Santorum Camp Lays Out Delegate Math in Memo

The Santorum campaign publicized their strategy to win the numbers game for delegates against Mitt Romney in an "internal" memo released Monday. The memo's message to Santorum campaign staffers (and now, the general public)? "Time is on our side."

Mitt Romney has embraced his perceived status as the inevitable nominee as a lengthy primary season shows no signs of felling his opponents, who seem to be set on staying in the race until the convention. But the memo, written by John Patrick Yob (a recent campaign hire, as Talking Points Memo notes) suggests that this was the plan all along: "In this race, a drawn out process favors conservative candidates such as Rick Santorum," Yob wrote. You can read the full memo here (via TPM).

The memo also alleges that the Republican National Committee "manipulated the [primary] calendar to front-load several of the states that were favorable towards [Mitt Romney]," a plan the Santorum camp says is now backfiring. Yob also claims that the Romney camp has fewer delegates than most media outlets counts allot him in their running totals, because many caucus state delegates aren't assigned until state conventions.

CNN currently has Mitt Romney with 458 delegates, and Santorum with 203. The magic number for the nomination is 1,144. As CNN notes, Romney released his own memo on Sunday claiming that Santorum's not grabbing enough delegates in recent contests to pose a challenge to a Romney nomination. 

Slate's own John Dickerson walks you through the complex delegate math here. In short: "Both sides are spinning fantasies, but as might be expected, Romney’s fantasy is closer to reality. He is offering something closer to historical fiction whereas Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich’s tales are more like science fiction."