Johnston, Iowa — “Please! Move for the senator! Arms back! Get outta the way!”
Near midnight on Tuesday, in a cramped, first-floor hallway at the Stoney Creek Inn, it was a madhouse, a circus of flying elbows and Klieg lights. Rick Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator — who for months could barely draw a local blogger to his events — was suddenly at the center of the American political scene, the near-winner of the Iowa caucuses. As he made his way toward the stage, Santorum was swarmed by scores of reporters and supporters. Slow step by slow step, his advisers, Secret Service–style, tried to shield him from the melee. Santorum, wide-eyed, shook hands and smiled, and said the same refrain to each bystander: “Thank you.”
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Santorum’s wife, Karen, and six of their seven children trailed him, saying few words on the long stroll to the dais. Their expressions echoed their father’s shell-shocked exuberance. About five years ago, Santorum lost his Senate reelection bid by 18 points, and as the election-night cameras rolled, most of the children cried as their father conceded. Now, marching together, they were composed, to be sure, but still emotional. “Everybody lost it a little bit when they heard the news,” says Mike Biundo, Santorum’s campaign manager. “But they were good tears.”
Once at the podium, Santorum quoted Christian apologist C. S. Lewis, and thanked his family; he applauded his political team and reflected on his Iowa travels. Then he turned to the next battlefield, New Hampshire, which will hold its primary on Tuesday. As he has done on the trail all winter, Santorum highlighted his populist message, with its emphasis on reviving U.S. manufacturing. That blue-collar appeal, he said, will be his campaign’s unabashed message as it looks to challenge Mitt Romney, the frontrunner in most national polls. In contrast to Romney, a son of Michigan privilege and Harvard grad, Santorum hopes to be the working-class hero.
“The message I shared with you tonight is not an Iowa message or an Iowa-and-South Carolina message,” Santorum said. “It’s a message that will resonate across this land.” Indeed, in conversations with National Review Online, Santorum’s senior advisers hint that gritty, middle-class rhetoric could be a recipe for success in New Hampshire, where recession-plagued factory towns dot the state’s ten counties. Romney, the Santorum aides argue, has spent millions making the Granite State his “firewall,” but their guy, with his Rust Belt roots, could easily surge. New Hampshire may have a “moderate” reputation, Biundo says, but it has a history of choosing populist conservatives, such as Pat Buchanan in the 1996 Republican primary.
Biundo, a longtime New Hampshire political operative, was a member of Buchanan’s campaign team that year, and hopes to apply lessons learned from that race. “He’s not pundit-driven, he’s not consultant-driven, he’s real,” Biundo says of Santorum, and with his history of winning tough races in Pennsylvania’s “coal towns and steel towns,” the potential is palpable. Already, over 23 state legislators in New Hampshire have endorsed him and “my phone keeps lighting up,” Biundo says, with a slew of experienced political hands ready to assist.
“There are a lot of pockets of opportunity,” Biundo says. He cites Rockingham County, in the state’s southeast corner, Carroll County in the central slice of the state, and the city of Manchester as areas that “could be really good for us.” Same goes for Nashua and the “North Country, where the paper mills have closed.” Santorum “understands what is needed to win in those areas,” he says. “With everyone else just glib and glamour, and talking in sound bites, he is going to do well. Not everyone will agree with him, but they’ll believe him.”
“We’re not like these other campaigns that look at New Hampshire, surrender, and say ‘We can’t be competitive there; we’re going to the South.’ We think South Carolina is extremely important, and we’re the only ones who’ve won a straw poll there. But we think that to be a legitimate presidential candidate, you have to, at the very least, be willing to compete in each region of the country,” says John Brabender, Santorum’s senior strategist. “And that includes the Northeast. We’re not expecting to walk into every place and feel like we have to win, but going to New Hampshire lets us continue a dialogue with the country. That’s where the press is, that’s where people are paying attention, and we want to show we have national strength.”
As Republicans, as Conservatives, as lovers of liberty, we're supposed to be above class.
Sure, we might stoke a populist cord for strategic reasons sometimes in the general, but we shouldn't have to be hoaky to pull the classicist wool over our OWN eyes in a primary!!
Santorum's heartfelt rhetoric hardly reflects the class warfare we've become accustomed to from Democrats but rather embraces the ethos of the American dream.
As a small business entrepreneur who started with nothing but a few thousand dollars and a dream, Santorum's "populist chord" resonates quite well with me, and quite likely with others who share my experience.
The American Dream thrives on freedom and opportunity, both of which are suffocated by statist bureaucracies and the regulations they generate.
Santorum's cultural convictions reflect the eternal truth that when the internal restraint of virtue is removed or weakened, the external restraint of the state becomes necessary and even justified.
The Left has ridiculed, impugned, and even sought to redefine virtue, paving the way for a heavy-handed (well intentioned, of course) Federal government to assist in managing our lives.
CAH@Plano:
A classicist is someone who studies the ancient world of Greece and Rome. A classist is someone who exploits class difference for political and economic advantage. Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist; Barak Obama is a classist.
