Santorum the spoiler: Just as Romney looked set, the ex-senator revives
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Unless America is visited by biblical plagues -- and maybe not even then -- Rick Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator and perpetual moral scold, is unlikely to be the next president. But politicians often have a highly inflated opinion of themselves and some voters will always indulge them.
For Mr. Santorum the first to do so were in Iowa, where he won the Republican caucuses narrowly after a recount. On Tuesday, after being trounced in Florida the week before, he won the nonbinding Missouri primary and caucuses in Minnesota and Colorado. This was a vindication of his campaign strategy to concentrate not on Florida, but on places where he could reach out to evangelicals and tea party stalwarts in a grass-roots effort.
Yet his success yielded only about 28 delegates. Missouri, for example, won't decide its allotment until new voting on March 17. So the results are more a timely snapshot of sympathies and those were unflattering for all the candidates, even the winner.
Bragging rights on Tuesday night amounted to no more than Mr. Santorum being the favorite of dyed-in-the-wool conservatives outside major media markets, which is not much of a recommendation in a general election where a candidate's appeal must be broad. Mitt Romney, still the front-runner, has a different problem.
Just when Mr. Romney seemed to have been accepted by the party at large, the old bugbear of his not being a real conservative has been revived. In what could be interpreted as a protest vote, Republican voters in all three states went out of their way to choose Mr. Santorum, who offered himself as the ideological purist. In doing this, they consigned Newt Gingrich even further into the outer darkness.
With Ron Paul chugging along (he finished second in Minnesota), the soap opera of the Republican primary season goes on, with public affections changing as if with the wind.
First Published February 9, 2012 12:00 am
