The Last, Best Hope for Conservatives

slate.com — At CPAC in 2011, Newt Gingrich took the stage to the stirring sound of Survivor's 1980’s rock anthem "Eye of the Tiger." He walked deliberately through the crowd. Here was Caesar returning from the wars. Tomorrow Gingrich will speak again at the same gathering, but the conservative who most deserves the dramatic, fist-pumping greeting is his presidential rival Rick Santorum: the lonely warrior who has triumphed without playing a soundtrack of self-regard, without the ready millions of Gingrich's gambling-magnate patron, and despite more derision from the elite media than Gingrich has faced. Has Rick Santorum eclipsed Newt Gingrich as the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney? If that's so, Gingrich should take the advice he was just a week ago offering Santorum: Get out of the race now to ensure that there is a single conservative alternative to Mitt Romney.

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