By David Madden

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — A top adviser to GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum suggests the former US senator from Pennsylvania could win his party’s nomination if fellow candidate Newt Gingrich gets out of the race.

That won’t happen in the short term, but could that strategy work?

The idea, says St. Joseph’s University political science professor Randall Miller, would be to coalesce the conservatives, and maybe some Tea Party people, behind Santorum, who may lack the money and political organization of frontrunner Mitt Romney but still enjoys a good deal of momentum.

Miller is among those who think Santorum can perhaps pull off the upset.

“If people are looking for ‘anybody but Romney,’ ” he tells KYW Newsradio, “and if Santorum doesn’t push the social stuff so much, which doesn’t play as well as he would like, who knows?”

At Drexel University, meanwhile, poli sci professor Dr. Bill Rosenberg suggests that next week’s “Super Tuesday” may not thin the herd, causing the battle to drag out to the party convention in Tampa in August.