Politics

Carville: Santorum ‘a chicken with his head chopped off,’ Romney ‘getting weaker’

Jeff Poor Media Reporter
Font Size:

On Tuesday night’s “Outfront with Erin Burnett” on CNN, Democratic strategist James Carville said that, even though Mitt Romney had just won another string of primary victories, the GOP front-runner should still be performing better.

The former campaign adviser for President Bill Clinton began by comparing Romney’s main challenger at this point, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, to a chicken with no head flopping around without cause.

“Well, my view has been that Romney is as much of a clinch to get his nomination as Obama was to get the nomination in Democratic Party,” Carville said. “Santorum never had a chance to set out after South Carolina. He was like a chicken with his head chopped off. The chicken is dead. The only person that don’t know that is the chicken.

“He can flop around all he wants to,” Carville added. “They’re not going to nominate him.”

Carville then explained that “the Republicans, since 1944 have always nominated the front-runner. And they have done it again. There’s really no surprise here. Romney just happens to be a little weaker and more limp than most of them — probably all of them. But Santorum can — he’s going to go through and do what he has to do and bound to stand that, but Romney was the nominee from the get-go in this thing.”

As for Romney, Carville said he didn’t appear to be getting stronger as he is racking up wins and delegates. Instead, it appears he is limping into this and will become “the weakest Republican challenger in modern American history.”

“I should be complimentary,” Carville continued. “He won three primaries tonight. And I would — no, he’s not getting stronger. He’s getting weaker. You know, the polls that I see show that the thing is going in the absolutely the wrong direction for him. He did not look — last time I looked at the Wisconsin number before I came up, it was anything but impressive.

“And, you know, he’s probably going into it by most calculations the weakest Republican challenger in modern American history. So I don’t know what the case exactly is that he’s getting stronger. He just doesn’t look like a very strong candidate to me. And he’s really giving the quality of the opposition here, which is the weakest in the history of Republican Party. I honestly think he should be doing better than he’s doing.”

Follow Jeff on Twitter