Why have Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich not yet endorsed Romney, wonders MICHAEL D SHEARin New York
MITT ROMNEY has vanquished virtually all of his Republican rivals. Only Republican Ron Paul of Texas remains in the race; the rest (even Newt Gingrich) have bowed to the reality that Romney will be the nominee.
But there’s one thing that several have stubbornly not done, even in the face of a Republican establishment that is growing impatient with them.
Endorse Romney.
Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum and Gingrich have all resisted the urgings of their peers to simply get on board the Mitt Romney Express.
The hesitancy is raising eyebrows among the power brokers in Washington who wonder what game they are playing. And the pressure is increasing.
Endorsements from one or all of the three could come as early as this week. Or maybe not. Here are some of the considerations that may be weighing on the minds of the former hopefuls as they decide whether to announce their support for Romney:
Constituencies. All three of the one-time Republican front-runners have large groups of fans who don’t want to see them cave in to Romney.
Moving too quickly to back the party’s nominee could seem like a slap in the face to those who worked hardest for them during the primaries.
Bachmann is in a re-election campaign for her House of Representatives seat in Minnesota, which makes it even more important that she not seem like a turncoat to the base of conservative activists who have supported her for years. In an interview last week, she made it clear that Romney would have to wait a little longer.
“As the line says in the Wizard of Oz, ‘All in good time, my pretty’,” Bachmann said. “It will happen.”
Fundraising. Running for president is a costly affair and each of the candidates needs to keep raising money to help pay off campaign debts. Doing so may get a bit harder once they have thrown in the towel and endorsed the party’s candidate.
Gingrich, in particular, faces a tough financial situation. His campaign reported more than $4 million (€3 million) in debts at the end of last month. Once he endorses Romney publicly, his potential donors may wonder why they should give money to him instead of Romney.
Gingrich has said he will officially drop out this week (Fox News reported over the weekend that it will be tomorrow) and his aides have hinted that he will endorse Romney at the time. But if he holds back at all, money could be the reason.
Pride. Of all the reasons for not endorsing Romney, the strongest may be the simplest. After months of lambasting Romney as the weakest possible Republican candidate, the defeated candidates are just struggling to get the warm words out of their mouths.
That’s surely the case with Santorum, whose bitter fight with Romney in the waning weeks of the primary season seemed to leave him with a particularly bad taste in his mouth.
Asked by Piers Morgan of CNN last week whether he was endorsing Romney, Santorum danced around the question.
“You can call it whatever you want,” Santorum said, adding a minute later that Romney “is going to be the Republican nominee. I’m going to be for the Republican nominee. We’re going to do what we can to beat Barack Obama.”
Leverage. For all of the one-time candidates, an endorsement ends whatever leverage they might hope to have at the Republican national convention in Tampa this August. All three would like to have featured speaking slots and influence over the party’s platform. Aides to all three have denied that they are seeking any kind of a deal with Romney’s camp for convention influence.
All have said publicly though that they hope to have an impact on the direction of the party – a conservative impact, they say – even without being the nominee.
The reluctance to offer a full-blown endorsement suggests the candidates are looking for ways to exert that influence before they fade completely into the background of the coming fight between Romney and Obama. – (New York Times service)