One reason is the obvious one: Santorum is simply better at communicating with average voters. He may not have an appreciation for Michigan’s lakes or know the size of its trees. His father may not have served as governor or run a car company. But his grandfather did work briefly for a Detroit automaker before moving to Pennsylvania, where he worked as a coal-miner. That allows Santorum to talk about his life in a way that typical voters can understand – and appreciate. When Santorum mentioned that his grandfather stayed on the job until he was 72, one audience member let out a very audible "whoa."

Still, Santorum was connecting with his audience for another reason. The middle of Santorum’s speech was a riff about community – and the importance of getting past more materialistic needs. He reminded his audience that previous generations of Americans didn’t have so many gadgets or creature comforts: “They had nothing compared to what we have today.” But, Santorum went on to say, they had strong communities and neighborhoods. “They were rich in social capital, not rich in money.”

After the speech, a pair of Romney campaign advisers trailing Santorum pulled me aside, to point out that Santorum had said almost nothing about jobs. I think they were right. (I actually missed the first five minutes so I can’t be sure.) But I don't think that was accidental. Santorum’s pitch isn’t really about economic opportunity. It’s about a way of life – a way of life that he believes is disappearing. Audiences like these seem to agree.

And maybe they have a point. You don’t have to endorse Santorum’s retrograde ideas about the family in order to believe that rising out-of-wedlock birth is a bad thing. You don't have to indulge conservative nostalgia for the 1950s, an era when the United States systematically disenfranchised and segregated African-Americans, to think that social capital may be in decline.

But if Santorum has identified some real problems, is he also proposing real solutions? As I listened to Santorum vow and end to “Obama regulations,” I wondered if that included efforts to bolster family and medical leave, so that new parents could stay home with their children. As I heard him promise to tame entitlements, I wondered how dismantling Medicare and Medicaid would make life easier for families with sick and elderly relatives.