Scarborough: Conservatives Want Brokered Convention

Joe Scarborough today made the case that conservatives are happy Newt Gingrich is surging again—not because they want him to be the nominee but because they think he can prolong the fight against Mitt Romney, trigger a brokered convention, and let a different savior swoop in to save the party. "Newt is the vessel that people like Sarah Palin and others who want a brokered convention are riding right now," he said on Morning Joe, according to NewsBusters.

"I've been talking quietly to the most powerful, I think, conservative movers-and-shakers in Washington over the past couple weeks, trying to get their read," he said. "Are we really going down this path? Every single one I've spoken to is trying to figure out a way to get to a brokered convention." And who might a savior be? On the same show, Mark Halperin noted that Republicans have named Mitch Daniels to give the GOP response to President Obama's State of the Union. "I'm not saying people are going to say, 'Draft Mitch Daniels' all of a sudden, who declined to run," Halperin said. "But people will look at that and say, Wow: Do we really want to send in Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich?" (More brokered convention stories.)