Taking 20 delegates from Romney might just be enough. You can look at the math in Illinois. In one of the CDs, our delegate got 8000 votes. Nowhere near enough to win. But one of the Santorum delegates only needed 800 votes. So, if 10% of our people voted for Santorums delegates, that would be 1 delegate more for Santorum, 1 less for Romney.
If we get the delegates in Maine, they wouldn't be considered "stealth" delegates. There's a very real possibility that we get 21 delegates out of Maine. Nevada seems to look good, based on what I think I read about Clark County.
Other campaigns are focusing on states to come, we're focusing on county conventions and state conventions, and trying to win them that way.
We need to persuade delegates to vote for Ron Paul in Tampa. They won't be "stealth" Ron Paul delegates, they'll be people who don't like Romney, because we've been beating him up for 5 months. And they'll like Ron Paul more in August than in March, because we helped Gingrich and Santorum get to Tampa. They will appreciate that.
Regardless of Maine's outcome, if you are already conceding ever getting another delegate by giving your votes to Santorum, then you are still relying on over 1000 delegates pledged to someone else going for Ron Paul. And that is SO unlikely that statistically it may as well be zero.
Think about it...suppose I owned 48% of a company's voting power and you owned 5%, with the rest being own by common stockholders, etc. Theoretically either one of us COULD get our opposing business strategies passed by getting the remaining shareholders to agree with our side. But I would be MUCH more likely to get just 2.01% of the common shareholders to agree with me than you would to get 45.01.
Romney is going to have AT LEAST 900 firm delegates. And by firm, I mean, ones that are definitely on his side. It will be far easier for him to get 144 of Gingrich or Santorum's delegates to switch to his side than for Ron Paul to get 600 or more (accounting for a LOT of stealth to bing him up to 544 in the first place.)
In other words, you just can't EXPECT all of Gingrich and Santorums delegates to go to Paul, even if the convention goes to round 30. So....Ron Paul needs to have as many earned delegates as possible to have ANY shot.
To be honest, I think it is a moot point. If Romney goes into August with 1000 delegates, there WILL be deals made, just like in 1976. Deals that wil be made before the first vote and therefore before the delegates get unbound. States want to vote for the eventual nominee. So as Romney gets closer and closer, he will pick up support from the GOP leaders in the later states, even if those leaders were on the fence.
And in THAT scenario, it is still better for Ron Paul to get as many votes as possible for the perception. If he finishes up getting less than 5% the rest of hte way becuase of your strategy, it just makes it easier and easier to marginalize him.
So...the way I see it, could your strategy work? Theoretically, yes. But the downsides of it are FAR too great to risk on the very small, almost negligible possibility of benefits.
Hopefully this works and I would like to see the look on Santorum's face when he finds out a good portion of his delegates were really for Paul all a long. He'll probably go and cry and moan to the MSM.
By the way...the problem with Santorum is that is campaign was SO disorganized for the first month, and still is pretty disorganized to some point that it most likely isn't just Ron Paul supporters who are Santourm delegates. Some may very well be Romney supporters. So those would be "free" votes for Romney from the unbound states.
