WEST DES MOINES, Iowa – It’s a week of firsts for Republican presidential contender Rick Santorum.
Santorum, a former senator of Pennsylvania, for the first time garnered double-digit support in polls of likely Iowa caucus goers this week. Also for the first time, Santorum appears poised for a strong finish in the caucuses. He did, after all, land third behind two other candidates, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul, in a recent Iowa poll.
Now, Santorum has finally leapt onto the Obama campaign’s radar – the ultimate compliment for a candidate vying to be taken seriously as a general election challenger.
“In the Republican game of Iowa whack-a-mole, Santorum benefits from being the last one to pop up before the music stops,” Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod tweeted on Friday. Axelrod was referring to Santorum’s nascent and rapid rise in Iowa state polls. Most of the Republican candidates who have experienced such rapid groundswells in support have watched that support fall off just as quickly as media scrutiny and opponents’ attacks that automatically shift to a frontrunner intensify.
The Obama campaign until now limited its discussion of the president’s Republican rivals to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
