Cheers For A Romney/Santorum Ticket

by Steve

There was the usual coverage today about Jon Huntsman's strange endorsement of Mitt Romney, and the conservative confab over the weekend wherein supposedly Rick Santorum secured the endorsement from major conservative leaders to be the "chosen one" to prevent Romney from getting the nomination.

To me, what's getting lost in this coverage about the Santorum "annointment" is that:

1. The vote tells Romney which True Believer he'll have to accept on his ticket;
2. The vote was rigged to ensure smooth sailing towards that ticket.

Romney may end up with the nomination, but he now knows he'll have to run with Santorum to get a unified party behind him. Mitt may have wanted someone like Pawlenty, but the conservative dinosaurs just told him the price of admission for their support, and that price is Santorum, which of course makes Romney a Dead Man Walking for November. But something else may be going on here.

The crowd that gathered in Texas was made up of Gingrich, Perry, and Santorum supporters. Perry was apparently discarded early, for any number of reasons, including his poor performance on the trail. That left two Catholics, Santorum and the converted Gingrich. If the Washington Times story is to be believed, the Santorum forces stole the vote and endorsement from the Gingrich forces through good ole' GOP deceit. But what this really tells you is that the Catholic conservatives in the party wanted to make sure they had the strongest possible choice anchored to Romney, and that meant Santorum over Gingrich. If the confab had chosen Gingrich, it would have made it too easy for Romney to reject his enemy as his running mate. But with Santorum getting the nod, Romney can only reject him if he's willing to piss off the base of the party months in advance of Tampa, and that isn't going to happen.

The unspoken takeaway from all of this is that the Catholic conservative faction of the party, already unhappy with seeing a Mormon take the reins ahead of them, insisted that the strongest Catholic be Romney's co-pilot, whether he likes it or not.