GOP May Not Deserve to Win

The following commentary comes from an independent investor or market observer as part of TheStreet's guest contributor program, which is separate from the company's news coverage.

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Rick Santorum's victories in Colorado, Missouri and Minnesota laid bare Mitt Romney's weaknesses and the GOP's fading prospects for defeating Barack Obama.

Romney's advantages are money and organization. His well-financed machine overwhelmed opponents in Florida, but he chose not to devote many resources to those beauty contests, and without the advantages of money -- and massive attack ads -- Santorum bested him by an average margin of 20%.

Rick Santorum

Santorum's principal appeal is social issues and adherence to Republican economic fundamentalism. That plays well among Republican primary voters, who are dominated by rock-jawed conservatives, even in ideologically diverse states like Colorado, Missouri and Minnesota. If Santorum had Romney's money, he could win the nomination but get trounced by Barack Obama.

Nationally, Santorum's hard-right positions on social issues would not serve him with more moderate voters -- even those who might privately lean toward his agenda.

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Consider Catholics, who are a quarter of registered voters and went with the winner in nine of the last 10 presidential elections, including President Obama. They are accustomed to weighing church edicts on abortion, contraception and gay marriage against more practical concerns. For example in New York, they support moderate Republicans like Rudolph Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg who pitch making the transit system work and New York attractive to businesses.

Moderate voters generally don't expect rigid adherence in public policy to their private views. Instead, they like tolerance. That's why, although most Americans want women to have choices about contraception and abortion, Obama is in hot water for requiring hospitals and other social service organizations, sponsored by churches, to pay for those through health care insurance.

However, voters want politicians to deliver on the things all Americans want -- safe streets, decent schools and the like. In 2012, that will be all about fixing an economy that is simply not delivering enough high-quality jobs, and on that issue Santorum is lacking.

Santorum chants the hard right dogma -- less taxes and deregulation -- quite well, but after that, gets pretty thin.