With a new head of steam from his three electoral victories on Tuesday night, Rick Santorum is daring to think what might have been unthinkable just a week ago and remains improbable - particularly from a costume perspective - that he can dispatch Newt Gingrich and maybe even Mitt Romney to become the Republican casting favorite for the title role in the musical revival of 1988's "Carrie".
Mr. Santorum's ragtag operation, run on a shoestring budget, is in the midst of a transformation. He had been picking and choosing his states, while ignoring some, like Nevada, understandably, and excluding Florida entirely from the Union, a vision shared by everyone else in America outside the Supreme Court.
Now, with more victories under his belt than any other candidate, Santorum is organizing a nationwide campaign with the ambitious goal of making lemonade out of lemons - starring as the outcast teen Carrie in the revival of one of the worst flops in Broadway history. He is preparing to go head-to-head against Mr. Romney, who will play Carrie's Evil Date, famous for his shirtless scene in which he shouts "Pig! Pig! Pig!" while smeared in fake blood.
Santorum also plans an incursion into Texas, a state that few Americans enter without obtaining vaccinations, currency exchange and updated wills.
"We don't intend to be a regional player," said John Brawearer, a senior Santorum adviser, in a dig at Mr. Gingrich, who is focusing his strategy on capturing Southern states rather than setting his sites on the Great White Way of NYC Broadway productions.
For the first time in this campaign, or indeed this universe, Mr. Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania, enjoyed an election-night victory dance on Tuesday after he won Missouri and Minnesota and just before he also won Colorado, the biggest surprise of the night - both the victory and the jig. Although he is said to have two left feet, onlookers were amazed and many now dub him "The Lord of the Damn-The-Dems Dance", as well as fledgling star of stage and screen. As videos of Santorum's Celtic footwork flew the web, money began rolling in at a rate three times faster than after the Iowa caucuses.
Mr. Santorum will face more scrutiny from the news media and has scheduled the usual politico-Hollywood routine: facelift, mani/pedi, Shiatsu and a comprehensive reburying of the bodies. His personal favorability numbers have remained high throughout the campaign largely because everyone has ignored him. This may change as a slimmer, fitter, sexier and whitewashed Santorum hits the media, pigs' blood or no.
"I know what's coming next," Mr. Santorum wrote to potential donors in a fund-raising e-mail message on Wednesday. "I saw what happened to Tom Cruise and Brittany Spears when the media turned ugly and the world became a cold, cashfree place.
"They're going to come after me now," Mr. Santorum warned, channeling the ghost of Richard Milhous Nixon.
Sure enough, Mr. Mitts-Free Romney began attacking Mr. Santorum directly on Wednesday, saying at a stop in Georgia, "During Senator Santorum's entire time in Washington, he never once auditioned for a Broadway play, let alone a camp, limp attempt at a revivial. Hell, he's not done that well off-off Broadway, if you want my opinion."
Mr. Santorum accused Mr. Romney of being a "mushy plate of greenish jello" and said he "doesn't even have a clean clear conservative & appropriately apolocalyptic vision for America, despite being a card carrying tenth generation Mormon whose favorite biblical book is Number 3 Nephi," which most American voters assume is a choice on Chinese menus.
"He's even weird for a Mormon," Santorum has said in one accidentally-televised asides to aides. "He's only got ten kids, fer Christ's sake."
The essence of Mr. Santorum's message is that he is the true conservative, sans apolocolypse. It is intended to appeal to the ideologically illogical base of the Republican Party that is turning out in the primaries, but it has the advantage of being in sync with Mr. Santorum's values: spend money (but not your own) to make money for your friends and campaign contributors, make war only on countries whose names begin with a vowel, eat all your vegetables and don't accidentally nuke Russia or even joke about it on TV.
Aides said Mr. Santorum would build on his advantages. He has used the recent debates to criticize Mr. Romney and Mr. Gingrich on three issues that define the race for many conservative voters: getting the poor off the streets and safely into prisons, a state-of-the-art lunar base and economic bailouts for Facebook friends of Mr. Romney and Mr. Gingrich.
Mr. Romney and Mr. Gingrich have supported them at one time or another and Mr. Santorum has opposed them.
"We're the only ones who can own those issues," Mr. Brawearer said.
"I think the reason Santorum didn't get more votes before was because of the belief that he couldn't win," said Walt Disney, an organizer for the Tea Party in Reno, Nev. But, Mr. Disney said, he voted for Mr. Santorum mainly because "he was the only candidate I could stomach," and he expects other Tea Party members are coming to the same conclusion.
Gastronomically speaking, Santorum is the only digestible choice on the right wing dinner menu.
"The love has been pouring in and it, along with cold hard cash, will increase after last night," Mr. Disney said.
He also pointed to what he saw as the fortunate emergence in recent days on the national scene of several issues of intense social importance to ultra right wing radicals - faggots, fornication and the Pill - just as Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado, with their strongholds of well-armed conservative voters, were preparing to go to the polls.
"The conventional wisdom is that it's always the economy, and of course it is for most Americans," Mr. Brawearer said. "But no one is able to call a 'time out' on these values issues, and I wouldn't be surprised if in part that helped stimulate voters to turn out for Senator Santorum."
The "Carrie" Broadway revival stock is suddenly soaring, which can only help Santorum in his bid to win the Republican nod for presidency.
Whether he can carry <sic> off the role of an outcast teen girl whose classmates tease her for getting her period, let alone the somewhat more challenging role of leader of the Free World, remains to be seen as America once again goes to the polls and pretends to believe U.S. democracy is more than a Disney fantasy.
