Romney camp: Pay no attention to Tuesday votes

In a memo released to the press, Romney political director Rich Beeson makes the case that the path forward in the 2012 primaries points clearly toward a Romney victory, and preemptively spins tonight's Missouri-Minnesota-Colorado contests as a political sideshow:

It is difficult to see what Governor Romney’s opponents can do to change the dynamics of the race in February. No delegates will be awarded on February 7 -- Colorado and Minnesota hold caucuses with nonbinding preference polls, and the Missouri primary is purely a beauty contest. Except for the Maine and Wyoming nonbinding caucuses running through February, the next contests are on February 28 in states where Governor Romney is strong. Arizona’s 29 delegates will be bound in a winner-take-all contest. Michigan, the state where Governor Romney grew up, binds 30 delegates.

The Romney campaign elaborates in an email:

• No delegates are being selected today. The delegate count tomorrow morning will remain the same as it is today. Gov. Romney has a significant delegate lead – he is the only candidate to have earned delegates in every available contest.

• Missouri is strictly a beauty contest (see ABC News: “Why Missouri Is Holding a ‘Meaningless’ Primary”). The primary being held today is completely divorced from any delegate allocation, and Missouri will hold an entirely separate caucus next month. We plan to compete in the actual Missouri contest in March.

• As our campaign has said from the outset, Mitt Romney is not going to win every contest. John McCain lost 19 states in 2008, and we expect our opponents will notch a few wins, too. But unlike the other candidates, our campaign has the resources and organization to keep winning over the long run. A winning conservative message, hard work, and old-fashioned delegate math will win this race for Governor Romney.

The full memo, including persuasive delegate math, is here. It's entirely true that the votes this week will have no impact on the delegate math in the GOP primary, but it's also too late for Romney to argue that these non-binding contests have no significance whatsoever. If that's the case, why bother spending time and surrogate energy to compete in them?