Jonathan Adler at NRO
I know some of my NRO colleagues are Rick Santorum fans. I must dissent on this point. Whatever his other virtues, RIck Santorum does not seem particularly concerned with constraining the size and scope of government. As David Boaz has detailed, Santorum seems to take an ends-justify-the-means approach to government interventions in the economy and civil society more broadly, and has practically embraced claims he is a “big government conservative.” I also have serious doubts about any candidate without meaningful executive or private sector experience. Such concerns were valid about then-Senator Obama (which the last three years have surely vindicated), and they remain valid about former Senator Santorum. And then there’s that electability issue. It’s not as if Senator Santorum’s last campaign in Pennsylvania went so well . . .
What he said.
Until the other day when I heard his horrific statements about how he is against the notion that we have a right to do anything we want as long as we don’t hurt anybody else (he’s against the idea) I had been thinking that Santorum might be the last hope for finding someone who is better than Romney who can beat him, but from that little outburst I can only conclude that he’s a big government conservative too just like Romeny and Perry with no more reliability than Newt, and no more sanity than Paul and Bachman. Where did we get this awful gang of fools? Yeah, yeah, I know, we got them from the legislature and the governorships. No wonder the country is in such a mess.
Brian. Yes. It’s in his policies and legislation, but more importantly it’s the bills he supported that was littered with pork and “right-wing” big government designs. But, he surged the latest as the anti-Romney candidate and it’s showing tonight. But, Romney is finishing well enough and will role into New Hampshire and beyond. Paul will not receive any kind of the support he experienced tonight in Iowa in the other states.
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I think that the next thing we will see as successive anti-Romneyites drop out of the race is that they will continue to not vote for Romney and will vote for whoever is still left. I suspect that Santorum will flame out as the others have upon closer inspection (in fact I think that this is already starting to happen). I understand that in the wake of Iowa both Perry and Bachman have left so I think that pretty much means that the anti-Romney vote is now going to just be shared by Newt, Rick, and Ron. I don’t think Ron has a prayer of sticking it out the whole way though he may do it just to get the exposure. I think that for the same reason Rick took so long to come to anybody’s attention (his blandness) he may well sink back into the single digits and perhaps drop out after losing a few states badly if that happens. At this point I think that deciding factor is whether we end up with a bunch of guys all getting around 25% of the vote with Romney leading that pack for a long time (in which case Romney will likely be the nominee) or one of the others drops out early in which case the most successful of the remaining anti-Romneyites will start gaining momentum early and manage to get the nomination. If I had to guess, I would say that of the three non-Romney candidates Newt is the most likely to be able to make it (Rick is too bland, and Ron is too nutty on foreign policy).
Anyway, that’s how I read the tea leaves.