After what seemed like a decade of 24/7 coverage of the Republican 2012 primary process, news has come out that there are still untold stories.  Apparently, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum negotiated to team up against Mitt Romney.  Ok, this doesn’t sound like a one meeting kind of thing.  It sounds like something that happened over a much longer period of time and something the political press, who are supposed to be “experts” would have picked up on. (And I am not talking about locals who may not cover politics all the time but the national reporters who do.)

Well, the nation was spared such a spectacularly awesome scary ticket because neither man would accept the veep slot. Phew, and the GOP thought the worst thing they had to fear last year was candidates who like to prattle on about “legitimate rape” and whatnot. (As a satire writer, I would have LOVED a GOP ticket with Newt & Santorum, LOVED IT.)

Of course, the other news that probably won’t actually come out (sorry, I cannot think of a better way to put that right now) is that Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) was NOT asked to take the veep slot for Romney because his son is gay.  Portman was a Romney surrogate and the two men spent a lot of time together. The irony is he had a better shot of picking up a state with Portman than Paul Ryan. I have a hard time seeing Romney ever getting Wisconsin.  Yes, I know people don’t base their pick on the VP candidate.  I guess someone if picked Ted Bundy after he was convicted of being a serial killer it would have turned more than a few people off…  Can you imagine the tagline for that campaign?  Smith/Bundy — because no one knows  more about preventing crime than a convicted serial killer!  (Ps.  I am sure some people were also turned off from John McCain because of Sarah Palin but not enough to swing a state or the election.  Note to any GOP readers:  I am NOT implying any Republican would pick Bundy for anything, ever.)

But I digress.

The GOP has been in overdrive trying to “rebrand” themselves.  I was especially impressed with their chairman, Reince Priebus, this morning.  He was asked if they planned to cut Portman’s national funding off now that he has endorsed same sex marriage.  “Of course not!” Priebus said with a fair amount of moral indignation because of course his decision to not defund Portman is the right thing to do based on current polling numbers that show increasing support for marriage equality.

At the Conservative Union conference last weekend, better known as CPAC, there was a session entitled “How do we look less racist?”  My response to the question was “How about you just BE less racist?”  My advice to the GOP is that superficial changes to messaging materials isn’t enough to convince people you care about their issues.  Priebus deserves some credit for starting to reach out to groups that have not either always or recently been the GOP base.

Getting people to believe you care about the things that matters to them requires you understand what those things are.  Reaching out to talk to them may not get you all the way there but it is a start.  Let’s hope the change Priebus is pushing is part of a long term approach and not a policy du jour.

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By Bob Cesca: The big news of the last 24 hours isn’t that Rick Santorum finally dropped out of the race for the Republican nomination, allowing Mitt Romney to focus his money and protocol droid attention on the general election. The truly big newsis the fact that Rick Santorum made it to April as a relatively strong candidate.

Rick Santorum: Truly the least impressive rival imaginable. (Photo credit: Talk Radio News Service)

Every four years there are inevitably several candidates from each party who are, to be frank, obvious losers. There’s an expectation that the weak no-names, the freaks and the vanity projects will never reach top shelf, A-list status leaving the truly solid candidates to direct their attention at winning and not deflecting shots from the cheap seats. Some of the D-list crowd will drop out before the Iowa and New Hampshire, others will stick around as an exercise in electoral masturbation. But they’re never talked about in terms of being a potential nominee or even vice presidential short-lister.

In 2008, on the Democratic side, no one expected Mike Gravel, Chris Dodd or Tom Vilsack to make it very far. Dennis Kucinich, Joe Biden and Evan Bayh never came close to being a frontrunner. So Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and (kind of) Bill Richardson could afford to maintain a narrow focus on a relatively small candidate pool. And even elbow-deep into the primaries, Edwards and Richardson never had a realistic shot.

This year, on the Republican side, almost every candidate attained frontrunner status at some point in the proceedings. We’re all familiar with the clown car passengers. And out of all of the clowns who wedged their giant shoes into the driver’s seat, very few people ever would’ve expected Rick Santorum to make it this far — much less enjoy a series of 10 primary victories. Ten!

That’s remarkable considering Santorum’s most recent electoral contest, his 2006 reelection campaign for the U.S. Senate, was an unmitigated failure in which he lost by 18 points, and, meanwhile, most of the internet community knew more about the Dan Savage frothy butt spooge meme than Santorum’s actual history and platform. His stunning longevity and unpredictable success as a candidate seemed incongruous with who he actually is.

So what does this say about Santorum and the Republican Party?

