In the midst of a seemingly endless primary season, one of the more interesting subtexts of each state’s GOP primary is the fundraising boost the winner has received in the immediate aftermath of their victory. Moon Pilgrim Newt Gingrich saw it after his South Carolina victory in January, and, on the heels of a three state sweep on Tuesday, Rick Santorum felt the sweet embrace of conservative donors stuffing grubby singles into his sweater vest.
Reports out of the Santorum camp on Thursday indicate that the electoral equivalent of a four day old raw catfish and cheese sandwich has pocketed nearly $1 million in donations since his Tuesday trifecta. Granted, frontrunner Willard Evelyn Romney earns that much personally in three weeks of ‘unemployment’, but a million bucks of new money at this stage of the game gives Santorum the ability to say “We’re going to have the infrastructure and we’re going to have the resources” regarding the push to Super Tuesday. Admittedly, these are just figures Santorum’s campaign is throwing around, but, unlike his claims that abortions cause cancer, he doesn’t have much to gain by lying about the dollars his campaign is pulling in.
For his troubles, Santorum is sure to bear the brunt of the Mormon Pain Train between now and the contests in Maine, Michigan and Arizona at the end of the month. As Newt learned post-South Carolina, it’s not a great idea to anger the Self-Anointed One and his terribly rich friends.
Willard, or rather, Romney friendly Super PACs will have a different challenge though, when it comes to attacking Santorum. On the surface, he really is the conservative’s conservative. He hates gays, women’s rights, and is subtly racist. Additionally, he’s big business friendly enough and populist enough that he’s not the same type of easy target that Gingrich is. He doesn’t force the moral reconciling of family values voters the way Newt does, and he’s eligible to be President because he wasn’t born in 1645 like Ron Paul. If anything, Romney’s hit men are going to work twice as hard to bring down Santorum, simply because they have nothing better to do. Look for lots of ads trumpeting Romney’s laughable ‘outsider’ facade, compared to Santorum’s years as a Senator.
It’s a testament to how bad of a candidate Romney is that he has to bother with contenders like Gingrich, Santorum and Paul at this stage in the game. Remember that, by this point in 2008, Romney himself had already ceded the nomination to John McCain, possibly under the assumption that 2012 would be his turn. Every time he loses a contest to one of these jokers, even in a ‘beauty contest’ state like Missouri, it becomes increasingly clear that for Romney to have any chance in November, Republicans are going to have to really fall in line.
None of this is to suggest that Santorum could be, or should be the GOP nominee. He’s still an odious human being with a decidedly 18th century set of beliefs in regards to social issues. To the religious/ultra-conservative right, he’s a lottery ticket. He makes hard core conservatives think that he’d solve all of their problems, and all they have to do is pump a few bucks in and give it a whirl. In reality, he has no chance of being a winner, and even if he did beat the odds, everyone involved would be worse off in the end.
Thanks to the folks in Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado and their distaste for Willard ‘Money, Cash, Hoes’ Romney, however, those of us voting in Super Tuesday states are about to be graced with a whole face full of Santorum. Thanks a lot, dicks.
