Santorum's Tuesday surprise

I am still amazed at the overwhelming support given to Rick Santorum across Colorado Tuesday night. Colorado is a state that covers a large amount of real estate! With not a lot of money or staff, and only spending a few days in the state, Santorum won in 44 of the 63 counties!

I didn't think he was that well-known! Actually, he is not nearly as well-known as Mitt Romney, who won here in 2008, or as Newt Gingrich, who it seems has been on t.v. every week for the last twenty years! Romney won 18 counties and Gingrich won one.

Ron Paul won no counties, but he does have a passionate group of supporters here. If he were to run this fall as a third party candidate, he would probably put Colorado's electoral votes in the Obama column. Colorado is one of those rare places where the voters are about one-third Republican, one-third Democrat, and one-third independent. Unless independents go for the Republican candidate in large numbers, as they did for Democrat Barack Obama in 2008, Paul is likely to subtract more voters from the Republican side of the ledger if he runs as a third party candidate, because of his conservative fiscal platform.

The turnout for Santorum indicates that the conservative base is much more well-informed than anyone gives them credit for, and they must be communicating with each other more than anyone realizes. However, Obama's announcement just days before the Colorado caucuses that under Obamacare Catholics and other religious organizations would be required to pay for birth control pills, some of which are abortifacients, surely must have been a significant factor in the Santorum victories in Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri.