Why Won't Santorum's Former Senate Colleagues Endorse Him?

Finally... Rick earns a clown face!

Actually, on Friday someone who served with Santorum in the House and Senate-- and suffered a disastrous defeat like his in the same 2006 re-election bid-- did endorse him. Mike DeWine, now Ohio's unpopular Attorney General, not only endorsed Santorum, he withdrew his previous endorsement of Mitt Romney, implying that people don't perceive Romney as human. (Originally DeWine was a Pawlenty backer.) In 2006 Sherrod Brown beat incumbent Mike DeWine by a staggering 905,644 votes (56-44%) on the same night Bob Casey was decimating Santorum in Pennsylvania with an ever more stinging 59-41% rejection (almost 700,000 votes). The losses that night for other right wing Senate incumbents-- Jim Talent in Missouri, Conrad Burns in Montana, Lincoln Chafee in Rhode Island, and George "Macaca" Allen in Virginia-- were all much closer calls. No one shared the public humiliation of utter rejection the way career politicians Santorum and DeWine did.

Explaining to a NY Times reporter Friday why he was switching, DeWine contrasted Santorum with Romney. “People like him and they relate to him. They think he’s real and they think he’s human.” (Romney has consistently snubbed DeWine, even after he endorsed him.) Subconsciously many people react to Romney as though he were an alien-- beyond just the weirdness of his Mormon faith-- as though he could be a robot with a human exterior or as though he could rip off his plastic skin and underneath we would see a reptilian monster from another planet come to earth looking for a new food source for a dying planet. Pick one:


But DeWine never mentioned what factory made Romney nor which planet he came from. Instead, he said Santorum is more electable against Obama-- just as the "inevitability" and "electability" arguments that have propelled the dislikable quarter-billionaire Romney this far have largely fallen apart.

Mr. DeWine made the case on Friday that Mr. Obama might not be beatable if Mr. Romney was the nominee. “I bought into the argument that he was the best candidate to win in the fall for all the reasons that were given,” Mr. DeWine said in the interview, referring to Mr. Romney.

He added: “He’s just not connecting. I don’t know what it is, but I can tell you from real people I’m talking to, it ain’t getting any better.” He now believes Mr. Santorum “has by far the best chance of being elected president and beating Barack Obama, and Romney simply is not likely to win in the fall.”

...It remains to be seen how much the switch will help. Mr. Romney still has many endorsements from influential Ohio Republicans, including Senator Rob Portman and George Voinovich, a former Ohio senator and governor. Michigan’s Republican governor, Rick Snyder, also endorsed Mr. Romney this week.

In a conference call with reporters on Friday, John H. Sununu, a former governor of New Hampshire and a Romney supporter, said Mr. DeWine was lashing out against Mr. Romney because of an advertisement from a pro-Romney “super PAC” that attacked Mr. Santorum for his vote to restore voting rights of felons who had completed their sentences. Mr. DeWine, Mr. Sununu noted, was one of only two other Republican senators who had joined him in that vote.

DeWine says he hadn't even seen the ad and, apparently, he's sticking to his theory that Romney comes across as an unlikeable or unrelatable alien. Apparently most Republicans in the Senate either don't agree or don't care. CNN has a cute story about why they'd rather go for the human corpse eater from the Planet Zog than for a freak like Santorum:

There is a Senate tradition dating back to 1965. One specific desk in the Senate chamber has a drawer filled with candy. The senator assigned to that desk is responsible for keeping candy in it and providing sweets to all his or her colleagues.

Rick Santorum had the desk with the candy drawer, yet all that sugar didn't win him any endorsements for his presidential bid from former Senate colleagues.

Santorum was in the Senate for 12 years. He served in the House for four years before that. Yet only three House members have endorsed him, and he has no endorsements from any sitting senators.

Mitt Romney, who never served in Congress, has racked up 77 congressional endorsements, including 12 senators.

Ask Santorum's former Senate colleagues about his bid for president and many refuse to comment.

...So, why the lack of support for the former senator? Most observers point to questions about Santorum's electability. Multiple GOP Senate sources tell CNN many who were in the Senate trenches with Santorum like him personally, but don't think he can win the presidency.

They recall fiery speeches on the Senate floor about social issues from abortion to same-sex marriage.

"Society should be all about creating the best possible chance for children to have a mother and a father," Santorum said on the Senate floor in 2004.

"Unless our laws enforce that, then I think it's fairly obvious that our culture will not," he said.
One veteran GOP leadership aide called him a culture warrior likely to turn off moderate voters.

"The fear of Santorum is that it would just be a slow decay. There is no faith that he would bring independent or moderate voters. If he does well on Super Tuesday you'll have serious people talking about convention strategies," said the Senate GOP leadership aide.

When former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was on the rise, many of his former colleagues were openly nervous, calling into question his leadership ability.

The same GOP leadership aide said with Santorum, it's a "quieter freak out. It's a freak out, just it's muted."

Another GOP leadership aide agreed, saying people "would be pretty nervous" if Santorum does well in big contests March 6, Super Tuesday.

Republican Senate sources tell CNN that colleagues often privately point to Santorum's crushing 18-point loss in his 2006 re-election bid.

All Romney's endorsements from Republican incumbents in Congress-- a Congress with a 10% approval rating-- isn't doing him any good at all. Roy Blunt is head of his operation in the Senate to round up endorsements... but Romney lost Blunt's own state of Missouri 2 weeks ago... badly. Romney, trailing Santorum badly in Michigan polling, just rolled out unpopular Michigan congressmen Fred Upton, Tim Walberg, Dan Benishek (a former Herman Cain supporter, in fact Cain's only congressional supporter), Bill Huizenga, Dave Camp and Mike Rogers, joining Thaddeus McCotter, who endorsed Romney after his own presidential bid never took off. (Crackpot teabagger Justin Amash is sticking with Ron Paul and, apparently, no one has told Candice Miller than her heartthrob, Rick Perry has suspended his campaign.) But all those endorsements haven't moved the needle towards Romney-- or maybe they help explain why Santorum is kicking his ass in Michigan!