Again, Why Not Santorum? (He's a true conservative and he can beat Obama)

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.

— Quin Hillyer is a senior fellow at the Center for Individual Freedom and a senior editor for The American Spectator.

Casey’s name probably got him points on election day, but to believe that alone got him 18 points is nonsense. His name probably got him 3-5 points at most, and that could have been easily handled

Calm down a bit and quote where I said Casey's name got him 18 points.

Now calm down a little more and do some math:

Let's assume 3-5 points as Bob Casey's son and namesake
plus 5 points from Santorum's base from being supposedly pro-life and pro-gun
plus 5-8 points from running in a landslide year for Democrats instead of a neutral year

That's 13-21 points in rough terms, conservatively.

Now, absent all those factors, would Santorum have lost his bid for a 3rd Senate term in a lean-Democrat state? Maybe. Maybe not. Certainly he would have had a better chance if he was perfect, which of course he is not.

If you are arguing that Santorum is not the most conservative or most electable candidate Republicans could choose to nominate for President, I don't know who would take the other side. I can think of dozens of politicians who would be better, not to mention private citizens.

But to try to tear Santorum down when he and Newt Gingrich are the only options currently available that bear a passing resemblance to conservatives ... that is quite another matter.

It’s not just “ugly butch feminazis” who support the right to abort. You might be surprised to learn how many normal looking, middle class women, married with families, fall into that category.

Some years ago we had a fairly ho-hum gubernatorial election in VA. The only thing interesting about the race was that the Dem was African-American. That is, until NARAL, WaPo, and others made an issue of the Republican’s pro-life position. I was working at the polls on that election day, and was stunned at how many of those nice, white, educated, middle class wives and mothers showed up to support the pro-choice Dem. When the doors closed at 7pm, there was a long line inside the building, almost all women, waiting to vote. Not one left until she had voted. The Dem won the election.

All it would take in a presidential election is for ‘swing states’ women to show up in droves to vote for whoever would preserve their right to abort. And, you can bet your bottom dollar with that as the top issue for which Santorum is known, that is exactly what will be focused on in the run up to the election.

I don’t think it’s quite accurate to say “Ordinary, faithful, conservative women” won’t vote for Newt just because your wife won’t! There are plenty of “Ordinary, faithful, conservative women” on this board who are quite vocally supportive of Newt, who happens also to be pro-life, but has a more diverse portfolio on issues. Your one-woman poll doesn’t work in presidential elections.

The degenerate mental case lawyer Santorum is still running interference for the man from planet Kolob.

He ought to go back to chasing ambulances, or at least running for Senate in his own state.

Oh that's right, he couldn't win reelection in Pennsylvania, so figured running for POTUS was in order.

And they call Ron Paul a nut.

Sorry but the women on this board are not refective of any demographic other than the women on this board. This place is a great big echo chamber. We don't really discuss anything anymore. We log in and echo each other's opinions unless we don't...then we likely get called names, insulted and someteimes zotted. I'm afraid that my wife and her lady friends...many of whom are republican and voted against Doug Wilder...are more reflective of American women in general and Newt's in trouble with that demographic.

It’s not just “ugly butch feminazis” who support the right to abort. You might be surprised to learn how many normal looking, middle class women, married with families, fall into that category.

I should also mention that I don't believe any candidate's position on abortion is going to have much effect on this election. This election is about jobs and the economy. Period.

I'm afraid that my wife and her lady friends...many of whom are republican and voted against Doug Wilder...are more reflective of American women in general and Newt's in trouble with that demographic.

NOt sure I agree with you. My wife would prefer Santorum, but will absolutely vote Newt over Romney. And if Newt is ahead coming into our PA primary, she has told me she would vote for Newt over Santorum.

In my opinion, Santorum has a much bigger problem with the northeastern Republicans because they perceive him as overly religious. He scares a lot of Rockefeller types in a way that Gingrich doesn't. Just my opinion living here on the East coast. And mainline Republicans are a demographic not seen here on FR either but I live among them.

Mainline Republicans might vote Gingrich in the general but it's unlikely they'll vote Santorum (particularly the mainline registered Republican women who tend to be baby killing sympathizers).

Neither Newt nor Santorum would carry the ‘women’ vote, barring some unforeseen event. Neither the women on this board nor your wife and her friends represent the majority of women in America. Those are both no more than anecdotal evidence of a point of view. Your saying that ‘many’ of your wife’s friends are Republican and didn’t vote for Wilder proves the point, does it not? Wilder won! The women I know who are R didn’t vote for Wilder, either. So what?

In the larger context, how ‘women’ vote or are polled nationally doesn’t mean a thing. All the Dems have to do to win is focus on suburban women in a few swing states.

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