Santorum hasn’t really been vetted yet, is getting favorable press and is getting ro present himself as he chooses too without much argument. (Romney likes having the non-Romney field split, Newt likes to treat the campaign as a two man race)

He certainly hasn’t taken anything like the attacks he would face in a general election or even if Mitt Romney came to regard him as a mortal threat.

With vetting and attacks his numbers would more than likely go down.

I actually think the ideal scenario would be for Santorum , Gingrich and Ron Paul to collaborate and choose different states to campaign hard in — therefore winning as many states as possible away from Romney.

But that doesn’t seem to be what is happening. Santorum is currently leading (though within the margin of error) Romney in Minnesota. (Santorum 29, Romney 27, Gingrich 22)

I would like him to take that as a reason to focus heavily on Minnesota now to maximize his chance of an actual win there and leave Colorado alone (he’s been campaigning quite a lot in Colorado, Newt hasn’t come here yet -he’s having a couple events during the day tomorrow which I hope will strengthen his support)

Right now — after spending a lot of time in CO while Newt was in Nevada (which he needed to do to keep himself in the running for second -which it looks like he’ll get- and to prevent an even bigger Romney win which would generate and insufferable level of “Romney is inevitable” narrative ) PPP has Santorum in second place, 14 points behind Romney but ahead of Newt.

This is what’s frustrating to me:

As an anti-Romney, and trying even to leave aside my pro-Gingrich bias – the worst case February scenario would be for Romney to win almost all of the states and for their to be confusion about who represents his main challenge.

So when winning Colorado looks obviously out of reach, and winning Minnesota looks very likely – why would you give equal (actually it seems like more attention) to Colorado. Even if I’m wrong and he’s spending a little more time in Minnesota, why not go all out for the state you might actuallly win?

Maybe Rick just doesn’t have his own pollster and didn’t know the lay of the land?

(Santorum made a really odd comment that Colorado was “wide open” because “no candidate has a natural advantage here” apparently unaware that Colorado is part of the “Mormon belt” and Mitt Romney won with 60% of the vote in 2008)

It’s hard sometimes not to think that Rick Santorum is competing more for second place than first..

He attacks Newt in paid ads while conspicuously avoiding hitting Romney – and it seems clear that Newt is his primary target.

That might have made sense at some point but surely Senator Santorum has noticed that some members of the press started referring to Mitt Romney as the presumptive nominee after he won NEW HAMPSHIRE.

It’s unfortunate, but the media narrative is something that needs to be dealt with and doing everything possible to hurt Newt more than Romney can only increase the likelihood that Romney wins enough states that it will be extremely difficult for ANY other candidate to be taken seriously.

So him staying in effectively changed nothing.

Unless he were to back out and endorse Fred Thompson before South Carolina (and, as the better positioned candidate why would he? )

I guess you could argue that Fred Thompson dropping out and endorsing Huckabee before SC might’ve mixed things up. (but whose to say Thompson would’ve even preferred Huckabee to McCain)

is how effective a united effort — with him endorsing and campaigning for Newt – could be in stopping Mitt Romney.

His current strategy seems to be to make the most of his second tier status (and of the media and the Romney campaign seeing his continued candidacy as helpful)

He doesn’t take fire.

He doesn’t seriously take on the candidate with the resources to pummel him in an air war/ media attack.

He competes in the lower profile contest that the (current) top 2 candidates don’t give nearly as much time or priority.

Spending more time in a state than others seems to be his main strategy and it works to a point.

But – even if he wins a couple of February caucuses – I don’t see how he goes on to win the nomination.

He supposedly got boost coming out of the Iowa caucuses but he still lost South Carolina by 23.4 points (and that’s a state with a lot of social conservatives, where – according to NRO he physically spent more time than anyone else, and where Newt’s ex wife bashed him in a super hyped interview less than 48 hours before voting started)

He’s competed in 3 primaries and is yet to get out of the teens.

As I posted elsewhere Ron Paul has also periodically polled favorably against Obama so I disagree with you. I don’t think that alone (or anything else Santorum has done, frankly) warrants a second look.

But as you seem fine with Romney winning the nomination we clearly have very different priorities.

so it would seem that an imploded Newt is still a stronger candidate than a surging Santorum.

Maybe I should’ve put those labels in quotes to better express my POV.

But in a way I think those labels are actually accurate. Newt is at something of a low point and needs to regain momentum – Santorum seems at the peak of his momentum and has things going as well for him as they probably are ever going to.

Yet Newt is still ahead in national polls – and is only behind by single digits in states where he hasn’t yet been at all and where Santorum has already spent a fair amount of time.

And yes, Newt has come out well ahead of Santorum in the last 3 contests.