Posted on 02/06/2012 6:59:48 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Missouri’s “beauty contest” primary on Tuesday could be Rick Santorum’s big chance. If he defeats Mitt Romney in that event, as at least one poll shows he is poised to do, the punditocracy and public alike might finally recognize the considerable upside he would offer Republicans as their presidential nominee.
Rick Santorum can win the Republican nomination. Rick Santorum can indeed beat Barack Obama in the fall. And Rick Santorum can and would govern at least as conservatively as Ronald Reagan did.
The evidence of his principled, mainstream conservatism is unambiguous, as is his record of winning long-shot races. What hasn’t been fully understood yet is why, and how, Santorum could win the Republican nomination and the presidency.
Let’s start with a few underappreciated realities about opinion polls held so far in advance of a general election. First, favorable/unfavorable ratings, along with the level of name identification, are far more important than direct “horse race” numbers. Second, poll “internals,” along with focus-group data if possible, should be interpreted to assess how much growth potential a candidate has, along with what his downside political risks are.
If a candidate has been widely known, and widely disliked, for a long, long time, that candidate has little room for growth. Very few public officials in American history, for instance, have as longstanding a record of horribly unfavorable poll numbers as Newt Gingrich has had for 17 years now. (His particularly dreadful polling problems among women, for instance, seem flat-out insurmountable.) Santorum, on the other hand, is far less well known, so he has a greater chance to move polls in either direction as voters get to know him better. The interesting thing to note here is that he continues to do better in polls the more he is known to the general public. That’s a serious sign of growth potential. Even better, even as the general public was first really looking at him, Santorum already was doing as well or better than Mitt Romney in head-to-head matchups against Obama in the key states of Florida and North Carolina.
Within the GOP, as Bill Kristol argues, Santorum probably has a better chance to defeat Mitt Romney head to head than Gingrich does. Polls bear that out. A number of polls also show that whereas a significant portion of Santorum voters would prefer Romney to Gingrich (this is Gingrich’s polarizing nature again coming into play), the vast majority of Gingrich voters would move to Santorum in a two-man race against Romney. That’s why, one on one, Santorum can beat Romney but Gingrich can’t.
When the “internals” are analyzed, Santorum rates particularly high on personal character, on sincerity, and on steadfastness of principle. Those are bedrock traits that, over a long campaign, help secure a voter’s comfort level with a candidate. A comparison with Reagan is in order here. While Santorum certainly hasn’t shown Reagan’s preternatural communication skills or sheer — almost magical — personal likeability, what matters in a race against a weak incumbent in a weak economy is that voters give themselves the psychological go-ahead for changing something as important as the president. Fear of the unknown runs strong. Even against an absurdly weak Jimmy Carter in 1980, it was only in the last week that voters swung sharply Reagan’s way: They needed reassurance, from watching his demeanor in debates, that he wasn’t the nuclear cowboy the Left tried to portray. Santorum’s palpable decency and sincerity can offer a similar reassurance against Obama. Someone as volatile as Gingrich cannot.
Santorum’s track record also indicates that he wears well over time. Witness his success in the Iowa caucuses, where voters had many months to size up the candidates. Witness his four upset (or at best even-money) victories in Pennsylvania. He doesn’t offer flash and sizzle, but in a long campaign, such as in the media-intensive slog that is a general-election presidential race, his personal and political virtues have time to become more apparent.
This is especially true when one considers that he has come so far already despite being the least well-funded of any candidate in the race. Santorum knows how to live off the land and still find ways to win. In the fall campaign, though, money will be no problem for him. The stakes are so high that no Republican-leaning donor will stay on the sidelines. If Santorum can compete as well as he has without a big war chest, imagine what he can do with serious financial resources behind him.
Meanwhile, he’s steady as a rock. For all of Gingrich’s and Romney’s vaunted debating skills, both of them have put forth at least two real clunkers of debate performances. Santorum hasn’t had a single bad debate or a single major stumble, and his reviews have become only more favorable with each contest. In a race where the economic lay of the land disfavors the incumbent, flash matters less than solidity in a challenger. It probably won’t require some sort of game-changing debate performance for a Republican to defeat Obama — but a game-changing gaffe or embarrassment could well lose it. Of all the Republican candidates, Santorum has shown himself the least prone to such gaffes.
