Next Week: The Return of NEWTMENTUM!
The Republican presidential primary might be ready for another twist.
Rick Santorum, the winner of the Iowa caucuses who has finished poorly in the four contests since, is showing signs of regaining momentum as the race lurches into February. Just look at how Mitt Romney’s campaign has suddenly shifted its sights onto the former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania this week, blasting him for his support of congressional earmarks.
“Rick Santorum is a nice guy, but he is simply not ready to be President,” Tim Pawlenty, a Romney supporter, said in a statement. “Plus, he wants Minnesota conservatives to believe he’s as conservative as they are, but he’s not. As a U.S. Senator, he was a leading earmarker and pork-barrel spender. He described himself as ‘very proud’ of the billions of dollars in pork-barrel projects he championed, and promised to defend the wasteful spending.”
It’s the first time in a month – since Santorum won Iowa – that Romney has focused his fire on him instead of Newt Gingrich. And that reflects a sense within the Romney campaign that Santorum represents a bigger threat Tuesday as the race heads into Minnesota and Missouri.
I imagine the conversation at Politico going something like this…
“Hey Roarty, write something exciting about Rick Santorum.”
“But… uh…”
“Goddamn it, WRITE SOMETHING! We don’t pay you to just sit there on your ass!”
“I… uh… what could I write?”
“I dunno. Something about another twist, maybe. I know he’s finished badly in four straight contests, but maybe he’s regaining momentum. Damn it, we need content, and this thing goes on for another four months. Write something about the big Santorum comeback, or we’ll find someone who will.”
*scribbling madly* “Gotcha, boss.”
To be fair, TPM wrote almost the same thing.
Don’t you mean “surge of santorum”?
Will that ever get old? I think not.
Oh, hell no. No end in sight. I still think about particularly clever examples of people working the word into their statements.
I was once in a conversation with someone who couldn’t quite recall Santorum’s name and needed to be reminded, but who said that Santorum was, indeed, the person he meant to reference. I was able to deliver the line:
“I can tell Santorum was right on the tip of your tongue.”
Santorum must always come from behind. It’s just the nature of the thing.
I can imagine a “journalist” doing what John King did for Newt Gingrich: set up a situation where Sen. Santorum can tell off a dreaded MSM bully to the delight of the put-upon conservative base.
The non- Mitt Romney GOP candidates need the media just as much as the story-hungry media does. Its all theatrics to get conservatives (and frankly, political junkies like the type that read this kind of blog) interested in an increasingly boring primary race.
TPM linked to this thing, which gives Frothy a teeny-tiny edge in MN (well within the margin of error, I think), but it also says that the state remains Ron Paul’s best chance of winning a primary, any primary. That may mean that it’s better than no chance at all, even if not by much. Who knows?
Anyway, Romney may believe that the tightness of the race in MN is because people are tired of the negativity between him and Newt and are simply preferring someone who hasn’t been drawn into the mud-flinging lately, or maybe he thinks that Newt is done and there’s no real reason to waste effort on him now, or he’s just tired of working out on the same old speed bag.
My money’s on “fling mud on the clean guy.”
I’m kinda ambivalent about that David Foster Wallace piece where he followed around McCain for awhile in 2000, but it’s really good at describing the different levels of logic involved in mud-flinging and how pervasive they are in both day-to-day campaign tactics and overall strategy.
Mud?
Well, soil is basically worm shit, so yeah.
Perhaps the Romney campaign thinks that it’s to their advantage not to let the race be framed as a two-man contest, and attacking Rick Santorum is the best way to get the media to pay attention to Rick Santorum.
The truth of the matter is that Minnesota is just weird. I don’t necessarily mean that in a bad way! But their populace seems to periodically do things like say ‘No, fuck YOU’ to established conventional wisdom and produce surprising electoral results.
So yeah, I can see Ron Paul or Rick Santorum winning the state. Hell, knowing Minnesota, I’m not sure someone couldn’t convince a plurality of primary voters to write in ‘Zombie Reagan’ or something really crazy like ‘Tim Pawlenty’ and have them win.
e.g. Jesse Ventura, Michele Bachmann, etc.
Al Franken, even.
The conservatives Need the media and the media needs a horse race.
Christ, how else does Silver keep that sweet, sweet gig? Not to mention all the other narrative naboobs. Do you want them to write about Welfare reform?
I dispute the last paragraph of the Politico story: I live in Florida and one of Romney’s PACs ran “Obama supports Santorum because he can beat him” ads for a week or two after Iowa. Then, when Newt had his surge, those ads went away and “Obama supports Gingrich because he can beat him” ads began appearing.
I suspect the Romney PAC chooses which candidate is closest to him in the polls in that state and runs the relevant ad.
Is there even a difference between Politico and the Onion anymore? I mean other than the fact that the Onion knows it is a joke.
Politico has never broken a story this awesome.
Politico has to try harder.
The Onion keeps beating it to scoops and predictions.
And their headlines are better, too.
The really pathetic reality is that Politico is often funnier than The Onion – in a tragic, nation-breaking, and moronic, way.
I look at Mike Allen and Jim Vandehei as the greatest comedy duo since Burns and Schreiber – if not Burns and Allen, or Abbott and Costello.
Shouldn’t one of our commenters who inexplicably think that the GOP primaries remain a going concern be getting in on some of that sweet, sweet Politico scratch?
Did you just try to troll your own blog and fail?
I’m perfectly willing to prostitute my writing skills for large quantities of cash. Can you get me Politico’s phone number?
Objects in free-fall do gain momentum.
This just in, the Midwest appears to have been overwhelmed by a frothy surge.
[...] (typeof(addthis_share) == "undefined"){ addthis_share = [];}Politico, I will not underestimate you… twice. Just in case the 2012 Republican primary race hasn’t already had enough twists [...]