AS much as I love Santorum (and think he is worth it), I can’t argue too much with that. It would be a rough row for Rick to hoe but at least I would be voting for a Conservative. I would vote for him in a heartbeat. The rest ... it’s 3rd Party or write in for me.
What would be a rough row for Rick to hoe? Winning the primary? The General Election?
If it comes down to Santorum v Romney, he can win.
As for Santorum v Obama:
Santorum would carry every state John McCain carried, most likely by at least a point or 2 more than McCain. Even AZ, which people try to pretend is a battleground is still solidly Republican. He seems in good shape to carry MO by more than the 4,000 votes McCain carried.
Santorum would need to get 17,000 more conservative or independent votes in NC, something that is almost a virtual lock. IN is also being abandoned by the Democrats for 2012. Santorum also lives in VA and would at the very least draw more conservative voters than McCain did in Loudon and Northern Virginia, and the SW. Santorum would also easily win all the places Gingrich won in the FL primary, and is popular enough to where the I-4 corridor and Hispanics wouldn’t be hostile to whom (many people I know didn’t vote for him in the primary because they thought he would leave the race due to his daughter’s health).
OH will be very close, but Santorum has as good a shot as anyone else here. To win means getting a 200,000 vote cushion outside Cleveland to win the state.
All this equates to 266 votes. From there he would have to win one of the following battleground states (NH, PA, MI, WI, IA, NM, CO, NV)
Santorum has a chance in PA, but the Philadelphia machine will still be strong. However, at the least, he’ll run better than McCain did in 2008. NH is probably out. MI, WI, and even MN are possibilities. By winning in MN and IA, we know that Santorum can be viable in the midwest states.
But Santorum may have the best chance at winning CO. He has Tancredo’s backing. NM is a possibility. NV is probably too difficult because of the broken GOP factions.
What I see with Santorum is that the states he’s won are battleground states that if the GOP nominee wins, they have a 90% chance of winning the election.