Um, Newt could have just as easily dropped out to help our cause. Why must it be Rick?
Santorum needs to drop out because....
Newt Gingrich is the anti-Romney, Santorum is not.
As Rush said today, Romney is the second choice for most Santorum voters.
Rick Santorum would be great to have as a nominee but we cannot continue to split the conservative vote and hand Romney pluralities, especially in winner take all states. I wish Sarah Palin were the one and only conservative candidate but she is not. We can all name folks who would make a better consensus choice than Newt Gingrich but they either are not running or there is Santorum who is not proving ready for prime time as a POTUS candidate.
Show me how Santorum shows the pure political talent to be a better candidate than Gingrich to defeat Romney (which is the essential job #1 this year). This cycle is going to be harder than any of us expected because Mittwit is buying, bullying and bribing his way to the nomination. One million corrupt dollars/one vote for Romney, the leftist Obozo lite, is not how most of us view the GOP and its nominating process.
I don't like this situation any better than you do BUT it is what it is.
I am listening to a local radio talk show out of Milwaukee and they are playing Romney's speech given last night. He is actually saying in one speech that this election is for the soul of America and that, as governor, he saw to it that Massachusetts public schools were the very best. Those were the schools where a homosexual practice called fisting was taught and where parents were not allowed to know much about the classes and not allowed to keep their kids out of them.
We need one political party whose nominees can be relied upon to be pro-life, pro-family, pro-gun, anti-taxation of folks of modest means, anti-envirowhackoism, anti-regulation, pro-private sector medical care, favoring and guaranteeing a military that is second to none and so far ahead of whatever comes next that no one challenges us, whose foreign policy is not one of mealy mouthed business-like "negotiations" or other diployak with our enemies but straightforward Jacksonian policy of killing any enemy that threatens us or our allies credibly. It would also be nice to see an end to the squandering of mountains of taxpayer money on such bills as porkulus, Obamneycare, TARP bailouts, other bailouts of the privileged and comfortable who are said to be "too big to fail," endless increases in the debt limit and in useless government trendy programs and their budgets, an end to green everything, "gay" everything, and credibly dedicated to name only the most conservative and capable judges to all federal court vacancies.
There has not been a real conservative movement in this country since shortly after Reagan's election. My contemporaries from the 1960s and 1970s hold things like CPAC to make believe that the movement lives but it does not. YAF is effectively gone. YR's and CR's are not what they were. Bill Buckley is dead and has not been (and will not be) replaced. National Review died with him and is now nothing but a whorehouse for moderates with literary pretensions and no imagination. Phyllis Schlafly tested machine guns for the Army during her college days in WW II and it is amazing that she survives but she is not as active or dominant as she was. The NRA is in the hands of David Keene who is no better than a moderate today and always on the lookout for cash. National Right to Life Committee is in the hands of people who aspire to 40 year careers capped by a gold watch and a nice pension. After years of misrule by Keene, the American Conservative Union is a rotted out husk of what it was under principled people like the late John Ashbrook. Ronaldus Maximus is dead and buried and the bad guys are trying to appropriate his fine and deserved reputation for people like Romney who were his actual enemies.
We must rebuild the conservative movement (and not a mere Paulistinian version) but we have no time to do so this year. Priorities: #1: Defeat Romney, #2 Defeat Obozo and elect a GOP Senate, #3 begin to purge the GOP leadership in both houses, #4 rebuild the movement and hold the elected SOBs strictly accountable. If we want to leave a viable nation to our children, we may have to swallow our pride, ask Santorum to step aside and endorse Gingrich and Michelle Bachmann to endorse likewise and for Sarah Palin to take a leadership role bashing Mittwit and nominating Gingrich. Whatever makes the talk show hosts comfortable in their public neutrality, we need Rush and Sean and Mark Levin and Hugh Hewitt on board leading the charge as our substitute for Mittwit's infernal money supply.