On one hand, Santorum should get a little bit of credit for surviving and, in fact, flourishing for this long. Mitt Romney raised $76 million to Santorum’s $16 million. Yet Romney had to flail and fight to pry every vote out of Santorum’s fringy grasp. If Santorum gets any credit as a candidate for making it this far, it was really due to two things: he could speak quite fluently and precisely during the debates, and the things he said were squarely in the psycho-wheelhouse of the tea party base. While Mitt Romney was jittery and uncomfortable, and while Newt Gingrich was, well, a dick, Santorum, in the eyes of the base, seemed like a the perfect cocktail of slick, effortless talking and unflinching conservatism. No one else in those debate could boast such a combination.

On the other hand, it’s very likely that history will remember Santorum’s successful failure (with apologies to Apollo 13) as being symptomatic of a collapsing, disjointed, leaderless Republican Party. So the primary process was, like the personal lives of Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh, an ongoing dramatic narrative of marriages, affairs and divorces, with the “we’ll settle for [blank]” candidate — Romney — waiting in the wings. Practically speaking, it was just a matter of time and attrition before it would be Santorum’s turn.

If we match this revolving door, 15-minutes-of-fame process with the Supreme Court-sanctioned Super PAC money, we have Rick Santorum surviving into April. Wealthy financier Foster Friess was Santorum’s leading non-campaign spokesman and pumped $1.7 million into his Santorum Super PAC. Without it, it’s unlikely Santorum’s disorganized, piss-poor campaign could’ve survived. While we’re here, we can probably write a similar epitaph for Newt Gingrich who was out of money and knee-deep in scandals (remember the bling and the “right-wing social engineering” things?) more than a year ago and yet somehow managed to get this far.

If I were forced to choose which factor contributed most to Santorum’s longevity, I’m absolutely siding with the latter: the spastic Republican Party and the existence of Super PACs allowed an otherwise D-list candidate get to a point where he was a potential spoiler, and maybe even the nominee in a brokered convention scenario.

So it’s Mitt Romney versus President Obama this year. The real poop-flinging insanity hasn’t even started yet. Hang on tight.

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By Ben Cohen: Finally, former Senator from Pennsylvania Rick Santorum has called it a day and suspended his Presidential campaign. This comes as no surprise as a win against Mitt Romney has been unthinkable for several weeks now given the discrepancy in funding and support from within the party. If you break down the amount of money spent in relation to the votes and delegates won in the Republican Presidential primary, Rick Santorum is by far and away the most effective candidate – a very serious problem for Romney given he probably won’t be able to raise as much money as Obama will in the general.

The numbers are extremely interesting. As of last month, the Republican candidates spent the following (via the Huff Post):

MITT ROMNEY

Ad spending per vote: $12.70

Cost per delegate: $90,796

RICK SANTORUM

Ad spending per vote: $3.01

Cost per delegate: $28,944

NEWT GINGRICH

Ad spending per vote: $4.78

Cost per delegate: $76,774

RON PAUL

Ad spending per vote: $6.33

Cost per delegate: $129,275

Romney out spent Santorum 3:1 for each delegate, and 4:1 for each vote – a stunning ratio that underlines how weak a candidate he is.

Romney’s strategy has been simple – outspend everyone and pander to the far Right as much as possible. It hasn’t been easy as both Gingrich and Santorum surged at various points during the campaign, but the principle that money buys elections has remained true. While Gingrich and Paul still remain in the race, Romney is now an absolute sure bet for the nomination.

While I disagree with Santorum on virtually every policy issue imaginable, I did get the feeling that he was a genuine politician who believed what he was saying. And for this reason, I feel slightly sorry for him given his acquiescence to the most disingenuous candidate the American public has ever been subjected to. While Mitt Romney may not be a religious nut like Santorum, his beliefs are so malleable that it doesn’t really make a difference. Both candidates would be a very serious disaster in the White House – Santorum because of his religious beliefs and militant conservatism, and Romney because he would roll over for the extreme interests in the Republican Party.

In some ways, had Santorum won, it would have reaffirmed the spirit of democracy in America. Sure, he would have made a terrible candidate, but it would prove that money doesn’t have to make the major difference in winning campaigns. Sadly, it does, and it means the candidate most allied with the interests of big business almost always comes out on top. Romney won because corporate America believes he will be best for them. He has the most chance of beating Obama this year, and should he get in, he will do exactly as he is told. Candidates like Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul are too risky for business – not because they don’t believe in the same nonsensical economic theories, but because they have shown independent thought and a willingness to actually be themselves. Corporations want a yes man, and Romney will say yes to pretty much anything.

