Why now? Why not two months ago?
Whatever he says in his formal announcement, here's the real deal. He was headed for a humiliating defeat in his home state of Pennsylvania. Republicans had already made it quite clear that they did not want a social conservative who is actually a progressive and favors using big government to promulgate his personal ideas of morality on the country. And there was no statistical way he could have won the nomination.
The only trick he had left in his bag was a divisive, scorched earth floor fight to feed his personal anger and ego. And I'm reasonably certain that some of the GOP's movers and shakers made a phone call or two to Mr. Santorum warning him that if he played that game, his future in the Republican party was a memory.
By getting out now, he can keep his hopes alive for a 2016 race if Obama wins, and maybe push his way into a gig at FOX or one of the alphabet networks as a talking head. As a good example of the kind of phoney 'conservative' boogie man the Left adores parading, I'd be surprised if the offers weren't already coming in.
Senator Santorum deserves credit for doing his very best to tie up the party in a divisive primary long after it was necessary that used up time and resources better spent unseating the current occupant of the White House. Not only that, but he ignored Ronald Reagan's 11th commandment and provided the Obama Campaign with a decent amount of material to use against the GOP nominee, Mitt Romney.
Thanks loads, Rick! Good riddance.
3 comments:
"...and provided the Obama campaign with a decent amount of material to use against the GOP nominee, Mitt Romney." Barack Obama has the best organized and most well funded campaign in American history. In fact, his campaign is probably better funded and organized than the campaign of anyone in the history of the "free world."
As such, it is extremely unlikely that Mr. Santorum could come up with any "material" that the Obama campaign does not already know about. By releasing the "material" now rather than during the presiential campaign this gives the Mr. Romney and his team much more lead time in devising a strategy to counter the "material." As such, Mr Santorum did team Romney a favor.
With that said I agree with the premise that it is good that Mr. Santorum has essentially withdrawn from the race. The focus needs to be on defeating Barack Obama not on who the Repubican nominee is or was.
Mr. Romney was always going to be the nominee. The RNC was goiing to make certain of that no matter what. Its actualy good that this is settled now. To have gone to the convention with someone else in the lead only to have the RNC and other Republican leaders steal the nomination from them and award it to Romney would have been disasterous byond what Mr. Romney could ever be.
I can only hope and pray the RNC knows what they are doing. They wanted Romney, they were going to whatever it took to make sure we got Romnye, and now we have Romney. Hopefully the strategy will work out.
The survival of our country is dependent upon a drastic change of course from the current one. While I'm not optimistic that the Republican leadership will deliver this change of course, they are much more likely to do so than the Democrats and team Obama or so it seems.
All the candidates were guilty of breaking Reagan's 11th commandment. Santorum certainly does not stand alone in this's aspect. With his extensive negative advertising, Romney was just as guilty, if not more so, than anyone else.
Hello Anonymous,
Most of what you're calling negative ads came from a Super-Pac backing him,which by federal law he can't interface with or even communicate with. That wasn't true of Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich.
It's also been obvious for some time that Rick Santorum had no chance to win. At that point,it would have been far better from the standpoint of beating Obama if he had taken the high road anyway and dropped out.
And BTW, if you think the ads in the primary were negative,wait until you get a load of what the Obama Campaign has in store.
Santorum's constant whining about 'negative ads' is just another indication to me that he wasn't ready for prime time.
Regards,
Rob
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