In a Republican nomination contest full of “second looks,” former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum may be heading toward a “first look” in the finale of the Iowa caucuses.
If you watched any of the Republican debates, you saw Santorum, a 53-year-old Catholic father of seven. He was the guy standing at the end of the candidate lineup complaining about not getting enough questions. Newt Gingrich clawed back into contention by scorching debate moderators for their bias and stupidity; Santorum stayed in the second tier while scolding moderators for not paying more attention to him.
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It wasn’t the best forensic tack, but Santorum’s frustration was understandable. It had to irk him to watch the ill-informed novice Herman Cain soar to the top of the polls on the basis of his booming personality and unworkable 9-9-9 tax plan, then get showered with donations when past allegations of sexual harassment surfaced. If a fraction of that windfall had gone to Santorum simply for being a principled conservative and exemplary family man, he’d have more resources to compete in the intense Iowa ad wars.
Santorum is the great paradox of the Republican field: At a time when primary voters say they are desperate for a candidate of conviction and consistency, Santorum is both on a range of issues, yet he hasn’t had a proverbial moment. Too earnest and too conventional, he lacks the personal pizzazz that has temporarily boosted the Republican shooting stars. He’s worked to make up for it with an admirably tireless 99-county grass-roots campaign in Iowa that has taken voters and the issues seriously.
Santorum’s calling card is his social conservatism, and he’s competing for Iowa’s evangelical voters with Texas governor Rick Perry and Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann. Santorum is more knowledgeable than Perry and more careful than Bachmann, and he has demonstrated more swing-state appeal than both by winning two statewide races in heavily Democratic Pennsylvania. His 18-point reelection shellacking in 2006 is his albatross, although Ronald Reagan himself might have lost in Pennsylvania in that GOP annus horribilis.
It didn’t help that Santorum’s outspokenness on social issues — especially those related to homosexuality — made him a figure of hatred and vulgar mockery on the left. But he’s not a thoughtless culture warrior, in it for the bombast. Santorum links his social conservatism to the struggles of the working class in one of the few thematic departures in a Republican primary that has been more about personalities and past heterodoxies than substantive differences.
In the debates, Santorum has constantly talked about increasing economic mobility. In a heresy for a Republican, he’s acknowledged that some countries in Europe are more mobile than we are, and he has noted the disparity between the unemployment rates of college-educated and non-college-educated Americans. Santorum proposes zeroing out the corporate tax rate for manufacturers to provide them a boost as a source of blue-collar jobs. “We need to talk about people at the bottom of the income scale being able to get necessary skills and rise so they can support themselves and a family,” Santorum said at the CNBC economy debate. He’s right, although he is one of the few Republicans who seem determined to have the conversation.
He’s always clear that the breakdown of the family is an inescapable factor in limiting economic aspiration. He cites the widely divergent poverty rates of two-parent and single-parent families. “You can’t have limited government,” he says, “if the family breaks down.” He speaks powerfully of how, when he was growing up in a very modest home, a mother and father were “the most important gift I was given.” He wants to triple the personal deduction for each child, making his tax-reform proposal the most pro-family of any on offer from the GOP candidates.
Santorum has seen a slight bump in the Iowa polls. He is still grinding it out on the ground and hoping it translates into a last-minute surge. Republican voters could do worse, and so far this year, at times already have.
I like Rick Santorum because of his position on the social issues. But a two-term congressman and one term senator is an awfully think resume, and he lost his last senate election to boot. It speaks poorly of the GOP field that he's considered as a strong contender.
He served 2 terms in the Senate, not one. Served from 1994-2007. And he didn't serve those terms on the sidelines: he was the third-ranking Republican in Senate, led on welfare reform, partial-birth abortion law.
He was a two term congressman and a two term Senator, 16 years as a legislator. That's more experience than Obama, Carter, Truman, JFK and arguably even Reagan, Nixon, GWB or FDR, although I'd disagree with the last four because they had executive experience.
The thinness of his resume is not the problem. The problem is that he's too focused on issues that, frankly, are not going to decide the election, and his image among swing voters, rightly or wrongly, is mud. And he doesn't have enough time to repair his image,
Exactly. The debate next year is going to be about domestic fiscal policies. Dodd/Frank, Obamacare, Spending and the Debt. It needs to be about the failure of Obama's administration on the economy.
Santorum's social positions, regardless of whether you agree with him or not, will serve as a negative in the election. It will provide a target for Obama and the Legacy Media to attack. In other words, it will be, at best, a distraction. It will allow the D's a chance to re-elect Obama by portraying Santorum as unacceptably out of the mainstream.
Are you sure Rick Santorum is the one that's too focused on those issues, or is it that those issues are the only ones the media thinks they can make any hay focusing on? Rick Santorum's got solid positions on Border Enforcement, Iran, Fed Job-killing, Entitlement Reform, and Budget Cuts. He may have a common theme that strong families make for a strong America, but he's done anything but ignore the fiscal, regulatory, and foreign crises.
Santorum was a two term Senator -- not a one term Senator. During his second term he was number three in the Senate Republican leadership. That -- together with his significant legislative accomplishments -- do not constitute a "thin" resume. And as a Pennsylvanian, I can say that I highly doubt that any other current Republican presidential candidate could have won a state-wide race in Pennsylvania in 2006. Moreover, with the exception of Romney, he is the only current canddiate that has ever won a state-wide race in a blue state (unlike Romney, Santorum did it twice).
