By Mark Greer

Like many of you, I’ve watched this Republican Primary season with a great deal of amazement. Proving to be the campaign that breaks all the molds, we’ve witnessed a chain of events that seems to defy assumptions, turn tradition on its head, and cast supposed realities to the winds. Yet as we approach what will be a critical juncture in the GOP Primary, now is the time to set some things straight.

Forget about who you thought would win the nomination, or who you really wanted to run. Forget about how hard you may have worked for a particular candidate, or how passionate you may have been about someone who is no longer in the race. Forget that one or more of the remaining candidates may not be your favorite. That you may not especially like them, or they fall short of the standards of perfection.

None of that matters anymore.

What does matter is that we make the right decision that will advance conservatism and put our Nation back on the right course. Thus the choice that remains is whether Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum will carry the mantle of conservatism and be able to successfully take on President Obama in the general election. Conservatives had better take a hard look at both candidates and realize that one would be our best hope of not only beating Obama, but bringing about real and meaningful change; while the other would be a disaster in a general campaign. Rather than keeping you in suspense till the end of the article, I’ll tell you right now that Senator Santorum has absolutely no chance of winning against President Obama. Now before some of you get upset, let me tell you why I’ve come to that conclusion and we may just come to some common ground before we’re finished.

Let’s take Rick’s strength of support. While much has been made of his recent surge in the polls, taking a closer look at what’s behind it leaves much cause for concern. In fact, the motto of Santorum’s campaign should really be “timing is everything.” Going back to Iowa, he clearly benefited from being the right guy at the right time. We watched the rise and fall Michelle Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Perry, and eventually Newt Gingrich, who took the hardest and most thorough pounding of any of the candidates, primarily from Romney’s Super PACs, when it seemed as though he would run away with the Caucus, a frightening thought to the GOP establishment.

There was Rick, the last man left standing, who to his credit, capitalized on the moment and barely edged out Romney in a state that favored conservatives. If Mike Huckabee would have been in the race, he would have lapped the field in Iowa. Santorum won Iowa by 34 votes, hardly a vote of confidence. I’m not trying to disparage Santorum’s Iowa win, but we have to objectively look at the outcome. It wasn’t as though Rick’s message propelled him to victory, but rather that Gingrich was seen as damaged goods, too badly marred by the onslaught of negative ads to be a viable choice. Rick was there to pick up the pieces, just at the time where no one else was left to steal his thunder or level attacks that could take him down like the rest of Romney’s opposition. What it gave us was a candidate who won Iowa without being vetted, without having even one glove landed on him. I fully expected that would change after Iowa, but interestingly enough, it didn’t. Romney’s campaign continued to go after Newt, sending out its establishment surrogates to tell everyone why Newt wasn’t a conservative, didn’t like Reagan, was too angry, and far too big a risk. With all the pressure on Gingrich, you would think that Santorum would have shined and taken the spotlight as the new front-runner, but that didn’t happen. Instead Gingrich pulled off what seemed to be an impossible comeback. Bolstered by what still remains to be the two most impressive debate performances of the primary season, Newt won South Carolina in resounding fashion, winning 44 of its 46 counties. Santorum came in third with 17%, 10 points behind Romney. Finally, Romney’s campaign decided they had to finish Gingrich off before it was too late, so they threw everything, including the kitchen sink, at him in Florida. It worked, Romney won big in the State, and it looked as though once again Newt was dead in the water. Thus began Santorum’s reemergence.

Are we noticing a trend here? While it may be fine to overlook the fact that Rick only seems to surge after Newt gets hammered, it won’t be a trend that will repeat itself in a general contest. The media certainly won’t be hammering Obama, but will focus all its attacks on the Republican nominee. If that turns out to be Santorum, we’ll have a debacle of epic proportions.

Now that the Romney campaign has decided to go after him, and people are really starting to look at Rick Santorum’s record and history of controversial statements, many are beginning to see just how much of a flawed candidate he would really be against Obama. It’s the reason why the idea is being not so subtly floated around that should Santorum beat Romney in Michigan, it may be time for a new candidate to enter the race.

