A long freaking twitter response I hope you find useful...

@mnrobot @ZillaStevenson @ricksantorum There's progressive and there's progressive.  I have NO faith in Romney shrinking government effectively.  Big Gov MA style is all he's ever known. Likewise no repeal of ORomneycare.  In this he's a lot like Obama. He has no experience of alternatives and when presented with the options he's rejected them.

With Newt it's arrogance.  Newt will look at Big Government and think I can make this work!  Hey, it's me! So he's unlikely to cut government departments or subsidiary agencies, but instead to try and micromanage them, e.g, Let's take all the DOE solar money and put it into cold fusion research! In this he's a lot like Obama.  He's an academic who's not as smart as he thinks he but thinks he can bluster and fake it. Remember this was a guy lobbying for permanent L5 orbital colonies at a time when we could barely get a Shuttle launched.

Santorum has always been a grunt.  I don't think he's subject to the sense of institutional entitlement Romney was surrounded by or by what he rightly describes as Newt's grandiosity. When Newt was posing for the cameras, Santorum was on the House floor holding the votes together behind Gingrich and his flights of fancy.  Where he has erred in the direction of "progressive" I honestly believe it's been either a matter of principle, as with Specter, or in the sense of this was the best he honestly thought we could get.  Remember, it was Santorum who made the deal for welfare reform, while Newt was smoking cigars with Clinton.

So in terms of reversing progressivism's metatstasis in the body politic, I have higher hopes for Santorum than either of the front runners.  Of course a lot more of the People That Matter think they can use Mitt or Newt more readily...