Chicago Tribune: Is Santorum ready for prime time?

To anyone watching the Republican presidential debates with no prior knowledge of the candidates, Rick Santorum would have a natural appeal. He's telegenic, good on his feet, well-versed in issues, personable in manner and adept at dismantling his opponents without sounding mean.

He's also a tireless campaigner: He visited all 99 of Iowa's far-flung counties before the state held its caucuses. Equally important, he has had the good fortune to be running against a collection of flawed candidates.

Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain and Rick Perry all had their moment in the spotlight — and each melted under the harsh glare. Newt Gingrich vaulted to the top of the polls, but only until people got reacquainted with his mammoth ego and condescending personality. Ron Paul has always been a niche candidate, and the niche is not large.

But Santorum's greatest asset is Mitt Romney, who has not been able to generate broad-based enthusiasm among Republican voters. Despite having a huge war chest and perennial front-runner status, he has lost in five of the nine states that have voted. In six of those, he got fewer votes than he did in 2008.

Romney often comes across as clumsy and tone-deaf in relating to voters. But his bigger defect at the moment is that conservatives regard him as an impostor, thanks to his past support of abortion rights, gun control and an individual health insurance mandate. An Economist/YouGov poll of Republican voters found only 28 percent regard Romney as a conservative.

That's a problem in a party that has moved steadily to the right. It's not a problem, however, for Santorum, who qualifies as a conservative with 76 percent of Republicans. When the former Pennsylvania senator claims the mantle of Ronald Reagan, it's believable.

But the conservative themes that have served him well so far may be a fatal handicap in the general election — if not sooner. Often, Santorum seems to be almost trying to give ammunition to those who regard him as a right-wing extremist.

He accuses President Barack Obama of advancing the agenda of “radical environmentalists.” He says that if Republicans lose this election, “It will be the end of the great experiment in the order of liberty and freedom.” He warned that a nuclear Iran might carry out an attack on North Dakota.

Comments like these may rouse the GOP's most conservative partisans, but they offer a vast bounty of material for Democratic attack ads. And they raise fears among other Republicans that Santorum's uncompromising approach will repel independent voters and disgruntled Democrats.

The smashing GOP triumph in the 2010 House elections, which delivered a host of tea partiers to Washington, may have taught the party the wrong lesson.

In an off-year, with the economy struggling badly, a sharp-edged conservative message worked. Against a gifted campaigner like Obama, who is now riding a surge in growth and a drop in the unemployment rate, it is more likely to backfire.

A conservative philosophy can be an asset in a presidential race, as Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush showed.

But those presidents knew it needed to be tempered by political reality.

Parties that veer too far from the center often bring destruction on themselves. Democrats learned that in 1972 with George McGovern. Republicans did in 1964 with Barry Goldwater.

Listening to Santorum, conservatives hear an alluring song. But it could be a siren call luring their boat toward the rocks.