Rick Santorum Hopes To Capitalize On Obamacare Arguments In Supreme Court

WASHINGTON -- Rick Santorum will make an appearance on the steps of the Supreme Court on Monday, when the Court will commence three days of arguments as to whether President Obama's health care overhaul is constitutional.

Santorum will speak to the press around midday, a campaign spokesman told The Huffington Post.

For the last month, Santorum has made health care the central theme of his campaign, charging that frontrunner Mitt Romney is "uniquely disqualified" from running against Obama, because Romney passed a health care overhaul as governor of Massachusetts that included a mandate to buy health insurance, like Obama's law.

On Sunday night, Santorum became angry and cursed at a New York Times reporter who he felt had taken out of context his comment that Romney is "the worst Republican in the country to put up against Barack Obama." Santorum told the reporter, Jeff Zeleny, that he was "the worst Republican to run on the issue of Obamacare, and that's what I was talking about."

As national attention turns to Obamacare, Santorum has an opportunity to create momentum in the Republican presidential primary, heading into primary contests in Wisconsin, Maryland and Washington, D.C. on April 3 (he is not on the ballot in D.C.). He is expected only to be competitive in Wisconsin, and even there it is an uphill battle, with the only recent poll in the state showing Santorum down 13 points to Romney.

If Santorum loses all three contests on April 3, it may be hard for him to survive through April to May. After the April 3 contests, there are no primaries for three weeks, and on April 24, Santorum faces a difficult lineup of states, with challenges in his home state of Pennsylvania and four other states voting that day that are advantageous for Romney: New York, Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island. In May, however, there are some primaries that favor him in Southern states.