Print edition: 
Two stories surfaced last week that amount to a loud vote of no confidence in Rick Santorum as the GOP nominee. ABC News reported that a top Republican senator wants a new choice if Santorum wins Michigan. Why? “’He’d lose 35 states,’ the senator said, predicting the same fate for Newt Gingrich.”
This senator is not alone. Politico’s Mike Allen reported: “A tippy-top Republican, unprompted, . . . sketched the germ of a plan for a new candidate if Rick Santorum upsets Mitt Romney in the Michigan primary on Feb. 28. Our friend brought visual aids: chicken-scratched versions of prosaic documents that are circulating among GOP insiders like nuclear-code sheets: In case of mayhem, break glass!”
In other words: “Whom are we kidding? We’ll get slaughtered with Santorum as the nominee.”
You see – right-wing, socially conservative pundits don’t actually have to win elections, but experienced senators and party operatives who know how to win races outside Republican strongholds aren’t putting their heads in the sand. Santorum’s views and persona have limited appeal in a general election, and they know it.
There are, of course, many problems with the knight-in-shining-armor plan. Romney wouldn’t necessarily get out of the race, and the not-Santorum vote would then be subdivided. A new candidate who actually wants to run and hasn’t stood up the party at the altar would have to be located. And the knight might not be so popular with actual voters.
Republicans should remember 2010. Republicans could well have had control of the Senate had they not nominated characters such as Christine O’Donnell, Sharron Angle and Ken Buck – fire-breathing tea partiers who were unable to win in swing or blue states.
