2011 is not 2015.
2011 offered a slate of mostly screwball candidates. In the field of screwball candidates, the one-sweater-vested screwball can be king for a day.
The current campaign has a very clear front runner and three just behind him; only one of those three (Carson) is a bit of a screwball.
What happened in past campaigns has zero predictive power for this one.
That only counts in ‘horseshoes’
and Santorum didn't have a change then and he has none now...He and many others need to drop out of the 2016 running for POTUS...
The very point is that whatEVER you’re seeing now has no predictive power.