Even though Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich are still officially in the race for the Republican Presidential nomination, Rick Santorum’s 10 April decision to ‘suspend’ his campaign has now cleared the way for Mitt Romney to become the Republican Party’s standard-bearer in November.
Since Romney no longer has to fight off a strong challenge from a more socially conservative Republican opponent, it’s time to focus on the general election strategies of Romney and President Obama. But before I begin, I want to use a bit more ink discussing Rick Santorum’s rather surprising political showing as well as his future prospects.
When he announced the suspension of his campaign, Santorum told his supporters that “this race was as improbable as any race that you will ever see for president”. Given that this was the same Rick Santorum who lost his 2006 Pennsylvania Senate re-election battle by a staggering 17 point margin, all I can say to his ‘improbable’ comment is “amen to that”.
I for one still didn’t give Santorum a chance even after he won a slim victory over Romney in their initial contest, the Iowa caucuses. However, he succeeded in striking a chord with many of the GOP’s social conservatives, despite being largely ignored by the news media, and the reality that his campaign team was both undermanned and vastly outspent by the Romney camp.
But even though Santorum will now finish second to Romney, by winning 10 state primaries and almost beating him in states like Ohio and Romney’s home state of Michigan, Santorum has nonetheless emerged as a far stronger Republican Presidential candidate than he was when the race began.
Over the course of his more than nine months of political campaigning throughout the US, Santorum succeeded in transforming himself from a political has-been into the energetic leader of the evangelical Christian and anti-establishment Tea Party blocs within the Republican Party. But as the youngest Republican candidate in the field, the 53-year-old Santorum has also established himself as one of the front-runners for the 2016 Republican Presidential nomination. Furthermore, if Romney loses to President Obama in 2012, Santorum may end up being the GOP’s lone challenger in 2016.
Santorum’s primary criticism of Romney throughout this year’s campaign was that his positions on divisive domestic concerns like abortion, climate change, healthcare and gun control are too similar to those of President Obama. This critique has gained currency with large swaths of the GOP’s conservative base, despite Romney’s concerted attempts to recast himself as a true conservative. As a result, a Republican loss this November will only serve to harden the resolve of social conservatives to nominate a more ideologically pure candidate like Santorum the next time around.
While Santorum’s decision to ‘suspend’ his campaign means Romney will no longer have to debate the Republican Party’s controversial positions on various social issues, you can bank on Democrats and President Obama spending a lot of time and money reminding voters about them this fall. Unlike the GOP’s social conservatives, both President Obama and the Democratic Party are well aware of just how much the other side’s positions frighten and turn off moderate and independent voters.
Those voters are the key to winning in November, so Romney’s success, if he is to achieve it, will be at least partially dependent on persuading independent and moderate voters to support him in spite of their opposition to the social conservatives’ agenda. But the rest depends on his ability to motivate Republican social conservatives to turn out and vote for him in large numbers.
Charles Laffiteau is a US Republican from Dallas, Texas who is pursuing a PhD in Public Policy and Political Economy. He previously lectured on Contemporary US Business & Society at DCU from 2009-2011.
