Photo by Gage Skidmore. Licensed under Creative Commons.
Rick Santorum means many things to many people. To Dan Savage and many supporters of LGBT rights, his last name came to mean this (if you’ll pardon the egregious pun). To followers of politics during the past half year, he’s been the guy at the edge of each debate stage, a reflection of his poor poll performance – with him often coming in at the margin of error. But as of last night’s Iowa caucus results, the name “Rick Santorum” may represent the man who could challenge the conventional wisdom (if not always numerical poll champion) frontrunner Mitt Romney.
Now when you Google his name, the first result you get (under an Associated Press graphic charting the caucus results) is a link to donate to his campaign. The header shouts, “IOWA SURPRISE!” and goes on to boast that Santorum “prove[d] he is the only conservative who can beat Mitt Romney.”
So, what spurred this overnight transition from 2012 bottom dweller to losing by only eight votes to Romney in the Iowa caucus? The question itself will most likely become irrelevant within the month of January, just as each of the buzz candidates during this election cycle has experienced a meteoric rise in popularity, only to subsequently and swiftly pull a Challenger and explode in the atmosphere of public opinion. Pundits and party insiders have gone from Trump to Bachmann to Perry to Cain to Gingrich to Ron Paul. (I mean, come on.)
Meanwhile, poor Romney has been cast aside as the stepchild of the GOP. Republicans see him as perfunctory, adequate, but he’s missing that dazzle, or, more importantly, he possesses that thing seemingly most detestable to the Tea Party faction of the GOP — any tie to political moderateness. He’s had to spend so much time distancing himself from his Republican-infamous “Romneycare” — even though it was successful — and flip-flopping on previously held beliefs to even stay viable that he has arguably rendered himself permanently ineffective for this election cycle.
So, even though some doubt the idea that Santorum could actually get the nomination, the rise of each buzz candidate represents a heavy blow to Romney. And so late in the game, it doesn’t bode well that someone like Santorum — infamous last name and all — could do so well in Iowa. Unless the GOP wants to nominate the guy who just bemoaned the welfare system as a way to give “black people...somebody else's money" to run against the incumbent first African American president of the United States, the party seems to be setting itself up for a weak run in 2012.