Several reporters, photographers, and TV camera crews were
crowded into a small conference room Friday afternoon at the
Marriott Wardman Park hotel in Washington. Hundreds of people were
lined up outside the room, waiting to enter the “Rick Santorum Meet
& Greet” which the program of the Conservative Political Action
Conference (CPAC) listed as scheduled to begin at 1:30 p.m. The
appointed time slipped past and, like the crowd waiting in line,
some in the media gang inside the room began to grow impatient at
the delayed arrival of the candidate, who had given a well-received
speech that morning in the hotel’s main ballroom.
“We’re a long way from Iowa,” I remarked to Santorum
spokesman Hogan Gidley, recalling how few reporters had covered the
underdog candidate during the long months he spent crisscrossing
the Hawkeye State and speaking to small groups of Republican
voters. A mere two months earlier, in mid-December, Santorum had
been sixth in the
Real Clear Politics average of Iowa polls, with less than six
percent. He had somehow miraculously surged to a win in Iowa, then
endured a month of disappointing finishes in New Hampshire, South
Carolina, Florida and Nevada, Now, fresh from triple victories last
Tuesday in Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri, the former
Pennsylvania senator was riding a wave of momentum, attracting the
kind of crowds (and swarming media coverage) that follow a bona
fide presidential contender.
At last, the candidate arrived, eliciting applause and
cheers from his waiting supporters. Santorum answered a couple of
questions from the press gaggle, then did a brief TV interview with
Andrea Tantaros of Fox News, before the crowd outside was led in to
get their “grip-and-grin” moments with the candidate. While the
candidate shook hands and posed for photographs with the CPAC
attendees, I walked over to talk with his campaign’s finance
director, Nadine Maenza, who confirmed previous reports that
Santorum had been raking in online donations at a pace of $1
million a day since Tuesday’s trifecta. In fact, Maenza said, she
had been informed that the campaign had already collected a
half-million dollars that morning, so that total donations to
Santorum since Tuesday were already more than $3
million.
Such a windfall of campaign cash, like the crowds of
supporters and the swarming media coverage, is further evidence of
Santorum’s status as the top rival to the Republican presidential
field’s longtime frontrunner, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt
Romney. And the sudden tsunami of contributions is another contrast
to those long and often discouraging months that Santorum spent
wooing voters in Iowa. His entire campaign operation in 2011
collected less than $2.2 million in donations, which was less than
the amount he’d gotten in the 72 hours preceding the Friday
afternoon “meet and greet” event at CPAC. Of course, Santorum’s
funds are still but a fraction of Romney’s massive war chest, but
the influx of contributions almost guaranteed that the 2012 GOP
campaign’s longtime underdog could keep up the fight through the
March 6 “Super Tuesday” primaries and beyond.
Santorum’s second surge, which evoked memories of the
frenetic final week before the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, gave
credibility to his claim to be the “consistent conservative”
alternative to Romney. While some pundits dismissed Santorum’s
strong showing last week as an inconsequential bump in the road for
Romney, it helped Santorum establish at least a temporary
ascendancy over Newt Gingrich as the top “Not Mitt” candidate in
the Republican race. Santorum has now notched four wins against
Romney, while Gingrich has been unable to replicate his lone
victory, Jan. 21 in the South Carolina primary. Gingrich’s stumbles
in the past three weeks appear to have badly damaged the former
House Speaker’s chances. Few could argue with Gingrich’s assertion
that Romney won Florida’s Jan. 31 primary mainly on the strength of
“money power” that funded an overwhelming torrent of TV attack ads
in the Sunshine State, but Gingrich’s subsequent defeats looked a
lot more like self-inflicted wounds.
The Gingrich campaign in Nevada was an ill-organized
disaster, and he compounded his Feb. 4 defeat there with a petulant
performance at a post-caucus press conference. Then came Tuesday’s
embarrassing wipeout. Gingrich hadn’t even qualified for the ballot
in Missouri, where Santorum scored a solid 55 to 25 percent win
over Romney. Gingrich finished a weak third (13 percent) in the
Colorado caucuses, where Santorum beat Romney 40 to 35 percent, and
Gingrich placed a distant fourth (11 percent) in Minnesota, where
Santorum got 45 percent to Romney’s 27 percent and Texas Rep. Ron
Paul’s 17 percent. This string of February drubbings suggested an
astonishingly swift meltdown for Gingrich, who in January had
repeatedly claimed that he was the only Republican candidate
capable of beating Romney, while occasionally suggesting that
Santorum should quit the race. After Gingrich’s recent three-week
losing streak, it is unlikely Newt will be repeating those claims
and suggestions again anytime soon. Indeed, several reports in the
past week indicate that the Gingrich campaign is now facing a
serious financial crunch, with Las Vegas casino mogul
Sheldon Adelson reportedly ending his contributions to a
pro-Gingrich “super PAC.”
The bad news for Newt continued at the three-day
conservative conference in Washington, where CPAC attendees gave
Gingrich just 15 percent of the vote in
Saturday’s straw poll. The media made much of Romney’s victory
in the CPAC straw poll — 38 percent to Santorum’s 31 percent —
but the fact that Santorum beat Gingrich by more than a 2-to-1
margin was arguably more significant. And while there was some
sarcastic scoffing when Santorum first accused Romney of having
“rigged” a victory Saturday, reports by the
New York Times and
Politico’s Jonathan Martin confirmed that
Santorum was factually correct: The Romney campaign paid for CPAC
registrations and bused in supporters to ensure a win in the
closely watched straw poll. Romney’s win in Saturday’s Maine caucus
was untainted by any such suggestion of illegitimacy. Another
fourth-place finish for Gingrich, who got just 6 percent of the
Maine vote, added emphasis to the weeklong streak of evidence that
Newt’s campaign is fading while Santorum’s is surging.
With more than two weeks to go before the next round of
primaries (Feb. 28 in Arizona and Michigan), it is impossible to
rule out another stunning upheaval in this year’s turbulent
Republican race. Already, the Romney campaign has begun
re-targeting its brutal attack machine to take on Santorum,
releasing negative “oppo” (opposition research) to the media, while
the pro-Romney “super PAC” Restore Our Future buys Internet ads
portraying Santorum as a proponent of pork-barrel spending. Being
attacked by Team Mitt, however, could be seen as still more proof
that Santorum’s surge has made him the leading conservative
opponent to Romney. And with Gingrich now evidently on the ropes,
Santorum may be positioned to emerge as the last man standing
against Romney. How long he can remain standing is a question that
will be answered in the days and weeks ahead.
