for months he struggled to gain traction, but in the most recent polling, he is in third place behind front-runners mitt romney and ron paul. so is santorum's rise an indication of growing popularity, or is it a result of so many of his rivals falling flat earlier in this campaign? i posed that question to elsie granderson, a contributor to cnn.com and senior writer at espn and cnn contributor will cain. >> santorum's rise has correlated with newt gingrich's fall. some of that support is going over to santorum. let's not take away what santorum has accomplished. he's put in a lot of hard work. he's visited every county in iowa. his campaign seems tailor made for iowa. social values, family values, social conservativism. that plays well to iowa. you'd expect that rick santorum could do well in iowa and now looks like he is doing well. >> i want to play this sound from nbc "meet the press" this morning. david gregory pressed santorum