Santorum Offers Tepid (?) Endorsement of Romney

The media is casting this as a tepid endorsement -- see, for example, this, or anti-Santorum Drudge's headline, "Bitter Santorum Backs Romney in Tepid Late-Night Endorsement..." -- but I don't see anything "tepid" in the endorsement, myself.

Read it all. It's an argument being made on behalf of Romney to anti-Romney voters, and a fine one.

Here's Yahoo's gloss on it:

"Above all else, we both agree that President Obama must be defeated," Santorum says before finally offering up his support in the 13th paragraph of the 16-paragraph missive.

"It will require all hands on deck if our nominee is to be victorious. Governor Romney will be that nominee and he has my endorsement and support to win this the most critical election of our lifetime."

Again, the endorsement is in the 13th paragraph because it's an argument in which the suggested conclusion builds from the previous premises.

What does suggest this is "tepid," though, is the time and manner in which it was released -- 11 PM eastern time last night, almost guaranteeing it would not make any news, because, by the time the news day gets started, this is already "old news," and yet no one's actually really covered it fresh as "new news."

He also didn't tweet the endorsement:

However, the former Pennsylvania senator, who posted his endorsement of Nebraska Senate candidate Jon Bruning on Twitter on Saturday, did not tweet the contents of the Romney endorsement. Instead, he posted a link to an interview he did with CNN's Piers Morgan last month.

That does suggest he's "tepid" about it, actually.

posted by Ace at 12:10 PM

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