Is Rick Santorum trying to save the GOP from Sarah Palin?

Don't get out your hedge trimmers just yet, Rick - Image via Wikipedia

Rick Santorum is testing the waters in Iowa for a possible presidential run in 2012 according to Jonathan Martin in Politico. But what I think he’s really doing is a favor for his friend Mitt Romney, hoping to undercut Sarah Palin’s votes within the Republican Party’s ‘base’ of religious voters, and, in his view, possibly saving the GOP in the process.

As Jonathan explains, Santorum is probably tilting at windmills – he’s just not electable:

But having been thumped by 18 percentage points in his bid for a third term and out of office since 2006, Santorum may have a difficult time appealing to a savvy Hawkeye state electorate that is likely to have a full complement of social conservatives to choose from.

“One of the things we’ve seen from the Iowa caucuses is candidates that appeal to the base do very well,” Santorum said when asked how his conservative profile would fit the state. “I think historically that’s always been sort of a key in Iowa. Whether I do or not, I don’t know—I mean, we’ll see.”

But I think that’s not really at issue here. Santorum just wants to cockblock Palin so that religious voters in Iowa will continue to pick doughy white guys like him instead of her.

And then Mitt Romney will race past a split base in Iowa.

I guess that would be a doughy orange guy.

For starters, let’s go back to February 2008 when Mitt Romney was already virtually knocked out of the presidential race because of his poor showing in early primaries. Santorum took to the radio and came out swinging against John McCain, and had this to say about Romney in an appearance on Laura Ingraham’s show:

If you’re a Republican, if you’re a Republican in the broadest sense, there is only one place to go right now and that’s Mitt Romney.

That’s a pretty strong endorsement from one man to another he knew at that time would not be the GOP’s presidential candidate. Santorum was throwing his weight behind Romney not just out of spite, but because he believes in Mitt in the long-term. He knew McCain wasn’t going to win and was trying to elect his party’s eventual standard-bearer with his big mouth.

So that takes us to Palin. I don’t think Santorum cares for her, on a personal or political level. First, let’s look at the personal. When asked about the revelation that Bristol Palin was with child, this is what Santorum told The Hill about how Palin was dealing with her family:

You don’t want to see have a child going out, and obviously, getting involved in sex outside of marriage. That’s not a good thing. … You take something that is not a good thing, which is for her to be engaged in that activity, and you take what happened, which is a pregnancy, and you turn it into the best thing possible, which is that you love her, you support her, and you love and support that baby, and that’s what Sarah and her family is doing.

So, Bristol was doing something that Santorum was critical of, but thankfully Sarah was showing love and support for her and her baby. Many other conservative pols, as that article showed, were happy to leave it at statements that Palin’s family should not be a campaign issue. Santorum passed judgment on her daughter’s pre-marital behaviors, which is his coded way of saying, “if she was a better mother, she wouldn’t have this problem.”

Next, onto the political. Santorum appeared on Greta van Susteren’s Fox News show shortly after Palin announced she would resign as Alaska’s governor, and said the following:

Her biggest fans that I know is my wife, Karen (ph), and she loves her, and she felt really bad that she quit. She felt like, number one, it hurt her, it hurt Sarah. And number two, it hurt women in politics. And although my wife is not an elected official, she was very much a part of my career and she was always trying to promote women in politics. And it looks like, you know, she couldn’t take it, and that’s not a good thing for women.

And you know, I’m — I’m speaking for my wife, not for me. I’m not — I’m not telling you how I feel about it. That’s how she feels about it, and I think that’s — that’s probably going to — going to hurt. It’s going to hurt her.

That’s a pretty rough start. Saying of Palin, “My wife doesn’t like you,” is pretty much Santorum-speak for, “You are a two-bit former sportscaster snowbunny who doesn’t belong anywhere near Washington (where I’ve lived all the time for the past 15 years even though I pretended I was a senator from Pennsylvania for awhile). If my wife, a good, common Christian Republican woman is offended at your quitting the governorship, imagine how everyone else is going to feel.”

He then added:

I think it’s — you say 70 percent, you know, but that’s a question, you know, Would you vote for her for president against a Democrat? I mean, most Republicans will get 90 percent of the Republican vote, not 70. So I don’t think that’s necessarily a strong number for her, unfortunately.

Translation: A lot of Republicans are as creeped out by you as I am. There’s no way we’re letting you run away with the nomination by putting together a psychotic populist coalition of crazed birthers, Creationists, gun nuts, and security moms.

I suspect it’s going to be a long four years for the GOP.

The proof will ultimately be in who is funding Santorum’s politcking over the next four years. If you see Santorum and Romney getting a lot of donations from the same people to whatever pre-campaign PACs they set up, their efforts will obviously be coordinated. And watch for Santorum to constantly find ways to steadily and sneakily stick shivs in Palin’s belly like he did on that Greta appearance in July.  Then you’ll see why he’s really flying to Iowa on a regular basis.