If Only Santorum Had Kept His Mouth Shut!

Or... if only Ron Paul wasn't wasting his money attacking Santorum instead of Romney. Or... if only Romney's cadre of billionaires and steely-eyed Mormons weren't more dedicated to seizing the White House than Santorum's whack-job billionaire. But, for whichever reason or combination of reasons, Santorum peaked in Michigan last Wednesday and it's been all downhill since then. Romney has retaken the lead in Michigan and it would be hard to imagine Santorum taking it back by next week.

Mitt Romney has regained the lead in a Mitchell/Rosetta Stone Poll of Michigan conducted for MIRS (Michigan Information & Research Service). The two front runners are now in a statistical dead heat with Romney (32%) having a 2% lead over Rick Santorum (30%) while Newt Gingrich (9%) and Ron Paul (7%) are far behind in a trial Republican presidential ballot test. About one in five voters remain undecided (22%). Eight days ago, Santorum had a 9% lead and twelve days before that Romney led by 15% in a topsy- turvy race.

..."Reports show Romney is spending twice as much on media as Santorum and it would seem as though it is having an impact. Romney has turned the race around and has gone back into the lead by 2%. Romney has made big inroads with conservatives that had gone to Santorum in the last poll. Santorum's lead among Tea Party voters has been cut from 15% to 5%, his lead with Evangelical Christians has been cut from 16% to 11%, and his huge lead among those that say they are "very conservative" has been cut in half, from 31% to 15%. The strong negative ads being run in Michigan defining Santorum as a big spender have had a huge impact. Romney's message and resources have put him back into the lead," Steve Mitchell, president of Mitchell Research & Communications, Inc. said.

John Garst, President of Rosetta Stone Communications in Atlanta, said "The campaign in Michigan remains extremely close; however recent polls conducted over the last few days indicate that there has been a fundamental momentum shift back to Mitt Romney."

Joshua Holland, in his book, The 15 Biggest Lies About the Economy, advances a real world theory about Republican politicians that goes a lot of the way towards explaining why Santorum-- nor, for that matter, any of these Republican candidates-- can't appeal even to the base of their own crazy party.

It’s worth restating a central rule of the U.S. political economy: people are attracted to the idea of “limited government” in the abstract-- and certainly don’t want the government intruding in their homes-- but they really, really like living in a society with adequately funded public services. They like what government does in the specific, even if they have an inherent suspicion of the idea of “big government” (the phrase itself was coined to counter liberal attacks on “big business”).

One need look no further for evidence of that assertion than a March 2010 poll of hard-core Tea Party activists conducted by Bloomberg. It found that 90 percent of the Tea Partiers think “the U.S. is verging more toward socialism than capitalism, the federal government is trying to control too many aspects of private life and more decisions should be made at the state level,” but, at the same time, fully seven out of ten of the libertarian activists wanted “a federal government that fosters job creation,” and half of them thought that “the government should do something about executive bonuses” on Wall Street.

At heart, that’s the reason the Right can’t honestly argue for its preferred policies. They can win votes by shouting about “government tyranny,” and they can make inroads by decrying the perfidy of “socialism,” but when they try to mess with a program like Social Security or cut the budgets that put cops on the beat and firemen into shiny red trucks and provide health care to poor children and the elderly, they get clobbered.

Obama may be a mediocre president but he is one lucky hombre... and in this political climate that may be as much as many of us will ever hope for. I'm not giving up 'til we have a great president-- just once before I die... please.