Rick Santorum Back On The Campaign Trail

Rick Santorum has spent some time contemplating on if he would stay in the race or not and he's made his decision. He's staying in the race: 

After a five-day break to celebrate Easter, help care for his sick daughter and thrash out strategy, Santorum kicks off the fight for his home state, Pennsylvania, in earnest on Tuesday.

He needs to win the state by a decent margin to stay in the race against Romney, whose allies have already begun negative TV attacks against the conservative former senator.

Santorum holds a rally in Bedford on Tuesday and then addresses his alma mater Penn State Dickinson School of Law, dampening talk he is near to quitting the race.

"Clearly, once we get campaigning, then that will certainly quiet any talk of us doing anything other than moving full-speed ahead," campaign spokeswoman Alice Stewart said.

Speculation that Santorum could be headed for the exit increased last Thursday when he held a strategy meeting with conservative leaders.

The meeting with conservative and evangelical leaders did not go as well as Santorum would have liked:

Rick Santorum, who rose in the polls thanks to enthusiastic support from Christian conservatives, faced pressure Sunday from a key Republican evangelical to end his increasingly long-shot White House bid.

Richard Land, a top official with the powerful Southern Baptist Convention, urged Santorum to abandon the race and throw his support to frontrunner Mitt Romney to increase Republicans' chances of defeating Barack Obama in November.

"Rick's a good friend. I like Rick a lot," Land told CBS "Face the Nation" program on Sunday.

But he said, "as his friend I would say to him, 'you know, you ought to seriously consider leaving the race now'," the prominent Baptist clergyman said.

...

But after their candidate failed to pick up sufficient steam to seize the nomination, Christian conservatives met again with Santorum last week, to strategize about how they should proceed going forward.

Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, trounced Santorum in primaries held last week in Washington, DC, Wisconsin and Maryland, lending additional credence to his case that he will be the party's inevitable pick.

Land told CBS that the tea leaves appeared not to favor Santorum -- although he left open the possibility that he could be a strong contender for a future Republican party nomination.

"In eight years he'll be three years younger than Romney is now," said Land.

He added, however, that "running for president is a very personal decision, when to get out is a very personal decision, and he's going to have to make that," Land told CBS.

Ebbing support among Christian leaders would come at a bad time for Santorum, who has denied rumors that he is plotting his exit from the race to avoid what could be an embarrassing loss in his home state of Pennsylvania.

With the Pennsylvania primary only a few weeks away, the window of opportunity to have a graceful exit from the campaign will shut and he will face an embarrassing loss in Pennsylvania.  Mitt Romney is ahead in the polls in Pennsylvania and ahead in the polls nationally. Even if Rick Santorum manages to win in his home state, the primaries in May will not go as well as he thinks it will. If Santorum loses in Pennsylvania, then he should drop out of the race immediately.