My Wednesday essay for The Daily Banter is up. Read and RT often!
The big news of the last 24 hours isn’t that Rick Santorum finally dropped out of the race for the Republican nomination, allowing Mitt Romney to focus his money and protocol droid attention on the general election. The truly big newsis the fact that Rick Santorum made it to April as a relatively strong candidate.
Every four years there are inevitably several candidates from each party who are, to be frank, obvious losers. There’s an expectation that the weak no-names, the freaks and the vanity projects will never reach top shelf, A-list status leaving the truly solid candidates to direct their attention at winning and not deflecting shots from the cheap seats. Some of the D-list crowd will drop out before the Iowa and New Hampshire, others will stick around as an exercise in electoral masturbation. But they’re never talked about in terms of being a potential nominee or even vice presidential short-lister.