Exit, stage (far) right.

In a rather sudden announcement, Rick Santorum has suspended his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, making the decision late last night. Yahoo has reported he rang Mitt Romney some time before to confirm his decision. Thus the Republican contest has effectively been wrapped-up; all that remains is a little house-keeping.

Perhaps the most engrossing aspect of Santorum's campaign was its sheer improbability, mtahced only by its stratospheric rise. Before December, nearly every Republican nominee - Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, and of course Romney - had at some time or another enjoyed a lead in the opinion polls. The Santorum campaign was seemingly almost proud of the fact that it operated on a shoestring budget, effectively from the back of a pick-up truck. After eventually winning the Iowa caucuses in early January of this year (Romney was initially declared the winner by eight votes; Santorum eventually took the spoils by 34 votes, though the Romney campaign curiously pronounced this a 'draw'), his run for the Republican nomination eventually shifted up a few gears. Eventually, riding high on his reputation as the 'come back kid', Santorum went on to seal primary victories in Minnesota, Colorado, Missouri, and Tennessee Oklahoma and North Dakota on Super Tuesday. 

And yet, to me at least, his campaign never seemed truly viable. Richard Nixon once presciently observed that Republicans ought to run to the right during the primaries, and then move towards the political centre-ground during the general election. It seems unlikely that Santorum would ever have made this latter transition were he to win the nomination and get that far. The entire raison d'etre of his campaign on occasion peered to be to become America's pastor-in-chief, with Santorum bravely taking on the pressing task of reorientating a nation's moral standing against the dark forces of liberalism and government activism. Santorum himself, however, was certainly no stranger to turning a blind eye and dipping his hands in the pockets of the federal government, spreading the beneficent largesse (read 'pork') to his electors in Pennsylvania. For his troubles he was turfed out of office by almost 18 points in the 2006 Senate election (an oft-repeated fact that only gives credence to the claim that this year's Republican contest has been full of no-hopers, has-beens and never-will-bes). 

This, further, embodied a glaring right-wing hypocrisy: shrink the state economically and financially, enlarge as far as possible when it comes to regulating the activity of individuals in the bedroom. Part of the reason hypothetical head-to-head polls showed Obama crushing Santorum was the latter's unflinching, painfully dogmatic, off-putting comments on homosexuals, abortion, and women's rights, to say the very least. The next five contests in two weeks time are New York, Connecticut, Delaware, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania. Only in the last of these did Santorum stand a chance against Romney's formidable, Super-PAC-lubricated election machine (and even there the opinion polls between them were narrowing ominously for Santorum). The remaining four states all enjoy, relatively speaking, better-educated, more prosperous GOP electorates, particularly those neighbouring Romney's Massachusetts. Romney already has a near-unassailable delegate lead, more than all of his competitors combined. Ron Paul will not win. Newt Gingrich is still, mysteriously, still here. Santorum admittedly possessed a certain charm and appeal among white working-class, blue-collar families due to his family's moving history, but, for varying reasons, their numbers are slowly shrinking, not enough to sustain a presidential run. 

I can't foresee a sudden surge to Gingrich or Paul now that Santorum has left the contest. Perhaps this will be the moment when the wider Republican electorate, downright unenthusiastic about the former Massachusetts governor, begrudgingly unite behind him. After all, hatred of Barack Obama transcends any ideological differences between the Republican nominees, and this election is still too close to call. Romney is  now the nominee. There are already suggestions Santorum is preparing to throw his lot behind him. What he now faces is a much more formidable opponent, the incumbent president.