Is Santorum The New "Teabagger Hope" ?

It's only three more days until the primary season is kicked off with the Iowa caucuses, and the polls are now coming fast and furious trying to predict what will happen in those caucuses. Those polls are, even in the best of times, only an educated guess as to what the voters will do when it comes time to vote. But this GOP race is so fluid (with over 40% of voters saying they could still change their minds), that we should probably take the word "educated" out of the equation and just call them a "guess".

There are a couple of new polls out, and both of them show Mitt Romney back in the lead in Iowa. This has some pundits predicting a Romney win in Iowa (and ready to anoint him as the eventual nominee). But note that Romney is not in the lead because he has increased his percentage of the vote. He is still only scoring in the low twenties in support, about the same as he's been doing for months now. This means he is still not getting any significant support from the teabagger/evangelicals, who make up the bulk of the Republican Party base.

If Romney wins in Iowa, and he could do that, it will not be because he is the popular choice of most Republicans. It will be because the teabagger/evangelical vote is split among several of the other candidates. I hear many of the pundits saying this is just what Romney wants, and gives him the advantage -- but for me, the math just doesn't work out. Let's assume that Romney is able to win a bunch of states with about 30% of the vote (which is about the best he could do without teabagger/evangelical support). That means 70% of the delegates are going to other candidates.

Now some of those candidates will fall along the way and drop out of the race (I doubt that Bachmann gets much farther than the first two or three states). Will Romney get any of their delegates? Probably not. The teabagger delegates will move to another of the ultra right-wing candidates -- because the teabaggers simply don't trust Romney. He is a newcomer to their point-of-view, and they expect he will go back to his "liberal" views once he gets the nomination.


If the teabaggers are able to finally coalesce around a single candidate, the race would be over for Romney. And they have tried for several months to find that anti-Romney "champion". They briefly flirted with Bachmann, but quickly abandoned her when Perry entered the race. Perry showed himself to be a doofus in the debates, so they moved on to Herman Cain. But Cain couldn't keep his pants zipped, and his sexual escapades finally forced him out of the race. They then turned to Newt Gingrich to be their champion. But when his opponents opened his closet door and all of his ethical skeletons tumbled out, Newt tumbled back to earth.

Running out of candidates, the teabaggers took a look at Ron Paul. But while Paul has a good organization in Iowa (and could do well in that state), his racism and wacky policies are too much for even the teabaggers. He will probably get about 10-12% of national delegates, but no more. That left only one candidate they hadn't tried (since Huntsman is a non-starter with the teabaggers) -- Rick "man on dog" Santorum. And recent polls have shown that Santorum is now starting to surge in Iowa. It is looking like Santorum might be the new anti-Romney champion for the teabaggers.

Note that each time one of the ultra right-wingers fell from grace with the teabaggers, they did NOT turn to Mitt Romney. And they are still not turning to Romney. Until a significant number of these teabaggers finally give up and accept Romney, he will not win. I had gone into this campaign thinking Romney would be the best candidate for the Republicans, but I am starting to change my mind. I'm beginning to think he would be the best Republican nominee for Democrats. I say that because even if he can get enough teabagger support to get the nomination, there will still be a lot of unhappy teabaggers who might just stay home on election day -- and that could hurt the Republicans seriously in down-ballot races.

Is Santorum the new teabagger champion? Probably (he's second in one of the new polls and third in the other). But I still have trouble seeing him as a long-term threat to Romney. It's probably a good thing that Huckabee dropped out of the race early, because the way things are shaping up he could have easily beaten Romney. Now Romney may win the nomination simply because there is no one else with enough gravitas to be a viable nominee. Frankly, it's starting to look like anyone the Republicans nominate (including Romney) would be good for the Democrats.

Here are the results of the two newest polls:

NBC/MARIST POLL
(December 27-28)
Mitt Romney...............23%
Ron Paul...............21%
Rick Santorum...............15%
Rick Perry...............14%
Newt Gingrich...............13%
Michele Bachmann...............6%
Jon Huntsman...............2%

WE ASK AMERICA POLL
(December 29)
Mitt Romney...............24%
Rick Santorum...............17%
Ron Paul...............14%
Newt Gingrich...............13%
Michele Bachmann...............12%
Rick Perry...............10%
Jon Huntsman...............4%
Undecided...............7%