A crowd of well-wishers and autograph-seekers surrounded Rick Santorum at an event hall here this week. The place was packed; dozens of men, women and children stranded outside stood in the cold just to catch a glimpse of him.
On Tuesday night, Mr. Santorum stunned the political world by winning the Minnesota and Colorado caucuses and a nonbinding primary in Missouri, reviving his flagging candidacy. On Wednesday and Thursday, at a series of power cord campaign stops in the suburbs north of Dallas and in Oklahoma, Mr. Santorum took advantage of a burst of momentum and campaign donations that have followed his three victories. Though overtaking Mitt Romney, the Republican front-runner, is still a formidable challenge, Mr. Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania, has become as much of a political rock star as he has ever been in his life.
As his remarks suggest, he has had a curious reaction to the sudden attention — he is trying to make it seem natural and inevitable, carrying himself not as an upstart or an underdog, but as a front-runner. In his speeches in Texas and Oklahoma, he cast his main rival as President Obama, not Mr. Romney or Newt Gingrich, his rival for the conservative Republican voter.
People approached him with tears in their eyes. They gave him cowboy hats, personal notes, quilts sewn for his seriously ill 3-year-old daughter and envelopes with checks gas thermocouple inside. His campaign had raised $1 million online in 24 hours. Earlier, at a nearby hotel, he had to apologize to those hoping to have their pictures taken with him, explaining that he had a television show to get ready for..
“We need to have someone who’s going to go out and paint that vision of what America looks like versus Barack Obama,” Mr. Santorum said on Wednesday evening in the Dallas suburb of Allen. “We need to make him and his failed policies electric winch the issue in this race. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m the best candidate to do that.”
And his support among social conservatives, meanwhile, is hardly assured: the endorsement he received shortly before the South Carolina primary in January from a group of evangelical leaders and Christian conservatives meeting in Texas did little for him then.
Though he may want to sound like a front-runner, the reality is that he has neither the organization nor money that a front-runner in a national race usually commands.
“The voters took a serious look at him in Iowa, and then his poll numbers dropped precipitously, when they decided he wasn’t ready for the tomato paste biggest job on the planet,” said Jim McGrath, a Republican strategist in Houston who is a supporter of Mr. Romney’s. “He pops up with a big night earlier this week, and he should be congratulated for that. But there’s nothing to indicate that there is a durable confidence in Santorum in this bump that is any different than the last bump that faded. His political stock has been a little shaky.”
“I love that he carries the family values with him,” said Becky Boydstun, 37, a stay-at-home mother from Frisco, Tex., who stood on a bench outside the packed barn-style hall in Plano trying to hear his speech. “When you don’t put yourself up on a pedestal, when you can relate to people on a general level, it draws them to you even more.”
Before Thursday, Max Lubitz, 25, a military officer who is on leave at Tinker Air Force Base near Oklahoma City, had been torn between voting for Mr. Gingrich or Mr. Santorum. After watching Mr. Santorum, he said he would support him. “I think this speech sealed it for me,” he said. “The electricity was alive in the room.”
But his digs at the president are not what people talk about as they crowd solenoid valve around him to shake his hand. It is his 3-year-old daughter, Isabella, or Bella, as she is known, who has a fatal chromosomal disorder called Trisomy 18. Bella’s struggle is the emotional undercurrent of his campaign and, for his supporters, has become inseparable from Mr. Santorum’s appeal as a Christian conservative who opposes abortion.
As he has throughout the campaign, he linked conservative social values to economic prosperity. In Texas, he prayed with a group of pastors, met with Tea Party activists and told the members of the Republican Women of North Collin County that a strong family unit is not only good for the country, but also good for the economy.
In Oklahoma City on Thursday morning, he was scheduled to speak at a gun range and shooting sports complex, but because of the expected turnout, the event was moved to the ballroom of a nearby convention center. Mr. Santorum addressed roughly 1,000 people about the dangers of big government and attacked President Obama’s health care, energy and economic policies.
“When she got pneumonia, he stopped his campaign,” said Stephanie Broardt, an Oklahoma City stay-at-home mother who stood on a digital thermometer chair to watch his speech. “He strikes me as a good father. That’s another reason why I love him, because he’s a family man. Other candidates cannot say that.”
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