Fish and company both tend to reek when too much time passes, said Benjamin Franklin, and so too do candidates, once their rationale and their welcome is gone. Time ran out years ago for Rick Santorum and ex-Speaker Newt Gingrich, dismissed fourteen and six years ago by their state and their party. They rose from the dead at nobody’s urging, and injected themselves into the 2012 cycle, at nobody’s wish but their own.
Rejected now for the second time running, they refuse to retire, determined, with no hope of winning, to inflict the maximum damage on the people and party who spoiled the comebacks that never developed, unable to realize that their multiple failures are nobody’s fault but their own.
Even the reasons they give for remaining explain why their troubles are deep: Mitt Romney is a ‘weak’ frontrunner, so he must be replaced with someone much weaker, who won less than half of his number of delegates, was trounced by him often in big states and swing states, raised much less money, and who ran a campaign so chaotic that he lost ballot access in several states. Romney has trouble reaching the GOP base, but his coalition is broader and deeper. The others have much more resistance reaching beyond the base.
“We won the areas that conservatives and Republicans populate, and we’re very happy about that,” Santorum said after Romney beat him by 11 points in the Illinois primary. But those areas will vote for any Republican this fall, and the big job for the Republican Party this year is to win back the independents who swung to McCain/Palin in 2008 in early September, and swung to Obama after the crash. Clearly a gaffe-prone extremist who can’t run a campaign is just the ticket to unseat the president. Is this logic and genius, or what?
Newt seems to be in it for laughs — and the chance to tour zoos and eat out on his money-man’s dollar — but what could be in it for Rick? He has upped his profile with one distinct wing of his party, but cooked his career on the broad public stage. He can never appear on a national ticket: even on the underside, he would be a distraction and a gift to the Democrats, who would play his hits over and over until they drowned out all else. The nominee would be forced to either explain or disown him: Does he think Protestant churches were subverted by Satan? Does he think gay marriage is like “man on dog” bestiality? Does he think church and state should be one? In 2016, should Romney lose, the rule that the runner-up-gets-to-run-next-time would fail to apply. He would run into a freight train driven by Marco Rubio at the head of a long line of viable candidates, young and diverse, who appeal to independents AND to the base of the party, and who never threw up at a speech by John Kennedy. His party should hope that he comes into Tampa with minimum leverage to prolong his exposure. The window he tried to pry open has closed.
Santorum and Gingrich may have believed that their early retirements were a mistake and injustice that they could erase if they showed their true colors, and emerged as the heroes they were. But character is destiny, and all that they did was repeat their old errors, showing why those who best knew them decided they wanted them gone. There will be no second acts in the American lives of these failed politicians. The audience is restless, and eying the exits. Will someone please show them the door?
Examiner Columnist Noemie Emery is contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and author of “Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families.”
