We agree about the decision Rick Santorum has to make.
The problem for Santorum — and I hope he understands it — is that private assurances mean nothing if you don't believe Romney's word can be trusted, and they mean less than nothing if Romney is defeated. I hope Santorum campaign staff are seeing this and telegraph to him, loud and clear, that if Santorum endorses Romney based on some sort of private assurances of a cabinet post or other position and Romney loses, Romney has lost nothing because the private agreement will never get revealed, but Santorum has lost a great deal because he'll be tagged as a flip-flopper who endorsed Romney, just like he did before with Specter, but for much less valid reasons.
Given Santorum’s history of being willing to support problematic candidates, I'm expecting he will eventually endorse the Republican nominee, and may even endorse Romney earlier. “Taking one for the team” is a good possibility, and I could see him saying that he'll endorse Romney publicly in return for a private commitment to something such as a key cabinet post dealing with abortion or marriage issues, or maybe a Supreme Court seat. (Don't laugh — political appointments to the Supreme Court have a long history, Santorum is a lawyer, he wouldn't be the first person nominated who has never served as a judge, and based on his past history in the highly collegial Senate, he's probably the farthest right-wing candidate who has a shot at Senate confirmation for the Supreme Court.)
I suspect much will depend on what happens in the next few races, but I also suspect much is going on behind the scenes. It wouldn't surprise me if the decisions by key organizations in the right-to-life and anti-gay-marriage movement to publicly back Romney now were done with the goal of persuading Santorum to get on board the Romney train.
Sat Apr 14 2012 07:55:17 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time) · 1,406 of 1,480 Pravious to darrellmaurina: “Quoting DTM: ‘I can see the point after a nominee is selected, but why now’ How about the fact that Mitt has 666 delegates to Newt’s 136? People here can engage in some kind of fantasy that Newt’s going to have some amazing comeback and win 85% of the remaining delegates, but that’s just not going to happen.”
Nobody here is trying to argue — least of all me — that backing Gingrich at this late date is anything other than a long shot. I get it.
I'd rather try a long shot than give up before the battle is lost. As DJ MacWoW said, “Listen, failure is certain if one doesn't even try! Surrender before the battle is foolish.”
“Mitt has 666 delegates”
FALSE. According to RNC own count, Romney has 573 bounded delegates so far. He needs 571 more to clinch the nomination.
With the release of some 200 delegates from Santorum dropping out, the nomination is not over YET, as more than 1150 delegates have to be allocated in the next primaries.