Even aside from that, I think there’s a deal.
If you’re going into nomination process with the intent of just increasing your name recognition, and such, which is all that you do if you have a negligible chance of winning the nomination, you try and go out on a high, like winning Iowa. It increases your chance of an electoral win wherever it is you do plan on running.
To win Iowa and then keep going and use up the gains from Iowa doesn’t make much sense, unless there is another reason afoot or that Santorum is egotistical enough to think that an Iowan win makes it conceivable that he’ll also get the presidency.
Rick Santorum is no idiot. He knows he has no chance winning the nomination. If he thinks that then he is an idiot at this point. Nobody with half a brain thinks Rick Santorum has a chance to win the nomination now. He knows it.
I gave him the benefit of the doubt up to now. He’s in it for another reason. He wants to be the conservative on Romney’s ticket. That’s clear.
Just like McCain needed a conservative on his ticket to win the Tea Partier conservatives so does Romney. Romney has had NOTHING to do with the Tea Party people and conservatives. He knows his VP choice will solve that problem.
Santorum’s job is to split the conservative ticket so that a liberal republican who made a deal with him can win. Otherwise he’s have stepped aside for the good of the movement.
Romney knows he cannot win the general without the conservative support. Santorum, he believes, is the way to gain it.