If you look at the polls showing the decline, Romney has picked up what Santorum has lost. This seems to be the who is most electable crowd. If Santorum loses much more than this, no matter where they go, Romney could be unbeatable after next Tuesday. He could be half way to the delegates needed with one third of the contests done. Throw in Paul’s delegates, and that is a tough number to beat. At this point, even Gingrich needs for Santorum to stop or slow the bleeding.
Santorum was a fluke. He is very ambitious and had actually been campaigning for several years, while still remaining an unknown outside of his district, with no identifiable positions except some social conservative statements. He was your basic Establishment guy.
He put time between himself and his dramatic loss in his last election and hoped nobody would remember. But as people got to see him again, they realized why they didn’t like him, which is because he has no ideas and differs very little from Romney except for the sweater vest.
I’m not sure that Gingrich is going to be able to come back, but I wouldn’t rule it out. However, this would be only with the voters, and the question is whether the GOP establishment would ever let him be the candidate.
I doubt it, personally. I think they’d be happy with a Romney/Rand Paul ticket (which is what I think Ron Paul was getting for his part of the deal) because I don’t think the GOP-E really wants to make any changes.
The problem is that they actually like Obamaworld, where everything is controlled by the government and businesses thrive by being annointed by the all-powerful government and where the irritating common citizenry knows to keep its mouth shut and collect its unemployment payments.