According to CBS, Rick Santorum is suspending his campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination today. The candidate, who was previously elected as a Senator from Pennsylvania, has scheduled a press conference in Gettysburg to make the announcement.
photo by Gage Skidmore
For much of the early 2012 campaign, Santorum was an afterthought in the race. A number of the early front-runners, including Trump, Bachmann, Perry, and Cain, have all decided to stop their campaigns already. As the other social conservatives left the race, Ricky gained momentum, and won the Iowa caucuses. But Santorum could never get Gingrich to drop out of the race, so Mitt won a number of the primaries since January with less than 50% of the vote. Without the ability to achieve a one on one race, similar to that waged by Obama and Clinton in 2008, Santorum found himself with a significant organizational and financial disadvantage.
Now, the race belongs to Romney, finally. Newt may continue in the race, now that his campaign’s financial troubles have become clear. But nobody actually believes that Newt can win, or that anyone would want him to win. It will be interesting to see how the Romney campaign evolves at this point.
Is he able to conduct a positive campaign? Well, he’d better. I can’t imagine how a negative campaign could be effective against a sitting president. People have too much knowledge of a president for that to work. So, Mitt needs to run a campaign based upon his ability to fix the problems in the economy, I would think.
April 10th, 2012 at 10:22 am
I agree. Unfortunate he has to spend a ton of money undoing what his own GOP opponents did. So he’ll do a ton of positive ads trying to define himself. The negative will be there, tho. He is going to attack Obama at his core among women and ethnic voters.
April 10th, 2012 at 10:39 am
Suffice to say, phew, I’m so relieved.
I was tired of asking, Rick? Rick who?
Like Obama, he was an empty suit, too.
Hey, he made Ron Paul almost relevant.
April 10th, 2012 at 10:51 am
Wow, A-S E, poetry. I don’t think anyone’s ever written a poetic response to one of my threads before. I’m impressed. As you can tell, I can barely write prose.
April 10th, 2012 at 11:11 am
Um, thanks, Arriba, but any semblance
to poetry there was purely accidental.
April 10th, 2012 at 11:39 am
A few last words about Rick Santorum:
1.) He was not a Conservative. He always supported legislation beneficial to labor unions. He was a protege of Arlen Spector, and, in fact, he endorsed Spector, not Toomy, in Pennsy’s senatorial race.
Like Arizona’s old Mr. Magoo, he was always an unprincipled opportunist, a fraud, an empty suit and a Rino, which was why Republicans in Pennsy became exasperated with him and voted him out of office in large numbers, just as they did with Spector, also. Reagan Democrats in particular became disaffected and they despised both of them.
2.) Santorum’s vicious, despicable and oftentimes inappropriate attacks against Newt Gingrich coordinated with Michelle Bachman’s vicious, slimy and despicable attacks against Newt Gingrich early in the debates did irreparable damage to the Gingrich Campaign long before Romney’s PACs and the MSM piled on to thoroughly destroy Gingrich. For those reasons, alone, it is justice that Bachman and Santorum will emerge from this race as little more than footnotes in history …, if those two despicable politicians even get that much recognition. Because of their vicious treachery, Santorum and Bachman are finished in national politics.
April 10th, 2012 at 12:33 pm
That poem was awesome but can be improved.
Suffice to say, phew, I’m so relieved.
Like angry Ron Paul I was feeling peeved.
I was tired of asking, Rick? Rick who?
Like Obama, he was an empty suit, too.
April 10th, 2012 at 12:49 pm
ok, here’s my entry for poetry corner:
There once was a guy from Steel City
His campaign’s done now and it’s such a pity
He ran out of dough
His wife said ‘don’t be a schmo’
and now it’s all up to mitty
April 10th, 2012 at 1:40 pm
Silence,
An empty hall.
No more banners,
posters or polls.
Turn out the lights,
Box what is left.
Days of glory past,
Too few to count.
Santorum is finished,
Let’s get behind Newt!
April 10th, 2012 at 1:53 pm
To this diversity of poetic styles I add a simple haiku:
No more Santorum
Will I see this day and next
The money is gone
April 10th, 2012 at 2:15 pm
Well, there’s always the Romney/FrothyMixture ticket.
April 11th, 2012 at 1:09 pm
See ya in 2016, guys, I’ll vote write-in for President. Good luck choosing between Obama and Obama v 2.0.
April 11th, 2012 at 2:27 pm
“See ya in 2016, guys, I’ll vote write-in for President. Good luck choosing between Obama and Obama v 2.0.”
I am just guessing here, but was Santorum your choice?
April 11th, 2012 at 4:57 pm
buzzbee, my choice was “Anyone but Romney”. And Obama is not an option of course, he can make even Romney look almost digestible.