Looking at some of Santorum’s past remarks, you’d think you came across a wish list for the Obama campaign. Here are just a few (and believe me, I could add more) that would easily be leveled against him, and effectively so, in a general campaign:

1. “One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country…. Many of the Christian faith have said, well, that’s okay, contraception is okay. It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.” (Interview with CaffeinatedThoughts.com, Oct. 18, 2011)

Considering the vast majority of women (and men) have used some form of contraception, this doesn’t exactly appear to be a winning argument for Santorum. Can you imagine the firestorm that would be ignited when voters heard the Republican nominee believes contraception is “harmful to women” and our society? Perhaps Rick doesn’t realize that married women use contraceptives as well, and they might not respond well to the notion that they’re ‘harming’ society and themselves.

2. “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money; I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.” (Iowa campaign stop, Jan. 2, 2012)

Rick really stepped in it here. Speaking about welfare programs, Santorum singled out black Americans as the recipients of “somebody else’s money.” Of course we all know that the majority of people on welfare are white, not black, but Rick chose to highlight blacks as the people waiting around for a handout instead of earning their own money. I don’t have to tell you how that would play out against Obama. Some might argue that the statement may not matter much, since the African American community overwhelmingly voted for Obama, but they would be wrong. With high unemployment in the black community, including an increasing dissatisfaction with President Obama, there is an opportunity for a candidate who can effectively articulate the conservative message to make inroads into the black community. Santorum ruined his chances of doing that with his foolish remark. Even worse, he tried to deny making the comment, maintaining that what he actually said was “blah” people, not “black” people…Really Rick? As a blah conservative, I mean, black conservative, I can assure you that won’t go over well with blacks should you get the nomination.

3. “If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [gay] sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does. It all comes from, I would argue, this right to privacy that doesn’t exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution, this right that was created, it was created in Griswold — Griswold was the contraceptive case…That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing.” (AP Interview, April 7, 2003)

Regardless of what you may think about homosexuality, I think most of us can agree that comparing it with incest, pedophilia, and bestiality may be a bit extreme. In the same interview, Santorum went on to say: “And that’s sort of where we are in today’s world, unfortunately. The idea is that the state doesn’t have rights to limit individuals’ wants and passions. I disagree with that. I think we absolutely have rights because there are consequences to letting people live out whatever wants or passions they desire. And we’re seeing it in our society.” Here’s a newsflash to GOP voters: this isn’t the platform you want to run on if you want to win the White House in November. Santorum, in taking a shot at Newt Gingrich, made a point of telling voters that they didn’t need to nominate a candidate they’d have to worry about what he would say next. Well I’d be willing to assume the majority of voters would worry about a candidate like Santorum, who thinks contraceptives are damaging to society, blacks are the ones responsible for the growing welfare system, and the government has a right to regulate the sexual activity of its citizens, far more than they would fear a guy like Gingrich who thinks we should expand the space program and build a colony on the moon.

As for Newt’s baggage, of course he has some, and would be attacked by the left-wing press in a general election, as would any Republican nominee. The difference is that Newt knows how to answer the criticism to his own advantage. When the media went after him in the two debates leading up to the SC primary, Gingrich turned the tables in dramatic fashion, making what originally seemed as strong negatives into positives. Positives that helped him turn the race upside down and win South Carolina in a landslide. That is exactly the formula the GOP will need in order to beat Obama in the general campaign, and Newt already proved that he can pull it off. If we want to look at records, I’ll take the guy who ushered in the Republican Revolution of 1994, passed Welfare Reform, balanced the budget four times, cut taxes, presided over a 4.2% unemployment rate, and actually shrunk the size of government any day.

Conservatives have a clear choice, one I hope they’ll consider long and hard before they vote for the latest surge in polling trends. If we want to beat Obama in 2012, we cannot nominate Rick Santorum. We must support Newt Gingrich. Forget about the head to head poll numbers with Obama for any of the remaining candidates. Ronald Reagan was down by 30 points to Jimmy Carter in early 1980. But Reagan had the vision, courage, and message that got the American people to believe in their own resiliency and ingenuity once again. Gingrich has that same message and those same qualities, which is why I support him. What we can’t afford is a nominee who will be DOA after securing the nomination. Santorum would be such a candidate.

For a party who seems to have mastered the art of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, I hope my appeal makes you think twice about the choice that remains for conservatives. I’m reminded of Santorum’s own appeal in 2008, which he made in support of Mitt Romney, who he now characterizes as a liberal: “If you’re a conservative … if you’re a Republican … there is only one place to go right now, and that’s Mitt Romney.” Rick was wrong then, and he’s wrong now.

Here’s hoping my appeal is more effective than his was four years ago.

Conservatives, don’t blow it…