An impressive showing by Rick Santorum?

It's rare for me to disagree with Mark Silk and rarer still for me to agree with Erick Erickson. But that's where I'm at when it comes to the politics of Rick Santorum's strong showing in Iowa on Tuesday.

Santorum won the support of 32 percent of evangelical caucus goers. "For a conservative Catholic running against two strenuous evangelical
candidates (Bachmann and Perry) and an idiosyncratic one (Paul)," says Silk, "that's
an impressive performance--really, an historic one." Silk predicts that Santorum, who also won among Tea Partiers, could give Romney some real trouble on his right flank.

Except that there's little reason to believe that Santorum's newfound success is based on much more than a brief flash of luck. He's the latest in a succession of candidates to emerge as the solidly conservative, non-Mormon alternative to Romney, and his moment happened to arrive just in time for Iowa. In the media-driven narrative of primary season, Bachmann and Perry are long since has-beens--a fact that accounts for Santorum's success, among evangelicals and otherwise, far more than his own skills and efforts do.