Santorum scaring a lot of people, but not Romney; Obama surges

The handful of times I’ve been around Rick Santorum, he’s been a pleasant man, nothing like the hard-edged cultural warrior you might expect. But if you haven’t seen it, you should check out the scary video his campaign has produced (above) depicting the apocalyptic nightmare that awaits small town America if President Obama is re-elected.

It’s powerful because it plays on emotion, and it’s particularly creepy that Obama’s picture is quickly flashed in between menacing images of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In that series of images, the phrase “sworn American enemy” is rapidly followed by Obama’s picture.

The video producer, veteran Pennsylvania media consultant John Brabender, has denied that the Obama images are intended as subliminal messages. He told NPR’s David Folkenflik, “what I was trying to do was show there was going to be this constant back and forth in Iranian-American conflict if Obama is elected.”

Hmmmmm.

I recommend Folkenflik’s take on the piece, which aired a few days ago.

The video is a tease for what Brabender says will be an eight-part series on the campaign’s website.

While the video is scary, Santorum’s poll numbers in his home state are looking pretty tame. The latest survey of 500 Republicans by Franklin & Marshall college shows Santorum’s lead over Mitt Romney, which was 29 points last month, has shrunk to just two points.

The poll showed Santorum leading Romney 30 to 28 percent, with 24 percent undecided. Newt Gingrich finished fourth with six percent, three points behind Ron Paul.

You can read the new Franklin & Marshall poll here.

UPDATE: Because the Franklin & Marshall survey polled only Republicans, it didn’t measure how president Obama would do against any of his GOP rivals. But a new Quinnipiac poll finds the prez ahead in the key states of Ohio, Florida, and yes, Pennsylvania.

I picked this up from our buddy, John Micek, Harrisburg correspondent of the Allentown Morning Call, whose Capitol Ideas blog is a must-read if you want to know what’s going on in Pennsylvania government or politics.