Conservative Catholics love Santorum (Bryan Snyder/Reuters)
Dave Weigel:
Catholic Vote, Deal Hudson's group -- an outgrowth of the George W. Bush campaign's Catholic outreach -- has endorsed Santorum, with its current president admitting that it shoild have been done ages ago. Co-founder and spokesman Joshua Mercer tells me that the group's super PAC, the Catholic Vote Candidate Fund, will buy radio ads in New Hampshire (where it has 3000 members), and TV ads in South Carolina.
"He doesn't need to win New Hampshire, but he can keep up the momentum," says Mercer. "I think that now that he's proven he can win, you're going to see Catholics coalesce around him."
So the Catholic base likes Santorum? Well, Catholics are a sharply divided lot, so I'm not sure you will see "Catholics" as a group rallying around someone the likes of him; social conservative Catholics, perhaps. But it's interesting that it took all of, what, a day or two for CatholicVote to go from "should we support Santorum?" to "heck yes we're supporting Santorum!"
Honestly, all power to them. As ex-Catholic myself I find the brand of mean-spirited moralizing and demands for theocratic legislation that this particular splinter of the Catholic base insists on to be repugnant, but if they want to prop up literally the most extreme candidate in the race, which is a damn difficult thing to be be when you're competing against Ron Paul for the title, I say go for it. Spend that money. Put your cart behind that horse.
The advantage of the Republicans (and even serious pundits!) entertaining Santorum as the next plausible Not-Mitt has multiple advantages for nonconservatives. It pushes Romney ever-farther right, making him appear ever more insincere and, well, crooked. And it brings the most extreme elements of the conservative base squarely to the fore, where America can have a nice, good look at them.
Remember back when the "Tea Party" was supposed to be the rebranding of Republicanism—a brand new "grassroots" movement that was to reclaim conservatism from those nasty, nasty Bush-era politicians who actually tried the damn thing? It was all about taxes; now look where we are. The same internal schism in the Republican Party as always, with the Wall Street crowd carefully trying to calculate just how close to theocracy they have to edge before the far-right religious crowd will be satisfied. I can guarantee you that Mitt Romney does not really give a damn if abortion is legal or illegal, so long as he gets his tax breaks (evidence: his entire past career), but Rick Santorum? Nope, he's all about the moral dangers posed by the gays, and the atheists, and the slutty, slutty teenagers and the like. The godbotherers have found a true believer in that one.