Lots of people argued that Santorum had to compete in New Hampshire and not go straight to South Carolina after his surge in Iowa. That argument made some sense to me at the time. But it became pretty clear by midweek that Santorum should have come to NH without committing to compete extensively. That way, he could have seen whether he got a sufficient post-Iowa bump or not. If he got it, he could devote all that time to New Hampshire and fight for an upset. If he didn’t get a big bump — and he basically didn’t — he could have gone straight to South Carolina, claiming that Romney was simply a de facto favorite son who’d been campaigning there for years. Diminishing the importance of New Hampshire was in the interest of everyone but Romney, Paul and Huntsman and doing so would have made stopping Romney in South Carolina more of a possibility.
Yeah, it’s all hindsight.