COMMENTARY | Despite finishing third in the South Carolina primary on Saturday night, Rick Santorum still has a large stack of poker chips to play in the coming weeks. With his family flanked around him, his speech was not as impressive as his Iowa speech. It actually sounded a bit like a Ron Paul speech: all over the place and less coherent.
Before Santorum took the podium, someone in his camp must have shown him the exit polling. According to The New York Times, “South Carolina Exit Polls: How Different Groups Voted”, the top priority for South Carolina Republican primary voters was defeating President Barack Obama, and Newt Gingrich, the victorious winner, did best with those voters. Gingrich also performed well with voters who were looking for a candidate with the “right experience.”
Santorum was quick to congratulate Gingrich on his victory. He even asked his supporters to give Gingrich a round of applause. Mitt Romney failed to mention the name of the man who defeated him. Perhaps he thinks if he speaks Newt’s name some sort of evil will come upon him; like Lord Voldemort did for Harry Potter.
Santorum rather considerably changed the whole notion of his campaign in his speech. It seems he’s offering himself up to be Gingrich’s or Romney’s vice president as the candidate of the Rust Belt. It’s likely he could compliment either one of them.
He’s trying to maneuver himself to be the guy who can bring the blue-collar worker to the Republican ticket in the November. It’ll be hard for him to sell that when voters look at Santorum’s record in the Senate, when he voted with George W. Bush right down the line.
With a resentful tone, he brought up President Obama’s quote about working people clinging to their guns and religion. He hit a sweat note there because a lot people in the Midwest were offended by that comment.
Santorum would compliment Romney more because of his projection that he cares about the wage earner. He could play well for a national ticket in Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana, states that have seen manufacturing jobs disappear.
It felt like Santorum was dialing back toward Gingrich. We’ll see if he’s less confrontational toward Gingrich during Monday night’s debate than he was in the last one.
Still a candidate of conviction, Santorum wants to make sure his issues are still out there. The question is which front runner, Gingrich or Romney, will embrace those convictions? If Santorum wants to move on he’ll have to raise a heck of lot of money … and quickly.