It seems to me that Gingrich is keeping on message and simply standing back, waiting, while trying to bring some kind of a focus on ideas into this race.
Santorum and Romney are identical except for Mr. Preacher Man’s God-talk (which is always the last refuge of, if not a scoundrel, somebody who has nothing to offer) and I have seen many Freepers say they are voting for Santorum because he’s “godly” or “moral.” The thing is, that’s a dangerous pitch, because he’s no more “godly” or “moral” than any of the other candidates. He and his wife are both DC power attorneys, and they have (individually) worked for lobbyists and organizations ranging from the World Wrestling Federation to a group that was a Planned Parenthood affiliate. Santorum seems to have a little trouble telling the full truth about his finances, and I think he has a history of falling short of telling the full truth about a lot of things.
According to some Freepers, they’re voting for him because he has been married only once. Well, the same can be said of Obama and just about any president - but that certainly didn’t make them good presidents. The only one in recent memory who was divorced and remarried was one Ronald Reagan...
Voting is way down in this primary, and my take on it is that the people who are turning out to vote are basically fine with a big-government, nanny-state candidate (either Romney or Santorum) and don’t want any real changes; they just want to hear their own version of noisy, self-promoting piety at the front of it all.
I think much of this is attributable to the constant polls that the voters are bombarded with. Romney started off announcing himself the winner, even before the campaign began, based on mysterious polls, and the Santorum campaign has also been projecting huge (but never realized) wins for him based on other polls.
In addition, the very early voting in some states, such as Florida, guaranteed that Romney, who had scads of money, had been campaigning there for years and was the only known name, was going to win before most voters even had all the information. The feeling of the inevitability of Romney followed by the unlikeability of this year’s Huckabee (and even Huckabee was more likeable, because at least I felt he was sincere) has seriously depressed the vote.
I really think many people are burned out on the GOP. They were perhaps going to give it one more chance after last campaign’s McCain debacle, but the pre-ordination of another RINO has made them give up.