Like everyone else, Savage had at first dismissed Santorum’s triumph in Iowa as a chance for more moderate voters in other states to prove his views are big political losers. I am completely blown away by this,” says Dan Savage, the mastermind of the Google-bomb that forever redefined Rick’s last name. “You could knock me over with a drop of Santorum. What is most shocking to them aren’t his chances of winning the nomination, it’s that he can win anything at all. Many LGBT activists still doubt Santorum could ever beat Romney. Senate by 18 points in 2006, would be striking fear in the monied, juggernaut Romney campaign. No one predicted that the man who once compared gay sex to bestiality and pedophilia, who had lost reelection to the U.S. Santorum lost the popular vote so narrowly that he took half the delegates in the state where Romney was born and raised and where his father had been governor. Exit polls in Michigan found a larger than usual percentage of voters were Democrats, and they broke overwhelmingly for Santorum, 53%, compared with 18% for Romney. Moulitsas wasn’t alone in his evaluation of Santorum. “Let’s have fun whacking the heck out of it.”
“I mean, Rick Santorum? Really? The Republicans have offered up this big, slow, juicy softball,” Moulitsas wrote gleefully. He declared the campaign to cause mayhem in open primaries “Operation Hilarity.” A vote for Santorum, Moulitsas calculated, actually meant more time for Republican infighting, and for the candidates to beat up Mitt Romney, the presumed real front runner. In theory, Santorum has so remote a chance of even winning the Republican nomination for president that Markos Moulitsas called on the millions of liberals who read his influential website, Daily Kos, to vote for the antigay ex-senator. Maddow, like many on the left, saw Santorum as a weak opponent against President Obama. “They’re about to nominate Rick Santorum! Don’t move a muscle!” Don’t make a sound,” Maddow joked days later in a mocking whisper. MSNBC hadn’t even staffed the night with live coverage. Once again the former Massachusetts governor appeared to be a lock for the nomination until Santorum shocked the political establishment by winning all three races February 7 in Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri. In a wave of spending that led to Romney accounting for 61% of all ads during the primary season’s first eight contests, according to a count by Kantar Media, his campaign regained the lead after back-to-back wins in Florida and Nevada. Two weeks after the caucus, Santorum was declared the winner in that state by 34 votes. But “front-runner Rick Santorum” was too absurd a notion to contemplate. The leader status had already been conferred upon every passing non-Romney fad from Donald Trump to Michele Bachmann to Rick Perry to Herman Cain. senator from Pennsylvania Rick Santorum as the one GOP presidential candidate who would never experience 15 minutes of glory as the front-runner. For months before the Iowa caucus in early January, MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow had dismissed former U.S.
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