Santorum: On to South Carolina January 10, 2012, 9:20 pm MANCHESTER, N.H. - After his disappointing showing Tuesday in the New Hampshire primary, Rick Santorum is banking on South Carolina to regain the momentum he had a week ago, when he nearly won the Iowa caucuses. Mr. Santorum did not spend any money on television advertising in New Hampshire. His campaign figured that Mitt Romney had such a wide lead here that even if Mr. Santorum gained a few percentage points, aides said, it would not matter. The Santorum campaign has raised $3 million since Iowa and is already pumping $1.5 million of it into television ads in South Carolina. The ads began running Tuesday. John Braebender, a top adviser and media strategist for Mr. Santorum, said the moderate voters of New Hampshire were not a natural constituency for Mr. Santorum. But, he said, the campaign decided to compete here because doing so offered priceless national media exposure without draining scarce resources. "If we had just gone to South Carolina, we would have disappeared from the national radar and our fund-raising would have gone downhill," Mr. Braebender said. The campaign also thought that if Mr. Santorum did not compete here, his potential voters would have gone to Newt Gingrich, whom the Santorum campaign sees as its main competition as the conservative alternative to Mr. Romney. Mr. Santorum stayed on his conservative message here, which Mr. Braebender said would make it easier for him to continue that approach in South Carolina. Others, including Mr. Romney and Jon M. Huntsman Jr., made explicit appeals to the moderates in New Hampshire. It will be hard for them to do an about-face to appeal to the conservative voters in South Carolina, he said. The Santorum campaign has a bigger campaign presence in South Carolina than it had here and has redeployed its forces from here and Iowa. It is also starting to organize county chairmen in Florida.