Santorum's out

Maybe I’ll give the Santorum campaign the better post-exit analysis it deserves, but I’ve been too busy working on a PS conference paper (phew, finally done) to read as much on the topic as I’d like.  That said, I do think this Amy Davidson post gets one point exactly right:

Santorum was also—perhaps most—important as a gauge of Romney’s weakness. This was true in a general sense (the latest not-Romney) and a more finely tuned one (how bad was Mitt’s evangelical problem? See: Mississippi and Alabama). Now we’ll see what Mitt can do with Santorum the not-candidate.

Santorum’s exit was a big topic of discussion in my Campaigns & Elections class yesterday and I do think it is a telling symptom of just how much cynicism modern campaigning breeds (perhaps, rightly so) that so many student assumed he was going to use his sick daughter as his official excuse for getting out of the race.  Not that he would ever admit the obvious truth that he could not face the embarrassment of a potential loss of his home state of PA.

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