Santorum fought tooth and nail to win the nomination, and too his credit, didn’t compromise on his core beliefs. While it is probably a good thing he is out of mainstream politics, ironically, it isn’t good for democracy.

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Rick Santorum's campaign could be near an end (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Kicking off a last-ditch effort to keep his presidential bid alive, Rick Santorum returned to his roots Wednesday, saying he shared the values of southwestern Pennsylvania, where his grandfather worked in a coal mine and he shot his first deer three decades ago.

“I’m very, very proud of the heritage that Pennsylvania represents,” Santorum told a few hundred people at the Blair County Courthouse. “Barack Obama four years ago referred to this area of Pennsylvania right here as a place that holds on, clings to their guns and their Bibles. You’re damn right we do!”

Santorum, who was joined by his wife, Karen, and six of their seven children, said he would offer the clearest contrast to President Obama on such matters, while his chief GOP rival, Mitt Romney, had staked out positions on issues such as gun control, healthcare, global warming and energy policy that were similar to the president’s.

“Give us a chance to go out and make sure that there is a conservative, that there is a principled — principled — nominee of our party, someone who can go out and take it to Barack Obama, make him and his failed policies the issue in this campaign, not our nominee’s complicity in those failed policies,” Santorum implored.

After losing three more primaries Tuesday night, Santorum is making what many believe is his last stand in his home state.

“We have to win here,” Santorum told reporters earlier in the day after eating eggs, hot sausage and Italian bread at Bob’s Diner in Carnegie, the Pittsburgh suburb that he represented in Congress.

While campaigning in Pennsylvania, Santorum sprinkles his remarks with accolades for the state, from its role in the nation’s founding to the steel manufacturing that built the country’s infrastructure and helped win world wars. And he reminisces about his local ties, such as hanging out at a Hollidaysburg soda fountain run by his cousin. He capped the day going bowling with his children in Mechanicsburg.

Read more at the LATimes…

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Illinois Republicans delivered a decisive victory to Mitt Romney in the state’s presidential primary Tuesday, crushing Rick Santorum in what amounted to the first big-state head-to-head contest among the front-runners for the GOP nomination.

With 98 percent of the state’s precincts reporting, unofficial results showed the former Massachusetts governor with 47 percent of the vote to Santorum’s 35 percent. The other two candidates in the race, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul, made only token campaign efforts in Illinois and were trailing badly.

Even more important for Romney, he swamped Santorum by winning 39 of the 54 elected delegates up for grabs in the state. Santorum had only five, though votes were still being counted in several Downstate congressional districts where he ran strongest. Read more at the Chicago Tribune…

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The next President?

Mitt Romney just cannot close the deal on the Republican Presidential nomination. Despite having outspent his closest rival Rick Santorum by an amazing ratio of 4:1 in Super Tuesday States, Romney barely won the most important delegate rich Ohio (by a margin of 1%), and did not do enough to cement his position as the candidate to be, losing in Tennessee and Oklahoma and surprisingly in North Dakota.

Make no mistake, Romney is still the front runner in this race as his money bought him enough victories to stay ahead. He is so cash rich that it would not be wise to bet against him, but he is barely beating the most pathetic field of candidates in recent history.

The GOP now has a very serious problem on their hands as they simply do not have a candidate capable of winning in November. Even if Romney wins, his inability to fend off amateurish campaigns from underfunded and underwhelming rivals spells catastrophe against the extraordinary capabilities of the Obama machine. The Democrats have a telegenic super star with one of the best campaign organizations in history. The Republicans have a disingenuous robot incapable of telling the truth from one moment to the next, who, no matter how much money is thrown at him, cannot come out on top.

Rick Santorum is also incapable of winning a general election. He is too extreme for mainstream America, and while he plays well with the angry white males who watch Fox News, he has no chance with sane Republicans, swing voters or independents. They will simply sit the election out, or go with the President.

The GOP head honchos are fully aware of this problem, and must be desperately running through hail Mary contingency plans for when the dust settles. My guess is that it will come down to the Vice Presidential position. Both Romney and Santorum need a balancing partner to fill their gigantic flaws, and the GOP will have to do a damn sight better than Sarah Palin.

If I were a betting man, I’d go with Jeb Bush for Romney (he gets the Bush Sr. conservatives and a lot of the base) and Condoleeza Rice for Santorum (she’s black, and a woman – two categories Santorum has virtually no chance of appealing to by himself). Neither are particularly good choices, but when you look at the rest of the party, there isn’t much else worth talking about.

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