Is Santorum Sinking the GOP? - Image Copyright 2012 Leo Soderman - Creative Commons Non-Commercial

Watching the GOP start to tremble about a possible Santorum nomination is entertaining…

via The GOP’s Panic Over Rick Santorum – The Daily Beast.

For more than six months, worried conservative chieftains talked up the need to unite behind a single rightist candidate in order to block the potential victory of the “mushy moderate” from Massachusetts, Mitt Romney. Now, on the eve of crucial primaries in Michigan and Arizona, and with Super Tuesday looming just one week later, some of those same leaders speak privately of the need to unite behind that same, once-dreaded Romney in order to avert an even more dire disaster: the nomination of Rick Santorum.

For decades, the GOP has tried to nudge the country to the right. With the advent of the Tea Party, that nudge became a shove. But like the supertankers they dream of filling with Canadian tar sands oil, once that kind of movement is rolling, it’s really hard to slow it down, much less stop it. Enter Rick Santorum.

If they were really honest about it (I know, a stretch), they would admit that Santorum is simply saying out loud what they all think. But the problem is, what they think and what has a chance of winning an election are two totally different things. And what Santorum has been spewing for the last 6 weeks has been increasingly further from the mainstream. Make no mistake – Republicans want want Santorum says they want. But the more seasoned, savvy pols know that to get it, they have to win elections. And Santorum’s heavy-handed shift to the right – practically dragging the rest of the GOP with them – will alienate moderate, independent voters.

So now, as vehemently as the GOP establishment was against Romney, they are now starting to worry that Santorum will sink them. Of course, they can change tactics right up until the actual nomination. None of the delegates assigned during the primaries are binding – they can change their vote right before the convention vote.  But of course, Santorum would raise a stink that would fracture the Republican Party. But so will a Santorum win, as they see their chances of taking the White House go up in a puff of neo-papal smoke.