1. I think Peter and Rich Lowry over at NRO said a lot.
2. One huge advantage that Santorum will have over Gingrich is that conservative journalists won’t turn on Santorum the way they did on Gingrich (unless Santorum really melts down or something). Santorum isn’t mentally unstable, has real principles, and seems to be respected as personally a good guy.
3. I’m not sure how Romney brings Santorum back down really quickly. Bringing down Gingrich was comparatively simple. You use Freddie Mac, amnesty, and his past support for cap-and-trade and a federal insurance purchase mandate to shrink the authenticity gap between the two candidates while tearing down his electability with stories of Gingrich’s personal baggage and then stare him down in debates to eliminate Gingrich’s toughness advantage and then let superior money and organization do the rest. And it really was simple since it was obvious to me at about the moment Gingrich rose to the top. Santorum isn’t as good a Romney target as Gingrich. Romney just can’t win (or even tie) an authenticity contest with Santorum. Off the top of my head, I can’t come up with a Romney line of attack that is likely to knock Santorum out of the box. “Earmarking Washinton insider” aren’t going to get it done as attacks when they are coming from the Romneycare guy.
4. Romney needs to hope that Santorum lets the media bait him into bootless culture war arguments.
5. It is obvious to everybody that a majority of Republican primary voters will either not vote for Romney in the primary or will only vote for him on a lesser evil basis. So he has to convince the key swing Republican voter that he is a lesser evil than Santorum. This means convincing them that Santorum is an evil (well not an evil evil, just a bad choice.)
6. Does Newt Gingrich have one more act left? He doesn’t deserve one but he didn’t deserve his last two campaign surges either.
7. It is nice to see a conservative authnticity candidate who is a principled and informed conservative rather than a demagogue back bencher (Bachmann) or a con artist (Cain, Gingrich.) Santorum isn’t perfect, but he is a huge improvement.
8. Run Mitch Run .
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