Could he do a Perry after the next debate?
Santorum was a “Establishment Republican”. I doubt you will see him throwing his support to Newt.
Rick, you’re a nice guy but this is out of your league. If you can’t take on Florida then you’re just playing around.
The last of the conservatives going....*sigh*
It’s time for Rick to go. I’m very proud of my candidate for doing the honorable thing and bowing out before South Carolina; now it’s Santorum’s turn. We need to get this thing sewn up so we don’t have to worry about Romney,
Let's not forget Ron Paul is also largely ignoring Florida.
The reason why is Florida is a winner-take-all state, and it is an extremely expensive media market. Once it became clear the race in Florida was basically a two-person race for the votes of two constituencies, one which generally has been voting for Romney and one which generally has been voting for more aggressively conservative candidates, it made sense for Santorum to largely bow out of Florida and let Gingrich try to rally stricter conservatives to defeat Romney.
That's not admitting defeat; if anything, it's trying to avoid splintering the conservative anti-Romney vote. I would think Freepers would appreciate him for doing that.
Santorum’s core supporters are social conservatives. He has a considerably better chance in the next set of races than he does in Florida under current conditions. Under different circumstances with a win or a better showing in South Carolina, Santorum might have been able to make an aggressive campaign for conservative Cuban votes based on his Roman Catholicism, but I think he sees that he can play no useful role in Florida except splitting votes and making a Romney win more likely.
Obviously Santorum knows that if Gingrich's campaign collapses, he'll be the beneficiary. Even Gingrich's strongest supporters have to acknowledge that given the see-saw way the race has gone so far, Santorum has good reason to wonder if that may happen.
I'd be surprised to see Santorum drop out before Super Tuesday unless he gets offered something by Gingrich.
But then again, everything about this race has been a surprise the whole campaign season.
He never had a chance, and with Gingrich garnering momentum he can’t even play spoiler and try to leverage that into a VP nod from Romney.
He needs to exit, he has no chance of being above single digits from this point forward.
Only other calculus is Gingrich falters badly, and the non romney folks move over to Santorum.. but I don’t see that happening. Gingrich is capitalizing on the grss root anger about the systematic destruction of our nation by the political class that refuses to respect the founding pricniples of this nation... Santorum is just a milk toast, who finds a backbone on some social conservative issues occassionally.