Out-Tebowing Each Other

This year, like every election year, candidates are scrambling for endorsements. This time around, it doesn't seem to matter who the endorser is. They just want to have a lot of endorsements. For some of them, they seem to have more endorsements than they have votes.

My favorite endorsement story – so far – has to do with Newt Gingrich. The day before the New Hampshire primary, Newt bragged to his press conference audience that he had just gotten an important endorsement. Who was this well-regarded political personage? Todd Palin, Sarah's hubby.

This group of candidates – or as the Democrats refer to them, the "Field of Dreams" – seems willing to stab each other in the back for any possible edge. Last Saturday, there was a meeting in Texas of wealthy Christian conservatives who want to get behind one candidate to stop Romney from being nominated. They decided on Rick Santorum, not Texas' own Rick Perry. Perhaps it had something to do with Perry getting less than 1% of the votes in New Hampshire. In fact, he got .7%. .7%! Usually "other" gets more votes than that.

The big endorsement that all of the candidates are hoping for is that of Tim Tebow. So far, he hasn't picked any of them as his favorite. Tebow is the quarterback for the Denver Broncos who is probably known as much for celebrating his faith as he is for celebrating his touchdowns. He can often be seen on the field, kneeling and praying in a pose that looks somewhat like Rodin's "The Thinker." This pose has become so well known that people all over the world are "Tebowing."

In a campaign in which the candidates all have shouted out in one way or another, "I'm more religious than you are," each of them wants to be associated with this clean-living, talented, pious athlete. An organization called Poll Position did a survey and found that 43.3% of those interviewed believed that "divine intervention" was partly responsible for Tebow's success.

Mixing religion with sports always seems as strange to me as mixing religion with politics – although the Founding Fathers didn't call for the separation of church and football. Tebow did not have a good game this past Saturday, and the opposing quarterback Tom Brady set all kinds of records.

Maybe it's fortunate for the candidates that Tim hadn't chosen one of them to support before that game. What would've happened during his bad game if he had endorsed one of them? While watching on television, would the candidate with Tebow's blessing have started to panic? Every time Tebow was tackled, would he see his political life going down the drain? Would his speechwriters have come up with something like, "I was misquoted before. I never liked the bum?"

Probably not. It's too easy for the Tebow believers to say that Tebow's performance against New England was to make him even more humble. Tim Tebow is just too good to be true for the candidates to give up on him. Come on. In addition to everything else he has to offer, this 24-year-old jock is a self-proclaimed virgin.

You probably think I'm exaggerating about the importance of getting Tebow's endorsement. It's just too crazy, right? What candidate would be willing to have his political future dependent on a guy who spends much of his time trying to avoid being pummeled by a fierce bunch of 300-pounders with frozen snot on their faces? Any of them.