I didn’t say WHO neglected to vote for Santorum, because I’m not entirely sure. Libertarian conservatives blame the social conservatives for staying home last November, and social conservatives blame the libertarians. Everyone seems to want to blame somebody else, as we have seen here in FR for the past half year.
But what is evident is that enough people stayed home to give Casey the victory. Casey had a famous name, and the tide was with him, but Santorum might have won if not for all that ridiculous sniping at him by the various conservative factions.
I know it’s anecdotal evidence, but my b-i-l married into an enormous Italian-American Catholic family in W PA and lots of them are into local Democrat politics. For years, they not only supported Santorum, but worked to elect him while still remaining registered Democrats. In ‘06, I was really distressed when I learned that they all were dropping him like a hot potato and jumping on the Casey bandwagon. Despite all my pleading, cajoling and arm-twisting, I could not convince a single one of them to vote for him. They still felt the same way about him they always had, admitted he’d done a bang-up job, but because Casey was a Democrat, Santorum no longer existed in their universe. They informed me it was not just them, but all the Reagan Democrats that they knew.