I'm from PA and have known Santorum personally since the early 90s, and it wasn't demonRAT magic that earned Rick his big defeat in '06.
The demonRATs ran the table that year and no pubbie could have won in PA that year, but Rick added 10% to his own defeat by not backing Toomey against sphincter in '04.
The TEA party conservatives {before there was a TEA party} wanted Toomey and Santorum and Bush worked against him in the PA pubbie primary.
Toomey only lost by 2 votes per precinct {a little over 24,000 votes} and we all blamed Bush and Santorum.
There was no conservative action for Santorum that year, and Rick usually draws big crowds at sportsman clubs, VFW, Moose, etal, but in '06 he couldn't draw flies.
I had a "Sportsman for Santorum" bumper sticker on my truck, but took it off in '04 and never put it back on.
He pissed his base off, big time, and us rednecks with our guns and Bibles told him to get along with the support of his new found media friends.
I think he's learned his lesson, and could vote for him, but right now I'm backing Newt, we'll see how it shakes out.
Santorum is such a terrific CONSERVATIVE candidate, I certainly hope the base would get over that he, like all people, made a mistake, or two.
I bet for every mistake Rick Santorum made, we can match that with a bunch of mistakes most, if not all, the other candidates have made.
Newt endorsed RINO Dede Scozzavave in NY’s 23rd district, but Santorum (and Bachmann) endorsed Dede’s opponent conservative Doug Hoffman. We should not hold that alone against Newt, but we also shouldn’t hold one mistake against Santorum either.