Why Santorum Won Last Night

Rick Santorum swept the Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado primaries last night and jumped back into the race for one reason; he is the best candidate.

For the past week, I had been thinking of putting up a post stating as much. The reasons are the following:

For conservative voters, Santorum is the most consistently conservative on the issues. Romney is mostly conservative, but I am pretty much convinced that, if elected, he will govern center right. I also agree that there is a certain "go with which way the wind is blowing" aspect to him. One of his biggest selling points is that he can capture the independents. That's fine, but to me, Santorum is the real deal as a conservative. In a debate with Obama, Santorum can do just as well as Romney.

Newt Gingrich, is the most eloquent when he outlines conservative values. When he is on his game, he wins every debate. In Florida, however, he was not on his game. The problem with Gingrich is that he has such high negative factors, and with good reason. He is mercurial, unpredictable, and those who have worked for him say every day is a new crisis. As Santorum says, Gingrich is a man of a million ideas, but the problem is in the execution of a million ideas. Who wants to work for a man in the White House (which is stressful enough) with a million ideas? Besides, too many ideas translates into too much government involvement in our lives.

Gingrich also has a ton of baggage. His resignation for the House was not as disgraceful as his enemies make it out to be. His marriages and divorces are going to turn off a lot of voters in the general election, and his wife, Calista, is not going to be a plus for him in that regard.

Another thing that turns me off is the food fight between Gingrich and Romney. Sure, it's part of the election process, but when you basically paint each other as not being fit to be president, it becomes destructive to the party's chances as a whole. They should have kept their criticisms to policy differences. The problem is there isn't much ideological  difference between the two (and Santorum).

Santorum comes with very little baggage. What's the worse you can say about him-that he is so religious that he is against birth control? I think that the voters saw a human side of him when his daughter with Down Syndrome was taken to the hospital last week. The voters are taking a second look at him in contrast to Romney and Gingrich, and they like what they see.

So my man is Rick Santorum. If he falls short, then I will go with Romney.

"What about Ron Paul?" you say.

What about him?