Santorum Stumbles, Attempts to Right Himself

Rick Santorum has consistently proven himself smarter in defeat than in victory. From the beginning of this colossal snafu they’re calling the GOP primary, Mr. Santorum had kept his demon-fearing religious psychoses well hidden, and seemed most of the times normal, generally rational – for a Republican – and occasionally charming. All of that changed, of course, a few weeks ago, after he won three caucus states on one day and catapulted to a double digit lead over Mitt Romney in national polls.

Then we saw the real Rick Santorum. The one who fears birth control for the evil it represents. The one who tastes vomit in the back of his throat at the concept of the separation of church and state. The one who thinks multiple college degrees are peachy for him, but not so great for the masses. The one who seemed to be working overtime to singlehandedly alienate the largest voting demographic in America: women.

Mr. Santorum’s national poll numbers plummeted from plus-12 over Mr. Romney to minus-5. That’s a 17-point turnaround in three weeks. He went from being the favorite in Michigan to losing by 3 points. Not even the most crazed right-wing zealot can blame his collapse on the "liberal media elite establishment," or whatever they’re calling the people who report what the candidates have said and what the candidates have done. Mr. Santorum has effectively sunk his own ship, without the help of Michael Moore, or Bill Keller at the New York Times, or whoever is calling those damnable liberal media elite shots.

Now, in defeat, Mr. Santorum is tentatively moving back toward the strengths that made him the most credible non-Romney in the GOP pack. In his concession speech Tuesday night he talked about the strong women in his life, all of whom have college degrees apparently (snobs!), and he avoided weighing in on Jews in limbo, whether fetuses should be allowed to drive, or how many angels can lindy-hop on the head of a pin. He focused on economic matters, giving the standard Republican prescription for curing all our ills: Rip the planet to shreds, frack it all, by jiminy, from sea to shining sea, and devil take the hindmost. In other words, the cagy, politically savvy Rick Santorum is back. The one who actually wants to win this thing.

He still has a shot. Mr. Romney currently leads in delegate count 142 to 59. (We must note here that we are using Real Clear Politics for our count. Every site varies in how it tallies this thing, as the degree of wiggle room in delegate count is wide enough for Newt Gingrich and Chris Christie to walk through hand-in-hand. Between soft and hard delegates, non-binding and binding primaries and caucuses, promised delegates from candidates who have dropped out of the race, and sundry other factors, there is no hard and fast count as of yet, but the proportional differences are roughly the same in all the major counts.) Super Tuesday stacks up not so shabbily for Mr. Santorum, and our very rough predictions place a plausible delegate count a week from now as follows:

Romney: 257
Santorum: 224
Gingrich: 128
Paul: 37

We predict Mr. Santorum will be in a very close second place following next Tuesday’s primaries, where 437 delegates are up for grabs in a clutch of states, narrowing the gap considerably. His anticipated success is dependent, of course, on his ability to return to the strategy which got him into the race in the first place: Stay mum about who Rick Santorum really is, and what Rick Santorum really thinks, and what Rick Santorum really will do if given the power he so really, really craves.