Rasmussen: Santorum Could Be Romney's Nightmare

An interesting article from Rasmussen Reports arrived in my inbox this morning:

In a campaign defined by Republican reluctance to embrace Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum has emerged as the latest not-Romney candidate to surge ahead. While it’s impossible to predict what will happen in this volatile election season, the data suggests that Santorum might be more of a challenge for Romney than earlier flavors of the month.

The latest Rasmussen Reports poll of the GOP race shows that Rick Santorum leads Mitt Romney by 12 points, 39 percent to 27 percent. Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul are far behind. In and of itself, that’s nothing new. The man from Massachusetts has at times trailed Michele Bachmann, Donald Trump, Chris Christie, Rick Perry, Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich in the polls.

What is new are the numbers from a head-to-head matchup with no other candidates in the race. Santorum leads Romney 55 percent to 34 percent. None of the earlier Romney alternatives could manage better than a toss-up in such a contest.

Big caveat: Throughout my blogging “career,” I have been highly skeptical of polls, and I encourage readers to take these numbers with a huge grain of salt. On the other hand, Rasmussen’s results have been some of the closest to what really happens in actual elections, so they might be on to something here.

Both Romney and Santorum are well-liked by Republican Primary voters, but Santorum has a slight advantage on this pointm [sic] as well. Seventy-five percent offer a favorable opinion of Santorum, while 66 percent say the same of Romney

There is a huge passion gap favoring Santorum, though. Forty percent of Republican primary voters have a very favorable opinion of Santorum. Just 18 percent are that enthusiastic about Romney.

The one thing keeping Romney afloat is that he is still perceived as the strongest general election candidate. For some Republicans, that’s enough. But to survive the Santorum challenge, Romney needs to give primary voters something more, something positive. GOP voters want a reason to vote for him beyond the fact that he has the most money and the best organization.

Team Romney needs to acknowledge that Republican voters are not only strongly opposed to President Obama’s agenda but that they don’t think much of Washington Republicans, either. They want a president who would shake up the good old boys network in Washington rather than join it. To date, Romney’s attitude signals that he’d be more comfortable leading the club than challenging it.

Rasmussen thinks the next two contests may be definitive:

The next primary competitions are slated for Feb. 28 in Arizona and Michigan. If Romney wins both states, the race will probably be over. However, if Santorum can pull off a victory that day, he will be far more than the latest flavor of the month.

It looks like Santorum has a good chance of winning at least one of those, at least as things stand right now, so perhaps Santorum is the Not-Romney candidate that we’ve been looking for.