Split Semi-Endorsement Helps No One

Well, the much-awaited, over-rated word from on high has dropped. The famIly leader organization is not endorsing, but group leaders Bob Vander Plaats and Chuck Hurley are personally backing Rick Santorum.

Thus ends the chance for a social conservative to win Iowa in two weeks. The only way that would have happened was with a Come To Jesus (sorry Prof. Bloom but in this case it works) united effort that drove two out of three of Perry, Bachmann, Santorum out of the race or at least down below the Johnson/Huntsman Mendoza Line.

What this says, of course, is that BVP's hand-crafted vehicle couldn't come to a consensus. That limits Bob's ability to use those resources; the mass email from the famIly leader has yet to land in my inbox.

Instead, BVP has very slightly boosted the weakest (in polls, not in intensity) of the three, in a classic case of People's Front of Judea/Judean People's Front/Judean Popular Front.



This doesn't get Santorum a win. It might bump him up from sixth to fourth.

This gets more and more like 1996 every day. No one is going to "win" this thing. Someone is going to finish FIRST with a result something like:

Paul or Mitt 25
Paul or Mitt 25
Newt or Perry 15
Newt or Perry 12
Bachmann or Santorum 10
Bachmann or Santorum 10
Huntsman and Johnson combined 2
wish list non-candidates 1
Kevin Phillips Bong: 0
(remember, there's no names on the ballot so everyone's a write-in)

The split decision by social conservatives just lowers that top bar a couple points.

But on this much I'm sure: if Ron Paul is in the top two, anti-Paul Republicans will flock en masse post-Iowa to whichever other candidate is in the top two, just to block Paul.