(Caricature by courtesy of DonkeyHotey, via Flickr)
Okay, so Iowa is over, yay! If nothing else it showed that it really is not relevant in terms of helping the nation decide which candidate to pick. The Republican field was the most volatile that Gallop has seen since it started tracking primary races. Mitt Romney “won” by getting exactly the same amount (minus a few) that he did when he lost to Mike Huckabee four years ago.
But that does not mean that the search for the Not-Mitt will not continue. Sen. Rick Santorum will now begin the process that has engulfed Rick Perry, Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich, beatification followed by mortification and political ignominy.
How can I be so sure? Well for one thing the fact is that Lil’ Ricky has no organization. Basically he has been running his campaign on a shoestring and with lots of family help. That is not going to get it done in New Hampshire (where he has barely been) or South Carolina or Nevada or Florida.
This is all part and parcel of why Iowa is not a good starting place for presidential nominating. It rewards people for campaign tactics that not only don’t help them in winning enough delegates to become the nominee but it actually harms them.
Santorum is never going to be the nominee. It is just not going to happen, but for the next two weeks or so we are going to be treated ad nauseum to the folks who hate Mitt Romney in the Republican Party talking him up.
We’ll hear about his “great story” of his life. We’ll hear about his “wins” in the Senate and how a radically conservative social conservative from was able to be reelected from the Keystone State in 2000, even though Pennsylvania is a swing state.
Of course none of it is really going to help as his views on everything from health care to foreign policy come out and he gets the attention he has been craving since starting this Quixotic quest for his party’s nomination. As long as he could meet face to face with uber-conservative Iowans and not be seen too much at the Goat Rodeos he wouldn’t be shown to be the asshat that he truly is on a large scale.
Those days are over for our pal Rick. He is going to have that coveted (but more than slightly shop worn) podium next to the Mitt Romney in the center of the debate stage. He will have some covering fire from a petulant Newt Gingrich, who is pissed that his ascent was undercut by a slew of (accurate) negative ads.
Still there will be a lot more questions of the newest not-Mitt to ascend the stage and they are going to trip him up. Things like ending abortion, bombing Iran, Terri Schaivo and his desire to zero out funding for the National Weather Service are all going to come back to haunt him. And that is before we get stated on the fact that he just can’t lay off of bashing gay citizens and will say things like marriage equality will lead to man-dog weddings.
I give his arch of popularity about 5 weeks, maybe a little less to run its course. He’ll get a boost from the fact that Rick Perry is almost certain to retire to Texas to lick his wounds and lament that running for President is hard work. If Michele Bachmann drops out he will gain a little more ground with social conservatives, but in the end it is all about money and organization and Lil’ Ricky just does not have enough of either for him to make it through to Super Tuesday, March 6th.
It is the organization issue that is really going to kill him. Sure there will be people from defunct campaigns available to work for him, but do you really want to bring on the team that flew flight Perry into the mountain? Or that ran the good ship Bachmann aground?
He will be able to raise some money and will probably be able to compete in the next couple of primaries (though Florida is so damned expensive I have my doubts) but in the end the fact is going to be that Mitt Romney is going to have all the money in the world and will get the conservatives to hold their noses for him in the name of electability.
Not, mind you, that I am sad about that at all. Romney was always going to be the nominee, but the more that the Republicans are forced to accept him rather than enthusiastically nominate him the better it is for Democrats this fall.
The Republican Party has run on emotional appeal for a long time now. They will have their visceral hate of President Obama to jazz them up, but even with that they will need to have a candidate they feel they can vote for. Romney will be like a bowl of cold oatmeal without honey. Sure its nourishing and good for you, but no one jumps out of bed in the morning looking for it. That is going to be a constant damper on their enthusiasm.
For now we can look forward to more Goat Rodeos as the GOP moves towards crowning their Grand Champion, but it ain’t going to be Rick Santorum, he is just another not-Mitt to be served up to the Far Right Wingnuts and then discarded when he shows that he is to crazy and too far out of the main stream to stand a chance against Barack Obama.
The floor is yours.