This past Tuesday’s GOP primary in Iowa seemed so wildly random: candidates falling in and out of favor faster than one can learn their wives’ names. (Yes, that was a softball, go ahead: “Which wife?” or “You mean, versus that woman who wasn’t his wife?” or “Michele Bachmann doesn’t have a wife, she’s really very much against that sort of thing…”)
I had lunch with a very politically-plugged-in friend yesterday, who described the machinations behind what appeared, to the casual observer, to be chaos. The rise and fall of individuals in the pack is a carefully timed dance, he explained, designed to result in exactly the right candidate peaking at exactly the right time. For example, three days before the Tuesday vote.
Rick Santorum’s straight-outta-nowhere primary result – second to Romney by a mere 8 votes – was not an accident, nor a stroke of fortune. He was the candidate – by design – in the right place, with the right ideology, at the right moment. Neither voters nor the media had time to rummage through the skeletons in the closet. And those voters disinclined toward Romney essentially had no alternatives.
As Ezra Klein of The Washington Post’s WonkBlog noted: “By the time Iowa’s Republicans turned their attention to Santorum, they were out of viable not-Romneys.”
If one follows my friend’s argument that all primary candidates’ finishes are pre-determined by the party, Santorum’s second-place finish would be an all-out endorsement of Romney as the GOP’s offering for president. Because despite the strong finish in the Iowa primary, Santorum in un-electable. Nine simple reasons are captured in this week’s copy of The Week.
Although none of them is a sweater vest. So make that ten.
