Well, if the moderate establishment agrees with all of that (a somewhat dubious proposition), then they should love Santo.

Plus, for conservatives he's a guy that has a track record of actually  doing the heavy lifting for reforming an entitlement: welfare reform.  Romney created one.

Well, the MSM ain't the only game in town anymore.  He certainly has to be careful, but my intention was to contrast him with McCain.  McCain wouldn't fight, I'm seeing evidence that perhaps Romney will.  Romney may be another Dole/McCain, but I think it's a bit of kneejerk to automatically categorize him that way.  Rhetoric-wise in '08 and '12, he doesn't sound like either of those guys. 

Sure it's a thin reed, but I still point to his veto on the stem cell legislation back in Mass.  Maybe then he was posturing in preparation for a GOP presidential run, but it had to have been tough.  It's definitely to the right of Newt's contemporaneous position.

I suppose I should look deeper into his record as governor, perhaps there are other slivers of light, or rather, right.

Two excellent points.  I heard it argued once about business school being essentially a progressive invention - and it's more training, not a classical liberal education.  That's Romney, and that's a real concern, but also the hope.  I think his natural political philosophy is conservatism, but he's not the philosophical type - he's been trained, not educated.

The second part is partially true: through the superPAC/surrogates he's been in the dirt fighting since S. Carolina against Newt.  I find that encouraging thinking of the general.  There is evidence his team will fight and fight dirty if need be (and need will certainly be).  Now he's starting to show that he can do it personally. 

I'm growing weary with the conservative purity tests.  I'm with frozen: I actually believe his conversion is genuine.  I wish he'd run and won once as a pro-lifer (for instance).  But he did veto the embryonic stem cell legislation - in Massachusetts, kinda gutsy.  That alone may have cost him a shot at running successfully again for governor.

In the end we have to decide whether we believe the guy or not.  Most people think he's a good fellow.  Well, good fellows don't engage in such broad ranging deception as this would have to be.  He's either a fraud and a rotten guy or he's for real.  I choose to believe him.

He can beat Bam-bam, though it'll be tough.  Once he wins, if he signs what Ryan sends him, is tough on the Iranians, et. al., I'm okay with that.

After all that, though, Santorum is my first choice.

Is Ron Paul not a fraud as a libertarian?  Our current entitlement state is the greatest threat to our liberties in the economic sphere.  Paul ignores this threat.  So his appeal is something that is not libertarianism in any serious sense.  It's a facade of libertarianism, but I think the appeal might be characterized as a nostalgia.  Get the boys back home, move back to the gold standard, spend less on discretionary items, and everything will be okay again like it used to be.  A false nostalgia.

Blaming Santorum for "expanding the Federal Budget by trillions of dollars" makes as much sense as blaming DeMint or Kyl or even Reagan for the same.  Cuddly?  Have you heard one thing he's said about national security in general or Iran in particular?

I would trust Santorum to do the right thing as much or more than any candidate in the race or those other conservatives wish were in the race.

My concern with him is messaging: he needs to talk more about growing the economy, taking a chainsaw to government, and dealing with Iran.  A lot more.  We all already know where he stands on the social issues (the right place).