Meanwhile, conservative leaders finally are beginning to rally around Santorum. Just in the last week they have begun to pour in. In Nevada, he secured the backing of tea party favorite Sharron Angle, while Gingrich is reportedly fading. In Colorado, Santorum achieved an absolutely remarkable troika of endorsements: anti-illegal-immigration hardliner Tom Tancredo and solid mainstream conservative Bob Schaffer, both former House members, along with the far more “establishment” (but still clearly conservative) former lieutenant governor Jane Norton. If he did that on a national scale, it would be like securing the backing of the Buchanan wing, the original Reagan wing, and the Bob Michel wing of the GOP.
Also stepping up for Santorum in the past week were conservative columnists extraordinaire Michelle Malkin and David Limbaugh. They join a growing list of dozens of key state legislators across the country and, quite significantly, nationally known conservative worthies such as Richard Viguerie, Gary Bauer, Michael Farris, James Dobson, Elaine Donnelly, Colin Hanna, Phyllis Schlafly, Pat Boone, and Maggie Gallagher, along with the well-publicized votes of social conservative leaders who met in Texas a few weeks back, as announced by Family Research Council chief Tony Perkins.
It’s also hard to find a major national conservative leader who thinks poorly of Santorum. (Gingrich is just the opposite.) While they haven’t endorsed, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Sarah Palin, William Bennett, and NR’s own Rich Lowry and Kathryn Lopez are among the many who have had plenty of kind things to say about him. He could unify the Right, whereas the viciously bitter fights between Romney and Gingrich make it very clear that large numbers of Republican activists feel too passionately against one of the other two to lend any real assistance if their disfavored candidate gets the nomination.
All of which is to say that Santorum’s potential for electoral strength is good, while his risk of disaster is rather low. Right now the only thing keeping him from being a clear winner is the failure of even more Reaganite leaders — all of whom know him to be a dependable, full-spectrum conservative — to stand up for him in the same way that he has stood up for conservative principles for so long. With Malkin, Angle, Limbaugh, and Bob Schaffer now coming on board, that odd reluctance might be coming to an end.
If it does, watch Rick Santorum surge again.
— Quin Hillyer is a senior fellow at the Center for Individual Freedom and a senior editor for The American Spectator.
Hmmm... Santorum has a shot at beating Romney in Missouri. Why? Because Newt isn’t on the ballot. The conservative vote is split between Santorum and Gingrich. If one were to drop out then Romney wouldn’t stand a chance at getting the nomination.
If you think an American citizen with (at least) as much the common sense God gave a donkey would do better than a lying big government Washington politician, as I do, then yes, of course, a private citizen would make a better candidate for president than most of these jokers.
Me too in Mich.
Why not santorum??? arlen specter..... enough said
Two points. First...Newt's unfavoables are still huge. In the neighborhood of 60% and Santorum's are half that...and since Santo is not nearly as well known he has some upside potential there where Newt has none. And second...the women's vote. Newt's chances there don't just SEEM flat out insurmountable. They are! He'll never get withing 25 points of obama and with those kinds of numbers he simply CAN NOT win!
At this point, Santorum’s diagnosis is: stalking horse for Romney. Whether he knows it or not. The left and the establishment know it, that’s for sure.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
I assume you're referring to Ron Paul, Michele Bachmann, and ... ... Thad McCotter?
Rick Perry is a populist, though he did run on a somewhat limited govt platform. Pawlenty, populist, did some good things in a tough state for conservatives. Herman Cain, bless his heart, never thought he was going to be seriously considered and thus was not prepared on many levels.
So why did limited govt conservatives get nowhere? Paul is a nutcase, Bachmann couldn't stay on message, McCotter didn't really commit to the race.
Then there are the many candidates who did not run.
I have many independent/Dem. family members that do not want Obama back for another four but will not under any circumstances vote for Newt, especially the woman. Character counts.
