For Santorum, Miles to Go Before He Sleeps

For Santorum, Miles to Go Before He Sleeps.MANCHESTER, NH - Despite the debate on Saturday night, Rick Santorum kept a busy schedule throughout the day. Usually, candidates will spend a day of debate in solitude with staff members, planning their strategies on how to deal with their rivals and the best way to have an impact on viewers.

This is especially true this weekend, during the return-to-back debates are scheduled for Saturday night and Sunday morning. They are the first debate since before the Christmas holidays and the first since voting began last week in the Iowa caucuses. They will also be the first to six, not seven candidates, as the Minnesota representative Michele Bachmann dropped last week.

All this means that if the candidates had much practice in discussions in recent months, the dynamics of the race have changed in many ways.

So far, Mr. Santorum was stuck on the sidelines of debates because its poor projections in the polls did not justify more clearly.

But since he lost the Iowa caucuses, Mitt Romney at a mere eight votes, is likely to share the stage on Saturday night with Mr. Romney. Having started to move in the polls, it is likely to face the attacks of his rivals not used.

If Mr. Santorum is preparing a strategy to adapt to a new discussion of his new popularity, it has to be connection between its many manifestations. His days are usually filled - on Friday, he ran an event across southern New Hampshire, making six saves, not including various interviews broadcast - and it provides almost as full a day on Saturday.

He started at a university forum at St. Anselm College on the economy and the middle class. He became more passionate as he took Obama to task for encouraging people to pursue higher education. Mr. Santorum called the excesses and arrogance, saying that if any of his seven children did not go to college, he would be happy for them to do something else.

After the forum, he had planned to go door to door in a neighborhood in Manchester to shake hands and ask residents for their votes. But he never showed up. About 20 protesters occupy Wall Street movements were preparing to demonstrate against him. It is not clear whether Mr. Santorum has been to avoid the demonstrators.

But it can be seen at the next event, where another demonstration is planned at the Homestead Deli in Amherst, south-west of Manchester. It is then a meeting at town hall style Hollis, further south in the most populous state, followed by a meeting-and-greet at the pharmacy, which is scheduled for 3:45.

Only then, he planned "down time" to prepare the debates.

Such a program reflects the intense demands of compression, primary six days here in New Hampshire, where voters go to the polls Tuesday. Every minute exposure helps, especially on a Saturday, which can help a candidate to advertise in the Sunday papers.

In addition, Mr. Santorum plans to rush to South Carolina, which votes next Sunday after the debate. Perhaps the debate and full Saturday schedule will be sufficient to feed the beast the media until he returns for the final push on the campaign Monday. And surely then, it will be another busy day.

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