions. As always, politics is a cutthroat game. It may very well come down to the last Hail Mary on the fourth down in the final minutes and it remains to be seen whose staying power will help them and whose will handicap them for future games. Whatever the case, the road to Tampa and the White House grows shorter with each passing day and history continues to prove that every vote counts. Make sure yours does.