Santorum sees nomination being decided in brokered convention

WASHINGTON — Rick Santorum’s campaign has begun to argue forcefully that Mitt Romney will fail to win the 1,144 delegates needed to clinch the Republican nomination for president, leaving the decision to a wide-open national convention in Tampa, Fla., this summer.

The argument suggests that Mr. Santorum’s strategists have all but given up on the idea that their own candidate can reach that magic number himself. A count by The Associated Press found that Mr. Romney has already collected 454 delegates, more than twice the 217 that have pledged to support Mr. Santorum.

But Mr. Santorum and his advisers believe that he — along with Newt Gingrich and Representative Ron Paul— can effectively block Mr. Romney’s march to the nomination over the next three months. If that happens, they argue, Republicans will gather for their convention with no certain winner — and with Mr. Romney at a disadvantage.

Aides to Mr. Santorum predicted that convention delegates — including a majority of the “superdelegates” — would throw their weight behind Mr. Santorum once Mr. Romney failed to lock up the nomination.

“When we go to this convention, if that’s where we end up, it’s a conservative party,” Mr. Santorum said Monday morning on NBC’s “Today” show. “If an opportunity provides itself at an open convention, they are not going to nominate a moderate Massachusetts governor.”

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I think this is wishful thinking on Santorum's part.  Modern conventions and nominating processes are specifically designed to avoid the uncertainty of a brokered convention.  So called super delegates can very often tip  the balance on the first ballot if things are too close with primary delegates.  For the record, the last time the Republicans had a brokered convention was 1948 (Thomas Dewey).  The last time the Democrats had one was 1952 (Adlai Stevenson).  The last brokered convention to pick a winning presidential candidate was the 1932 Democratic Convention (FDR).