Rick Rolling The Country, Part 4

Steve M. warns that underestimating Rick Santorum as a threat to President Obama's re-election is a grave mistake as Santorum is beginning to attract the same "moderates and independents" that Romney was counting on in his argument that only he could attract a wide-enough coalition to win in November.

Now, I think plenty of swing voters and heartlanders will stand with us on some or all of these things when push comes to shove; even at the Applebee's salad bar they hated Dan Quayle's attempt to slut-shame single mothers a generation ago, and more and more heartlanders are cool with the fact that Ellen DeGeneres is gay. But if these aren't make-or-break issues for moderate Middle Americans, which I think is the case, then they're unlikely to have paid as much attention to Santorum over the years as we have, so right now he doesn't look so bad to them. I don't know if that will continue to be true if he's the nominee and they learn more about him, but for now we shouldn't assume that our view of him is shared by everyone who's not a rightist.

Polling numbers over at PPP back up Steve's argument:  for the first time somebody other than Mitt Romney is doing better against the President. 

One thing that has remained constant in the ever changing GOP Presidential race is that Mitt Romney is the strongest candidate against Barack Obama...at least until now.  PPP's newest national poll finds Romney trailing Obama by 7 points at 49-42, while Santorum trails by only 5 points at 49-44.

This is the first time one of the "non-Romneys" has edged out Mittens in a national head-to-head against President Obama, and that makes me believe that Santorum may have the mileage to keep going for a while.

Now granted, the more scrutiny on Santorum, the worse he's going to start doing, but it's worth taking the notion of a defense against a Santorum candidacy seriously for the Team Obama folks.  Having said that, I think Santorum's rise is much more of a function of Romney's collapse.

We'll see.