Sarah Palin Still Searching for the Not-Romney Candidate to Endorse

COMMENTARY | If there was anything that could be taken from Sarah Palin's pre-CPAC speech interview with CNN and the New York Times this weekend, it was that she is firmly in the not-Romney camp and is simply hoping for the general electorate to decide which of the more conservative candidates (Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum) will make a better choice for the GOP nomination. That, and she is in no hurry to endorse, just in case Mitt Romney does eventually end up as the Republican Party nominee for president.

In fact, Palin welcomed the idea of a brokered convention in Tampa in August.

"I don't think that it would be a negative for the party, a brokered convention," she said. "And people who start screaming that a brokered convention is the worst thing for the GOP, they have an agenda. They have their own personal or political reasons for their own candidate, who they would like to see protected away from a brokered convention. That's part of the competition, that's part of the process. And it may happen."

Given that former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has been the predominant frontrunner for much of the campaign season and that she has called for voters in South Carolina and Florida in their respective primaries to vote for former Speaker of the House Gingrich to "continue the process" (per Fox News) and keep the ultimate GOP nomination anyone's guess, it appears that getting a brokered convention is exactly what Palin would like to see. It would certainly benefit the candidate she's shown the most favoritism toward -- Gingrich. But with the growing opposition to Gingrich within the Republican ranks,! a power play to influence the ticket may be all Gingrich can hope for.

Santorum is a different matter altogether. With his recent surge in winning Minnesota, Missouri, and Colorado last Tuesday (and effectively canceling all of the Romney momentum won from victories in Florida and Nevada), the former senator raised again the chance that a not-Romney candidate could eventually take the nomination in August.

And with Santorum just a little more rigid in his conservatism, a little more geared toward the social spectrum of the religious Right, he stands as perhaps even more acceptable to Palin as the next GOP candidate, rather than Gingrich.

Besides, neither are Mitt Romney, a candidate whose conservative credentials Palin questions. She warned that Romney had to do a better job of appealing to conservatives (the implication being that he was not conservative enough to generate a good voter turnout on Election Day).

Palin said that a candidate had to get the "tea party patriots enthused and energized in order to win this nomination, and more importantly in order to defeat Barack Obama," a remark that was a direct hint at Santorum's growing momentum with the more conservative wing of the Party. Where Gingrich once held sway, Santorum now dominates, according to a Pew Research survey , among Tea Party members and white evangelicals.

Palin publicly self-identifies with both demographics.

And she's shown support for Santorum before as well. Back in December, she told Fox News' Sean Hannity that if voters began to shift, they might opt for someone with "ideological consistency" like Santorum. She practically gushed when she talked about his pro-Israel, anti-abortion, and tax-slashing positions.

Although the former governor of Alaska says she hasn't picked a c! andidate to endorse as yet, her every word is geared toward electing a candidate that is more conservative than Romney -- a not-Romney. She even noted in a previous interview with Fox Business while awaiting results from the nation's first caucus in Iowa that Texas congressman Ron Paul was not to be dismissed, either.

Simply put, Sarah Palin wants to openly back a winner, so she's biding her time until one is actually declared. Holding back her endorsement until a presidential nominee is actually declared helps her save face from supporting the wrong contender going into the convention -- even when it is evident that she is for not-Romney.