Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Santorum Out

I have a piece over at Plum Line looking forward towards the general election, but here's a couple of quick notes about Rick Santorum, as he drops out and somewhat-more-formally clinches the nomination for Mitt Romney.

Yes, Santorum was the last one standing, at least if you don't count Ron Paul, and if you understand that Newt dropped out a while ago but chose not to actually admit that he was dropping out. Santorum certainly finished second in delegates and votes. Nevertheless, I doubt that we can say he had the best shot at the nomination other than Romney. That honor, the real runner-up in this cycle, probably goes to Rick Perry, and perhaps even to Tim Pawlenty. Santorum, my guess is, pending further information, came in a solid fourth. Hey, it's something!

How close did he come to winning the nomination? I think there are two realistic possibilities.

One is that he was alive until South Carolina. Had Santorum, and not Gingrich, "won" the debates that week, then he might well have won that state, and perhaps at that point movement conservatives would have jumped on board. Santorum, under that scenario, has the resources to run a solid national campaign: he sweeps the south, wins at least Ohio and Wisconsin and perhaps Illinois as well, and has a very solid chance to defeat Romney and win it all. Add in to that what you wish -- while I don't think an earlier or more impressive decision in Iowa would have made much of a difference, others no doubt disagree; perhaps, too, Santorum could have made slightly different choices along the way.

The other possibility, however, is that those conservatives who did not embrace Santorum after Iowa (or after Colorado/ Minnesota) were really with Romney all along, or at least preferred Romney to Santorum all along. If that's the case, then Santorum really never had any more of a chance than Newt, Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, or Ron Paul would have had if one of them had won in Iowa -- and the nomination was really locked up not in South Carolina, but the moment that Rick Perry couldn't remember that third department he wanted to eliminate.

We really don't know the answer. Can we find out? Perhaps. Interviews with key party actors might shed some light on it. Combing through Mark Blumenthal's "Outsiders" polling might shed some light, too. On the other hand, it may depend on choices that were never actively made, and therefore would be difficult,  perhaps impossible, to reconstruct.

So, congratulations to Rick Santorum on a race well run, and to Mitt Romney for a truly impressive job of winning a nomination from a party that, all in all, wasn't particularly interested in giving it to him. And now we get eight months of this...oh well, I'm sure some of it will be fun.

6 comments:

  1. "...I'm sure some of it will be fun." I'm not.

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  2. "the moment that Rick Perry couldn't remember that third department he wanted to eliminate."

    I'm still amazed by how awful Perry did, given the fact that so many major Republicans were so excited about him entering the race. Some were probably just going off what they heard from others, but the people who knew Perry from his decade on the big stage of Texas did an awful job of getting the word out that he wasn't worth getting excited about.

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  3. A word for Rick Santorum: in an age when the glad-handing, slick, empty-suit type President (e.g. Reagan, Clinton) dominates, there's a certain underdog appeal to Santorum. Santorum rose about the only way a fella like him could; doing unpalatable things the machine wanted but no one else was willing to do, starting from his Penn State days and quixotic quest to revive the Young Republicans there.

    Its easy to hate on Santorum, though I suspect Santorum, privately, knows why too. That he has nevertheless carved out such a political career is certainly noteworthy, it seems to me.

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  4. He was never in it. Being a protest candidate (in this case, the protest was conservatives' dissatisfaction with the inevitable nominee) is not the same thing as having a shot. He never had a shot.

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  5. Dilan,

    Perhaps, but how would we know that? I don't think that the above scenario in which Santorum wins or comes close in SC is far-fetched...is it? Yes, he probably loses even in a drawn-out fight, but I'm not sure how we can be sure about that.

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    Replies
    1. We know it because party actors never supported him, and because the primary system was designed in such a way that the states where insurgent candidates might do well were proportional delegate states, whereas the states where establishment candidates were likely to mop up were winner take all states.

      Primaries are NOT designed to actually allow the party base to select the nomination. They are designed to put on a show. That show is partly about legitimating the chosen nominee and partly about generating media publicity, but they are still a show.

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