Daily Santorum: Softening the edge?

The clock is ticking down on Rick Santorum's presidential campaign announcement in Somerset on Monday, which brings us to this major get by Good Morning America -- George Stephanopoulos will interview him live on GMA beforehand. GMA is even soliciting questions for the ex Senator here, which . . . could get ugly.
Stephanopoulos is an interesting pick for RS, given that he's an ex Bill Clinton aide. (He usually talks to a different network.) But there are signals out there that Santorum is trying to soften his hard-right image, which til this point has been his major calling card. But with his early poll numbers stagnant or even slipping, the Boston Globe (following him in Manchester on Monday) says he's now trying to carve out a broader image, at least in the Granite State:

“I have a pretty long and clear record on these issues so people question me on them,’’ Santorum said in an interview. But he said media coverage of him focusing only on social issues ignores 90 percent of what he does.

. . . Despite 17 trips to New Hampshire since April 2010, Santorum has hovered at around 2 percent in the polls, according to Andrew Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. Smith said that can be attributed to a lack of name recognition and the New Hampshire public’s perception of Santorum as a religious social conservative.

“If your major reason for running is a socially conservative agenda, you won’t run very well with Republicans in New Hampshire,’’ Smith said. A 2009 Gallup study ranked New Hampshire as the second least religious state in the country. University of New Hampshire polls show Republican primary voters in the state are more supportive of abortion rights than the country as a whole.