I live in Pa. as well, Santorums' stance on intelligent design did not help him, he along with a host of other state and local officials were booted, at least in part, for promoting the teaching of creationism in public schools. There was an entire school board voted out, near Harrisburg, Dover?, because they tried to force "creation lite" on parents and their kids. While I thought voting out the third most powerful Republican in the Senate at the time, was a bad move for Pa. He was clearly on the wrong side of this issue and suffered for it.
Better than the half-termer demonstrably incompetent than we have now. I have discussed national security with Rick - he's better on that than most might know.
People forget: Abraham Lincoln lost more elections than he ever won, including the Senatorial election of 1858, just two years before his election to the Presidency. The argument that he lost in 2006 is a lame excuse, and is intended as a scare tactic by those who don't like him anyway.
As for his support for Specter: remember that he believed that Specter had a better chance of winning the general election than had Toomey that year. And, furthermore, he extracted from Specter a pledge to allow conservative nominees through the Judiciary Committee. If Toomey had been the nominee that year, Republicans might well have lost the Senate altogether, and a Democrat chairman of the Judiciary surely would have let NONE of Bush's nominees through the committee.
Yes, Santorum is very right about the social issues -- the family is key to the economic and cultural revival of America. He is right on this, as on so many other issues. This emphasis of his is proof of his wisdom in an age of sound-bites and "gotcha's"!
"If Toomey had been the nominee that year, Republicans might well have lost the Senate altogether"
Republicans picked up a net 4 Senate seats that year (2004), so this doesn't make any sense. That he had to get Specter to concede to allow conservative nominees through committee isn't exculpatory information, it just highlights how poor his judgement was in the first place. Besides, if Santorum was justified in backing Specter over Toomey due to 'electability concerns', then it stands to reason that we as primary voters should factor in the same criteria and tell Santorum thanks, but no thanks.
I agree, the GOP could do far worse, and have in the likes of Cain, Newt, Perry and Bachmann.
Santorum is the one person in this race, other than Romney that I could support. Yes, his resume is thin, but he has the character, the intellect, and the right positions and knowledge on the issues.
He far surpasses the rest of the field, and I think the reason is that he comes off as an arrogant whiner in the debates. If he had been able to come across as more likeable, he would be doing better. As it is, I hope to see him beat out the motley crew of Paul, Newt, Perry and Michele.
Rick Santorum expressly rejects the Tenth Amendment, and asserts that States do NOT have the right to pass laws that conttradict traditional morality. Santorum said the following at the Ames debate:
"Michelle Bachmann says that she would go in and fight health care being imposed by states, but she wouldn’t go in and fight marriage being imposed by the states. That would be okay. We have Ron Paul saying oh, whatever the states want to do under the Tenth Amendment is fine. So if the states want to pass polygamy, that’s fine. If the states want to impose sterilization, that’s fine. No! Our country is based on moral laws, ladies and gentleman. There are things the states can’t do. Abraham Lincoln said “the states do not have the right to do wrong.” I respect the Tenth Amendment, but we are a nation that has values. We are a nation that was built on a moral enterprise. And states don’t have the right to tramp over those because of the Tenth Amendment."
This is flatly wrong, and any person who so grossly rejects the Tenth Amendment is not fit to hold any office in the federal government. Every single other candidate in the republican field this year (including Trump, Johnson, but perhaps not Cain - who did not have a clear ideological foundation anyway) is vastly more qualified than Santorum on the Constitution.
Face it, the ONLY reason you support Santorum is likely the ONLY reason you almost certainly supported Huckabee in the past: he is a sincere Christian. When most politicians only pretend to be Christian, it is refreshing to see guys like Santorum who are legitimate believers. But that does not make the guy qualified to be President.
Sorry, but if nothing else the 14th Amendment insures that no matter what state you live in the 10th Amendment can never allow the States to commit abominations like slavery against a vulnerable population. Likewise, a fair-minded grasp of Equal Protection makes it clear that no state to legalize murders - even murders of children in-utero or elderly people who have been deemed "useless eaters."
Even then, the argument that everything not explicitly prohibited must be permitted to the States by the 10th Amendment is laughable, and was likewise laughable in Madison's day.
I don't know how a guy who lost his last election by 18 points should be considered a serious candidate.
Also I think he takes the social issues a little too far to actually be electable, I don't think a majority of American's hold his views on contraceptions for example. He is young for a presidential candidate at 53, but in some ways he is a relic. I don't know if a Rick Santorum can be elected president in America, not anymore.
He should be considered at least as serious as Gingrich and Bachmann (who have never won statewide office) and Romney (who declined to run for re-election for fear of a shellacking). If a track record of winning big elections is a primary criterion, then Perry, Santorum, and Huntsman are the only candidates who would make the cut.
Mr. Redhunter,
Mr. Santorum is a two term House of Rep ('91-'95) and a two term Senator ('95-'07). 2006 wasn't a great year to be up for reelection as a Republican.
I generally like Santorum but when he first announced, my reaction was that he was running for Secretary of Health & Human Services, or Attorney General. I never considered him a serious Presidential condender from the start.
His shelacking in 2006 may partially be due to teh fact that he drew the ire of conservatives by supporting Arlen Specter over Pat Toomey.
His whininess at the debates and his tendancy to drone on about his record in the Senate didn't do much to increase his appeal.
Many Iowa voters may want to influence who wins, amongst the leading contenders in the polls. If I were in Iowa, I would hesitate to vote Santorum because I may think I am "throwing away your vote" on the guy who is going to get 3% of the vote.
As much as I like Santorum the media would pounce on his position on the social issues and would probably scare away more independents than the GOP can afford to lose.
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