Department of Sour Grapes: Santorum Suggests Romney Rigged CPAC Poll

File this in your Department of Sour Grapes file. Former Sen. Rick Santorum is suggesting that former Massaschusetts Gov. Mitt Romney may have rigged it so he won the CPAC straw poll vote:

Rick Santorum suggested on Sunday that Mitt Romney’s campaign may have rigged a straw poll of conservative activists by paying the entrance fee for supporters.

Romney beat Santorum by 7 points Saturday in a straw poll of almost 3,500 attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Santorum pointed out that Ron Paul had won the poll in both of the past two years “because he just trucks in a lot of people pays for their ticket, they come in and vote and then leave.”

“I don’t try to rig straw polls,” Santorum said on CNN’s State of the Union.

Paul actually came in last on Saturday, having declined to address the conference or to activate his base for the straw poll. But Santorum said that wasn’t the case with Romney.

“You have to talk to the Romney campaign and how many tickets they bought,” Santorum said. “We’ve heard all sorts of things.”

Some thoughts on this:

This is akin to how partisans of BOTH — I repeat — BOTH parties will take a poll and run with it and tout it if it shows their person ahead and then insist the methodology is flawed when it shows their candidate is not doing well. I have yet to see a partisan dispute the methodology of a poll that shows his candidate ahead.

So will we soon hear Santorum claim that he lost the Maine caucuses because those, too, were rigged?

This is also a bit of the politics of de-ligitimization hitting Republican ranks, Shortly after George W. Bush’s election some Democrats insisted he was not legitimately in office and that a cpartisan Supreme Court got him in. 9/11 short-circuited that and it never really gained steam. Barack Obama’s critics have tried to de-legitimize him with the phoney birth certificate issue.

It is possible Romney made sure more supporters were there. But isn’t that was a)politics is all about b)winning caucuses is all about c)winning a general election is all about?

GO HERE for more weblog reaction.

JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief

Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.

themoderatevoice.com/