Rick Santorum is warming up to John McCain. Which means Santorum is deeply skeptical of the Arizona senator, as opposed to being dead set against him. From Today’s Philadelphia Inquirer:

Conservatives understand just how consequential the 2008 election will be. It could very well result in the election of a Democratic president who’s prepared to reshape America culturally and economically and unprepared to defend the nation against our foreign enemies. Yet we see a presumptive Republican nominee who has too often joined the very people who seek to destroy and replace what we fight to conserve and improve. And so we wonder: Is this the man we can trust to take our case to the American people?

Many of us want a leader who believes in his core that this race is a fight for the soul of America, her Judeo-Christian tradition, her sovereignty, her courage to defeat not appease or surrender to her enemies, her belief in capitalism and limited government, and her commitment to equality of opportunity, not result. We want a leader who’s not interested in moving the country in the same direction as Clinton and Obama, only slower.
Is McCain that leader? It’s a question that both he and conservatives will have to answer. My own doubts prompted me to oppose him and, finally, endorse Mitt Romney in the GOP primary. But general elections pose such questions in a different, more complex context, and the best answers come after a period of post-primary decompression.

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