Earlier this week, we saw the new media morph into the liberal republican establishment media as they came out smearing Newt Gingrich in order to help Mitt Romney win Florida. The Drudge Report filled its page with 12 prominent links to stories and columns smearing Newt Gingrich.

The worst part of this coordinated betrayal by the so-called conservative media was that the stories about Newt Gingrich attacking Ronald Reagan, like the one in National Review, were totally untrue. Ronald Reagan’s son, Michael Reagan, even came out to refute the charges, while others thoroughly disproved them.

That was a few day ago, and now the republican establishment media is back. Today, Michelle Malkin joins David Limbaugh (Rush Limbaugh’s brother) in endorsing Rick Santorum. So, why did I say that they endorsed Mitt Romney, and why did I include Rush Limbaugh?

Michelle Malkin, David Limbaugh, and Rush Limbaugh all have extremely conservative audiences. If they came out and endorsed the liberal Mitt Romney directly, they would lose their entire audience. Instead, they have strategically endorsed a conservative candidate, who can’t win, to split the conservative vote and help Mitt Romney. Ironically, Rush actually explained Mitt’s split-the-conservative-vote strategy himself, a few months ago.

So, here we are the day before the Florida primary with Michelle Malkin and David Limbaugh endorsing Rick Santorum. These are the latest poll numbers: Mitt Romney 36%, Newt Gingrich 31%, Rick Santorum 12%, Ron Paul 12%. Does anyone believe that an endorsement from Limbaugh or Malkin is going to bring Rick up 24% to win this? Absolutely not, you would have to be insane to think so.

Maybe they just believe in Rick and want to support him anyway? Nope. Endorsements are always given at a time that will have maximum impact and put a candidate over the top. If they wanted to help Rick, they would wait for a state where he was close to winning.

So, who do these Rick Santorum endorsements actually help? You guessed it, Mitt Romney.

Rush has not endorsed Rick, right? Oh, but he has. In fact, Rush Limbaugh took a page out of the Palin playbook. Just before South Carolina, Todd Palin endorsed Newt, while Sarah didn’t officially endorse anyone. However, we knew it was Sarah’s endorsement too, and the effect was much the same as if she had. Newt went on to win by over 12% and gave most of the credit to Sarah Palin.

That day Rush Limbaugh saw something that he could use, and he decided to copy it in Florida. Still don’t believe me? Well, think about it a minute. When is the last time that you heard about an endorsement from David Limbaugh or Todd Palin?