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>>If Rick Santorum ends up as our nominee, we are going to lose the election by 10+ points. Sorry, Santorum lost his home state by 18 the last time around - he’d be destroyed by Obama.<<

I used to feel the same way about his loss in 2006. How do you lose that badly? I no longer do, however. It was a weird year, PA was leaning Democrat, and his opponent was respected and ran as both pro-life, and pro-gun, hardly traditional Democrat stances.

As for his beating Democrats, this is how he got started in 1990 (from Wikipedia): In 1990, at age 32, Santorum was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives to represent Pennsylvania’s 18th congressional district, located in the eastern suburbs of Pittsburgh. He scored a significant upset in the heavily Democratic district, defeating seven-term Democratic incumbent Doug Walgren by a 51%-49% margin. During his campaign Santorum repeatedly criticized Walgren for living outside the district for most of the year. Although the 18th District was redrawn for the 1992 elections, and the new district had a 3:1 ratio of registered Democrats to Republicans, Santorum still won re-election with 61% of the vote.

Looks like he’s capable of winning Independents to me.

As for his support for Spector, Wikipedia reports: “ Reporters have observed that though Santorum and Specter differed on social policy, Specter provided him with key political staff for his successful run in 1994.”

That was when he won his Senate seat, beating a Democrat incumbent, something that’s usually very difficult to accomplish.

In short, I have no trouble thinking that Santorum can beat Obama. He certainly won’t lose by 10 points in the current environment.

You are dead on with your post about PA. Santorum is a blue collar Conservative. For those of us who were engaged in PA politics Rick was well known as a Conservative, even though he tends to be a blue collar / labor guy. That is the influence of Western PA where he was a Congressman, and should play very well in PA, Ohio and possibly Michigan.

Both Newt and Rick are solid Conservatives, and anyone thinking Newt is a better general election candidate against Obama is simply not paying attention to his very high negatives. I am NOT saying Newt is anything less then a true "big ideas" Conservative. I am just reacting to some poor debate performances following his SC win coupled with very high negatives in the polls. If I am wrong, then tell me why. No need to trash Santorum to make the point about Newt.