Santorum warns GOP shouldn’t pick party’s nominee too quickly

There’s a danger in picking a Republican presidential nominee too quickly, Rick Santorum warned Tuesday.

“If we decide on a nominee next week, Barack Obama will spend the next six weeks beating the brains out of the nominee,” Santorum said on Glenn Beck’s radio show. “There’s an advantage of not having a nominee.” 

{mosads}Santorum’s comments come just ahead of primaries in Mississippi and Alabama on Tuesday. 

Polls released Monday found a tight race in both states. A Public Policy Polling (PPP) survey for Alabama found Mitt Romney ahead with 31 percent support of likely Republican voters, followed by Newt Gingrich at 30 percent and Rick Santorum at 29 percent. Similarly, in Mississippi, PPP found Gingrich with 33 percent followed by Romney at 31 percent and Santorum at 27 percent.

Also on Monday, Santorum’s campaign released a strategy memo arguing that Santorum could win the nomination if the race goes all the way to the Republican National Convention. The memo suggested that the Santorum campaign thinks Romney will be unable to win the sufficient amount of delegates to clinch the nomination ahead of the convention and that the former Pennsylvania senator’s best chance is to hold out until then.

“Mitt Romney must have a majority on the first ballot in order to win the nomination because he will perform worse on subsequent ballots as grassroots conservative delegates decide to back the more conservative candidate,” the memo, written by Santorum adviser John Yob, read. “Subsequently, Santorum only needs to be relatively close on the initial ballot in order to win on a later ballot as Romney’s support erodes.”