Everyone Single Republican is a Frontrunner Except Rick Santorum

The dream of a tubby, New Jersey president is over. Sarah Palin continues to be coyly indecisive. Rudy Giuliani is rarely mentioned. The GOP may just have to pick one of the candidates they have.  

After a list which relates how even near-punchline candidates former Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman (to say nothing of the recent Herman Cain fever sweeping parts of the nation) have had some poll spikes, says Salon:

And then there's Santorum, the only one of the candidates to participate in all of the GOP debates and still not show any life. He's at two percent in the ABC/Washington Post survey, almost exactly where he was last month and the month before that. In the Fox poll released last week, he was at four percent. And his fortunes are no better in the key early states: He's averaging 4.3 percent in Iowa (where he's never broken double-digits), received one percent in the latest New Hampshire poll, andcouldn't even crack three percent in a recent South Carolina survey.

You'd think that, even by accident, a few polls would have moved in Santorum's direction at some point in the past year.

In spite of some positive press for Santorum's debate performances, the schadenfreude-rich Salon conclusion:

Maybe there's something else about Santorum that just rubs the average Republican the wrong way, or causes the average Republican to ignore him. Whatever the reason, it's got to be maddening for Santorum. He spent three terms in the Senate and he's nearly killing himself doing all the things a presidential candidate is supposed to do. Plus, he's running in a Republican race that's almost comically wide open. But his party's voters continue to send him the same message over and over: Anyone but you.

To be fair, former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson is not even named in the article. But he had a media spike after the most recent debate when they harped on his "shovel-ready jobs" quip. Google searches for him spiked as well. Google for Santorum is, of course, a double-edged sword.

Reason on the 2012 election. And on Rick Santorum.

[Photo by Reuters.]