Forget the headlines about Mitt Romney’s victory in Wednesday’s CNN Republican presidential debate in Arizona.
Because as the economy ripens and undermines Romney’s biggest issue, voters seem to be looking instead for a blue-collar, social conservative that can energize the base and that guy is Rick Santorum, says a leading political expert.
“Santorum may be a risk worth taking,” says Larry Sabato, who heads the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. “He gives activists some fallback reasons to vote should economic recovery continue, and he will stir the base, especially Tea Partiers and evangelical Christians. GOP enthusiasm has been on the wane lately but with Santorum, goes the thinking, GOP turnout may increase,” he said in his weekly Crystal Ball analysis.
Sabato suggests that Santorum has remained popular longer than other anti-Romney candidates because the nature of the race is changing, in part due to indications the economy has bottomed out and may be on the upswing.
“As the economy improves and President Obama’s ratings creep upwards,” said Sabato, “many Republicans have become less certain that any nominee is going to defeat the incumbent. This may change if worse economic numbers crop up later in the year and high gas prices begin to take a presidential toll. But for the moment, the trend is encouraging activists to look beyond Romney, the economic manager, to someone whose social-issue conservatism and blue-collar image may enable the GOP to serve up a different kind of presidential option.”
What’s more, he suggests, GOP voters seemingly always eager for the anti-Romney might be pushing Santorum’s candidacy to produce a fabled brokered convention in Florida this summer. What happens then, however, is a mystery, though many GOP insiders figure that the four candidates left standing will work out a deal instead of picking an outsider like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie or former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
Santorum, unlike Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul, poses the biggest problem because of his string of victories, his lead in Romney’s Michigan where voters will it the polls next week, and his growing delegate count. And all that comes, adds Sabato, as Obama’s job approval numbers increase. “The warm winter thawed the once-frozen prospects of a second Obama term.”
