Keep an eye on Artur Davis. He’s a former Democratic congressman from Alabama who has always had strong disagreements with his party. Davis is now contributing to National Review Online; first on Ben Nelson’s retirement and now on the GOP presidential primary. This morning he offers this effusive praise for Rick Santorum:

The case for Rick Santorum — and yes, at this juncture, that phrase still feels weird — is that he is a conviction conservative with immigrant, middle-class roots who empathizes with battered places Republicans normally don’t see. If you don’t yet buy it, watch his might-as-well-be-a-victory-speech in Iowa: It was simply the best Republican rhetoric in the last decade.
The former senator powerfully articulated the case that too much entitlement weakens individual resolve; that the working and middle classes can be as endangered by unrestrained corporations as they are by big government; and that revitalizing shattered communities is a conservative enterprise too. He smartly acknowledged that neither party has exactly been preoccupied with the middle class, or the deteriorating relationship between work and reward. If it lacked the poetry and the elegant lilt of Obama’s A game, there was a clarity and directness to it that post-Reagan Republicans have struggled to find.

Davis is also talking openly about switching parties; he no longer identifies with his old party and has criticized the party’s opposition to voter-ID laws.

“I’ve heard some people at the national level encouraging me to run as an independent for my old office,” Davis said, referring to the congressional seat he left to run for governor. But he said his home state makes it more difficult than almost any other state to run as an independent. “Alabama is not friendly to independent candidacies.”

Davis was the only member of the Congressional Black Caucus to vote against Obamacare.