The problem isn’t Santorum, it’s the voters. They aren’t supporting Newt, they are supporting Santorum.
Santorum doesn’t have them under lock and key. He doesn’t own them. He can’t give them away. If the VOTERS think the right thing to do is to support Newt, they will do so, and it won’t matter if Santorum drops out or not. Like with Perry — by the time he dropped out, there were no supporters to sway.
If you want to make a fight, why not call for Michelle Bachmann to endorse Newt Gingrich? She actually did drop out, so if Newt is the best thing for conservatives, wouldn’t the darling of the Tea Party endorse him?
Santorum needs to stay in the race so if Gingrich crashes and burns, we aren’t stuck with Romney.
I take your point now and it is an appreciable point. Yes, ultimately it will be the voters who decide who gets elected.
However, they both cannot continue to run and one of them will win. As long as both are in the race, they will siphon potential voters from each other and Romney will walk up the middle and win.
It won’t be a case of Newt burning out and Santorum taking his place. It will be a case that, if they keep siphoning votes from each other, they will both be holding a bag of nothing. You can’t split a 60 percent vote about even and expect to overcome the nobody choice, who happens to have 40 percent of the vote.