Within the Margin

The march of inevitability to GOP Nominee for Mitt Romney was either bolstered or hit a snag today – at the time of this writing, I’m not sure which. Reports from The Hill announce that Rick Perry is leaving the GOP field days before the South Carolina primary. Does this help Mitt? Not really in South Carolina, where it’s actually a boost to the conserva-duo of Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich. But more than likely it’ll help Santorum as he is now the right”s “anointed one.” More on that in a bit.

For Perry, this campaign is likely to end his time in the national spotlight – and what a disastrous time it was for him. A celebrated conservative when he entered the fray, Perry’s lack of message discipline and terrible performances in debates contributed to his short-lived campaign. Perry, unlike Gingrich or Santorum, had the money to compete and could have built the organization needed to win the Iowa caucuses and preform admirably in South Carolina. If there hadn’t been 15 debates between the time he entered the race in August and the time of this writing, Perry would likely be polling second or leading Mitt with many of his vulnerabilities unexposed. Perry’s debate prep was an issue of laziness on his part and on the part of his campaign. After a decade as Governor of Texas, and running with minimal opposition and eventually not even bothering to debate, it’s easy to see that Perry and his initial advisers had no clue what they were in for, especially confronting a man who’s been running for president full time since he left Beacon Hill in 2007. It would be premature and amateur of this author to prognosticate that Rick Perry’s political career is over due to this campaign. However, if the Governor does run for another term in 2014, a good number of Democratic potentials (while our bench in Texas is fairly pathetic, we’d find someone) would want to remind voters of Perry’s stances and gaffes and call his leadership into question. (An aside: while this sort of strategy would work in a more purple state, Texas’ deep red hue would make this mission a suicide run for near about any Democrat) But, the fact remains that the Governor’s national profile is ruined.

With Perry gone, the Evangelical wing of the Republican Party is now down to two choices: Rick Santorum, who has probably won the Iowa caucus, and Newt Gingrich, whose campaign is likely to blow up for the third time. This past weekend, Evangelical leaders essentially anointed Santorum as their pick for who they’d want to be the nominee, and more importantly, to stop Mitt Romney from gaining the nomination. For Santorum, it’s the needed jolt to a campaign that after a week of gushing about his Iowa success essentially fell on life support; he should have written New Hampshire off instead of even setting foot there. It’s tough to gauge how this will effect turnout for the former PA Senator, but it will provide him additional funds with the evangelical field winnowed. Santorum likely gets a good bounce as the sound replacement for pro-Perry, anti-Mitt and any “anyone but Romney and Paul” stragglers as well. Santorum will also likely benefit from the Speaker’s third immolation as a candidate in the course of this campaign.

The Phoenix Gingrich may not have any more ability to rebound from a potentially scandalous interview given by his ex-wife. According to reports on Twitter and the web, Drudge is linking the story and in place of what was called a successful debate by Mr. Gingrich, he’s once again on the defense about his personal life. How many times can a candidate burn and rise from the ashes? Newt’s impeccable luck only comes as a consequence of the abhorrent weakness of the Republican field. If any of the could-haves (for this we’ll say a competent and red meat-throwing Huntsman campaign, Tim Pawlenty not quitting when he did, or Chris Christie organizing a ground game, or Mitch Daniels and/or John Thune mounting a run) had entered and done so without the gaffe-fest Gingrich never would have made it out of his summer campaign collapse.

For this round of musical chairs, another unqualified person drops out, but the fractures facing this GOP primary electorate continue to be glaring between the “mainstream” or “Establishment” crew going for Romney, the Evangelical win pulling for Not-Romney, and the Paulist wing being…well, weird. The losers in all of this aren’t the Republican voters – they brought this upon themselves – but the American electorate as a whole as it continues to show a great apathy towards the two parties and ideas of governance, instead throwing up their hands in frustration about their lack of “choice.” There’s no real free flow of ideas of how government should run, and really in politics there hasn’t been that discussion in a long, long time.

Update (4:37): Perry endorsed Newt Gingrich this morning/afternoon in what has to be gasoline on Newt’s terrible, no good, very bad day. Sunday may well be Newt’s last day as a candidate for President.