"Never give up, never surrender!"
That's right, I totally just recited the tagline from the 1999 film Galaxy Quest. But why not? It seems rather appropriate with the media attention aimed at either the Romney/Gingrich bickering or simply slobbering over the Massachusetts moderate, while prematurely counting out the conservative candidate as he plowed ahead in the midwest and beyond the plains. And boy, did it pay off Tuesday evening with Santorum's landslide win in the Missouri 'beauty contest' primary (beating Romney by 30%, supplying ample momentum for the state's March caucus), and simultaneous win in Minnesota's caucus (beating Paul by 18% and Romney by 28%...yes, Paul outpaced Romney in MN!)...
"I don't claim to be the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney; I stand here to be the conservative alternative to Barack Obama.”
"Ladies and gentlemen, freedom is at stake in this election. We need to be the voice for freedom."
Then Santorum completed Tuesday night's sweep, shocking the Romney camp by defeating the presumptive frontrunner in the Colorado caucus (by just over 5%)! Leon Wolf of RedState put Santorum's performance in pretty nice perspective:
Santorum’s performance was impressive in each state, vastly outperforming his position in the polls, which had him losing by 9 points in Colorado (he won by 5) and winning by only 9 in Minnesota (he won by 18). It is hard to tell who got clobbered worse – Romney, who fell all the way to third in Minnesota, or Gingrich, who finished well behind the flailing Romney in every state. Newt Gingrich didn’t even bother to give a speech tonight, which was probably a good idea if Romney’s shell-shocked and confused concession was any indication of what we could have expected. Although Santorum didn’t get any official delegates tonight, he certainly has bought himself one heck of a news cycle, and has in one day sucked the oxygen out of virtually every other campaign with the stunning results tonight.
So this sets up Rick Santorum for an accomplished entrance into the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) towards the end of this week and two more CNN debates down the road (February 22nd in Arizona & March 1st in Georgia), building momentum towards the Super Tuesday primaries on March 6th.
Although, I'd say this turned out to be a pretty super Tuesday for the former Senator from PA, and a great night for conservatives, America.
ADDENDUM: Rush says Santorum is "the last real conservative still standing, and he is running as a conservative. He's not cloudy about it at all. There's no doubt about what and who Santorum is."
And Santorum hit the media circuit this morning, giving some great substantive responses (and rebuttals) to the talking heads, from CNN's pretentious Soledad O'Brien...
...to the Fox & Friends crew.
UPDATE: AP reports that Santorum has jumped into second place in the delegate race per Tuesday night's caucus wins in Colorado and Minnesota.
