Santorum must keep cozy with Evangelicals to reach the top

Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum was a long shot from winning when the debate season began. There were no profile pieces of him in The New York Times or Newsweek. His closet wasn't ransacked for skeletons. He didn't even suffer from the malapropisms that plagued the nova campaigns of Bachmann, Perry and Cain.

Away from the glaring lights, Santorum quietly built his campaign in Iowa, visiting every county in the state and even moving his family there for an extended period. Perhaps his strategy—lie low, build a base and avoid reporters—is worth noting.

It is perfectly clear now why Santorum decided to run for president after being defeated handily in his 2006 Senate bid for re-election by Democrat Bob Casey. No one else in the GOP field distinguished themselves as the candidate of the Evangelical Right.

Fiercely conservative on social issues (he opposes the 1965 Supreme Court decision that invalidated a law banning contraception and has liked homosexual intercourse to "bestiality") and a believer in a muscular foreign policy (especially concerning Iran), Santorum has replaced Mike Huckabee as the darling of the Evangelical nation.

But his challenge will be to avoid Huckabee's fate as a "One State Wonder." Huckabee breezed through the socially conservative Iowa caucuses in 2008 only to be defeated in New Hampshire – a state full of Republicans concerned more with fiscal and populist issues than social ones – losing momentum that he never regained.

If he can produce a strong showing in New Hampshire, Santorum has the Evangelical bastions of South Carolina and Florida to look forward to. The question now is this: can and will this erstwhile powerful electorate organize behind his candidacy? Their disaffection with John McCain - along with the active enthusiasm of the newly politicized Obama followers - relegated the Religious Right to an ineffectual role in 2008, but they may prove deadly to Obama in November.

Santorum pulled off an upset of sorts in Iowa, garnering 24 percent of the Iowa caucus vote and finishing a close second (only 8 votes) behind Mitt Romney. Romney, like John McCain before him, never felt comfortable leading, or having to pander to, the Religious Right. Santorum relishes it, and this may prove decisive as the year unfolds.

Santorum, once the third most powerful Republican in the Senate, was a George W. Bush apostle, which proved to be costly in 2006 - a terrible year for Republicans, as Santorum has reiterated during the Iowa campaign. Santorum, more than others, represented the George W. Bush model at a disadvantageous time - when most Americans were ready for our soldiers to be out of Iraq and George W. out of the White House. Nevertheless, the Evangelical Right saw the mid-2000's as their golden age, and now perhaps they see Santorum as the leader who can usher in a new post-Obama religious Republican awakening.