POLITICO.COM : Derail Mitt Romney : "Rick Santorum’s campaign is eyeing a pair of swiftly approaching Midwestern primary states as its best — and perhaps only — opportunity to deal a mortal blow to Mitt Romney and permanently transform the Republican presidential race into a one-on-one duel to the finish"

.

"Rick Santorum's team sees plentiful opportunities to harvest delegates over the next month in states such as North Dakota, Oklahoma and Kansas — inexpensive political arenas that lean strongly to the right".

POLITICO.COM
Rick Santorum’s plan to derail Mitt Romney
By ALEXANDER BURNS and MAGGIE HABERMAN
February 13, 2012

Rick Santorum’s plan to derail Mitt Romney

Some excerpts :

A potential path to breaking open the race against Romney, they say, could run through Michigan’s Feb. 28 election and Ohio’s Super Tuesday vote on March 6 — two Rust Belt primaries in which they believe Santorum’s working-class background and manufacturing-heavy message will resonate. (Arizona’s winner-take-all primary, also on Feb. 28, looks less inviting.)

The privately held hope in the Santorum camp is that beating Romney in his native state of Michigan or in the ultimate general election battleground of Ohio would discredit, on a grand scale, the on-and-off Republican front-runner and make the other candidates in the race irrelevant in the remaining contests.

...................

“A state like Michigan, a state like Ohio, you do look at those and say, Santorum’s blue-collar background versus Romney’s Wall Street background, we believe is a great contrast to have.”

Santorum himself went a bit further in a Fox News interview last week, saying he believed he could beat Romney in Michigan, though Romney won the state in 2008 and grew up there when his father, George Romney, was governor.

And even as they work to lay the foundation for a longer struggle against Romney, Santorum’s team has already taken tentative steps toward a more aggressive posture in Michigan and Ohio.

They’ve brought on state directors in both states, plus Tennessee. A media-buying source said Santorum has inquired about cable television rates in Ohio and aides to the former senator said they are preparing to run ads there and in Michigan.

..............

More than a few of the Super Tuesday states fit that bill: Santorum campaigned last week in Oklahoma and is scheduled to visit Idaho and North Dakota in the next few days. Should Santorum fall short against Romney in the big-ticket Midwestern battlegrounds, his advisers believe he could press on with a campaign aimed at building a conservative coalition, delegate by delegate, for the Tampa convention.

-----------------

The other theory of the case, however, is that Santorum’s surge is proof positive that the Republican Party simply does not want to nominate Romney for president. Maybe (and even proponents of the theory acknowledge it’s only a maybe) Santorum’s sweep of last Tuesday’s primaries tore up the expectation among primary voters that the GOP will settle on Romney and created an opening for Santorum to knock him off.

..................

“I think he’s going to win Tennessee. He’s not going to win Georgia, but in states where there’s large evangelical populations, where they don’t have a native son running, I think he’s going to do well. I think he’s going to win Oklahoma,” said Land, who is neutral in the race. “He has won the battle with Newt Gingrich for the social conservative vote.”

.............

“I think you might actually see, because of the Tuesday election, exponential growth in the Santorum camp,” the Santorum ally said. “People have paid attention but didn’t think he could win.”

.............