Santorum won't win the nomination for President. VP however...

What has surprise candidate Rick Santorum actually achieved this week?

A week is most certainly a long time in politics, but Rick Santorum changed the face of this campaign for the Republican nomination for President in the space of about 48 hours. As Steven Colbert quipped just hours before the Iowa caucus, “I was shocked to discover that Santorum had risen straight to the head of the third place”. A day later, he had come second by eight votes. Now, he appears to be turning into Mitt Romney’s main contender.

It was all a matter of timing. The right wingers in the Republican party (the ones who make Margaret Thatcher look like Glenda Jackson) have been looking for an “anyone-but-Romney-candidate”. They tried Michelle Bachmann, who suspended her campaign after her sixth place finish in Iowa, and then Rick Perry, and then Herman Cain, and then, unbelievably, they flirted with Newt Gingrich, heavily: like Ryan Giggs with his sister-in-law.

All of those candidates fell by the wayside or, in Herman Cain’s case, returned to the wayside. Finally, at the eleventh hour, the right turned to Rick Santorum, a pro-life, anti-gay, climate-change-denying and intelligent-design supporting former Senator from Pennsylvania. I’m surprised it took them so long.

Now, thanks to 30,000 people in Iowa (and Newt Gingrich’s past catching up with him), Santorum is the Republican right-wing’s golden boy. That shan’t be enough (unless something extraordinary happens). Romney’s got it all sewn-up (he also received John McCain's endorsement this week) and remains the only candidate who has a realistic chance of taking on President Obama. He will win big in New Hampshire on Tuesday, and find himself as the undoubted front-runner.

That was the case last week, so what’s really changed? Well, the right has finally found someone who they’re going to rally behind in these primaries and a totem pole to dance around at the convention. Santorum will not win the Republican nomination, but he may ensure that he is Mitt Romney’s running mate.