Newt is the stronger candidate. He’s more conservative, he’s more persuasive, and he can run rings around Rick and Robamaney Intellectually.
Rick’s a nice guy, but we need a fighter, so he needs to either step aside, or just come out and admit that he’s just trolling to be plastic-man’s veep.
If you want to. But I think it describes more like 100 million people.
RE: He’ll never get withing 25 points of obama and with those kinds of numbers he simply CAN NOT win!
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http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/290180/rasmussen-santorum-45-obama-44-robert-costa
Rasmussen: Santorum 45, Obama 44
By Robert Costa
February 4, 2012 2:13 P.M.
As NRO reported on Friday, Santorum’s advisers are committed to staying in the race. The latest Rasmussen tracking poll offers some encouragement:
In a potential Election 2012 matchup, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum is at 45% while President Obama earns 44%. This is the first time in any poll that Santorum has led the president. Several other GOP challengers have led the president a single time in the polls including Rick Perry, Herman Cain, and Newt Gingrich. Each man briefly held the lead while they were surging in the polls, only to fall quickly. It remains to be seen what will happen to Santorum’s support.
Unless he's the nominee of the party Newt will never get my vote. He's morally unfit for the office and he hasn't got a snowball's chance in hell of winning the general.
problem we have now is two fold. One thing is that conservatives are divided over Gingrich and Santorum. The other is that Santorum does good in the Midwest and Gingrich odes well in the South. These are the facts.
People for Gingrich are right that Santorum lost his momentum. People for Santorum are right that Gingrich has baggage that hurts him in the general. At this point I just want Romney out. Gingrich seems to be the best one left. But I am sweating it.
If Santorum pulled it off I would support him. But right now people the state favor only Gingrich. But Gingrich needs to beat Mitt on Super Tuesday.
GOP is going to go the way of the whigs if Romney wins the nomination. As soon as Obama takes a lead on Romney then all chaos will break.
Tea party or someone conservative will attempt a 3rd party run and a lot of people that didn’t want a 3rd party candidates will be begging for it.
So We have to beat Romney. Or there will be consequences. I am sure of it. The people can’t be dissatisfied with both political parties and not have a swamp of 3rdparty people run to tap into that feeling.
I wrote Santorum off before he even began. An 18 percent loss in his Senate re-election bid struck me as “cooked goose” territory. Yet I have watched in admiration as he held on while others dropped by the wayside in the current race. In my eyes, he has rehabilitated himself.
I still don’t trust Romney. I admire Newt and I especially like his views on defending Christianity at home and abroad and his desire to rein in our imperial judiciary. Yet I know that the media is ready to dump on him again, big time, as “the Gingrich who stole Christmas.”
In March, when I vote, I will decide as I walk into the booth: Newt or Rick.
"...and doggonit, people don't like me!"
Regarding relative conservatism of the candidates, people have different opinions, which I will not rehash. Let's just say it's debatable. Persuasion? If most people do not like him, how persuasive can he be? Intellect? There's no question Newt is smart. He has a lot of ideas. Does he have the wisdom to know a good idea from a poor one, to govern himself as a candidate and as a president?
Correcting some grammatical errors.
The problem we have now is two fold. One thing is that conservatives are divided over Gingrich and Santorum. The other is that Santorum does good in the Midwest and Gingrich odes well in the South. These are the facts.
People for Gingrich are right that Santorum lost his momentum. People for Santorum are right that Gingrich has baggage that hurts him in the general. At this point I just want Romney out. Gingrich seems to be the best one left. But I am sweating it.
If Santorum pulls it off I would support him. But right now more states favor Gingrich that are coming up. But Gingrich needs to be able to beat Mitt on Super Tuesday.
GOP is going to go the way of the Whigs if Romney wins the nomination. As soon as Obama takes a lead on Romney then all chaos will break.
Tea party or someone conservative will attempt a 3rd party run and a lot of people that didn’t want a 3rd party candidate will be begging for it.
So we have to beat Romney. Or there will be consequences. I am sure of it. The people can’t be dissatisfied with both political parties and not have a swamp of 3rdparty people run to tap into that feeling.
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