No, I don't think he would have beaten Obama. Like most others I think he would have been slaughtered. He is way too far to the right socially at least. He couldn't avoid having his not-so-distant stances on so many social issues brought up that it would have killed him.
Examples: "One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country.... Many of the Christian faith have said, well, that's okay, contraception is okay. It's not okay. It's a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be." —Rick Santorum, interview with CaffeinatedThoughts.com (October 2011)
The vast majority of the country thinks contraception is a good thing and he said this just over a year ago. Only a person who is very ignorant does not know that sex serves more purposes in human life than just procreation.
“Earlier in my political career, I had the opportunity to read the speech, and I almost threw up.” –Rick Santorum, on JFK's 1960 speech about the importance of separation of church and state (October 2011)
Just to fill people in on this speech, here is the transcript.
Transcript: JFK's Speech on His Religion : NPR
JFK wasn't even saying anything about God in school or anything of the sort. He was merely assuring other religions that his being Catholic would not lead him to basically follow the Pope or any other person/mandate from his religion in running the government, as most people feel it should be. And Santorum said he basically found this sickening.
"The reason Social Security is in big trouble is we don't have enough workers to support the retirees. Well, a third of all the young people in America are not in America today
because of abortion.” –Rick Santorum, during a Republican presidential debate (May 2011)
He just made one of the biggest and stupidest links I have ever seen that wasn't associated with a conspiracy theory.
Rick Santorum Quotes - Top 10 Crazy Rick Santorum Quotes
Most of what the guy said was about social issues. He might have gotten more, even many more social conservative voters out, but he wouldn't have gotten very many moderates or independents at all, and could have even kept some of the fiscally conservatives at home because he didn't seem to have a plan at all and seemed fiscally weak. He would have put off many women voters due to his stance, even in his own book, that women were basically better to stay in the home, raising children. He flipflopped on at least one issue, college for all (for it in 2006, but made the comment about it being snobbish this last Feb), although granted it was a very small issue. Stances on education would turn at least some away (against sex ed, wants creationism taught in public school).
And I know this isn't really important to many but he dissed comic books and studying them for cultural influences, on them and from them. He doesn't seem to understand that some of the "great" comic book writers/worlds have addressed cultural issues on a level that many children/teens are better able to relate to than huge novels that many find boring.