Thanks for that, but that doesn't change my point that we shouldn't want our working class hero...just a liberty-loving American. The conservative sirens near our shores don't sing John Lennon!
blue collar my butt ... wait until the nation learns of his spending of PA treasure and his elitist lifestyle cloaked in "blue collar" living. google his children's education and his residence during his PA senate run
Nothing anti-liberty in Santorum's story, and if you call that "hoaky" you are really cynical. He's talking about FAMILY and working for a living, not some labor union BS.
I happen to come from a blue collar background as well, maybe I grew up less well off than Mr. Santorum. Actually I don't think most of my relatives or ancestors wore collars. My parents did not go to college, neither did their parents, or my great grand parents some of whom were immigrants. So I guess I'm kind of the first person in my family with a degree, not that is something I dwell on, and I had to work while I was in college, at one point I was working two jobs while going to school.
I honestly have to say I don't really care for the class identity politics stuff, in fact it kind of ticks me off that people that is going to get my vote. Just because his grandfather was coal miner that is not going to get my vote. I want someone who has the right economic policies. Frankly he is a bit guilty of a being a bit of a demagogue on trade. Some of us simple folk are actually capable of reading-- even reading stuff that others find boring, and some of us have read the work of one French classical liberal theorist and political economist named Claude Frederic Bastiat, and can understand the superiority of comparative advantage theory over the foolish ideas of protectionists which Mr. Santorum mindlessly pandered to as a member of Congress by voting against trade deals that are beneficial to the economy.
I never really got class envy, maybe because everyone else that grew up around me wasn't all that rich either. Romney is a rich guy, and honestly I'm not jealous, and he can talk about his money all he wants. I don't care. Hopefully someday, if I have kids, my kids can be rich guys who grew up as privileged too. I like their chances of that a better if Romney is president as he understands the economy where Santorum does not, even though he apparently can empathize more, and we need someone who understands the economy- not what it is like to be middle class or lower, the importance of trade- not someone who panders to protectionist fools, and someone doesn't want to do what Santorum wants to do, and that is to try, foolishly, to determine where the economic growth will come from with his selective tax cuts for some sectors of the economy and leaving them high in others. That is a dumb policy.
It will be a fine line Santorum walks as he evokes the lost middle class. I realize they are not so lost, but I know the narrative. It is Romney's weak spot, as consultant/takeover groups track record on actually running enterprises is not all that strong. Bain is fine, but like all the rest of the big consulting houses they are overly reliant on favorable tax provisions and using the target firm's equity to finance the deal and the consultant/broker's fees. Then the sale a few years later to reap all the equity and the takeover firm is gone. If that debt kills the enterprise long term, tough. So I don't have warm and fuzzy feelings - people like Mitt, not that he is bad guy - use debt financing to line their pockets and spin the business, much like people in the recent housing bubble did. They risk little of their own capital in the process. This worked when the US worker was way overpaid compared to the world, but that is changing. Now you need to actually run a business that can work the long term - that means tough long term decisions on wages, and inventory, and capital investment. Romney is no different than any other financier in that they usually aren't very good at that because in the end your financial models can only give you suggestions. There is more art involved in real business management than we give credit.
All of Mitt's successes revolve around short term actions - which probably explains his flip-flopping. The models said say this in Massachussetts, and this in '08 and this in '11/12. But what does he really believe? His business background never required him to confront his financial models long term, and his electorial successes and failures haven't either - which probably explains why he doesn't make a personal connection with people and why he is stuck at 25%, and why as a candidate he has lost way more often than he has won. No one knows what he believes because in reality he really doesn't either, or thinks it doesn't matter. I'm not suggesting any other ulterior motives here - he seems to be an honest guy, devoted to wife and family and faithful to his religious beliefs. That is all to the positive, but I think he lacks the next part that people are looking for. So I think he is in no way shape or form necessarily our best candidate to take out Obama.
The issue of logistics and inventory, and worker productivity and increasing wage rates in China and India have started to bring about a migration of manufacturing work back to the US, so Santorum may get lucky that the trends are working in his favor. But it will never be what it was in the 50s, when most of the industrial capacity in the world had been bombed out and we were the only game in town, and where technology today has reduced the need for people in factories. But there is still some need.
If Santorum cannot make the case in a non-protectionist way, I don't think in the end it will play, but I do know the nation's mood, and economically this wipes out Obama's class envy we hate success rhetoric. Because with the hard economic times the other shoe along with anti-immigration (which spans both parties) is concern about what free trade means. I will be intersted to see if Santorum can climb to respectability in NH how he handles that dynamic. Blatant free trade bashing would be a mistake.
In the end his soft underbelly is cultural issues, which the young foolishly believe has no impact on their economic future because they have been indoctrinated into believing that, despite it being incorrect. Big govt strangles business formation which produces economic uncertainty and this uncertainty is more pronounced when the cornerstones of the local society - church, family, civic involvement - have been allowed to be undermined by the big uncle Fed Daddy and his crack entitlement candy. Talk to employers about their desire to hire workers who haven't worked in a year or two. They don't want to look at them for the most part. We were just being compassionate goes the argument. But how are these people ever going to get a decent paying job again, the odds aren't good. They are probably never going to be really employable again - thank you uncle O.
I am not sure Santorum can get to the point that the cultural war can't be won in Washington. But we could at least stop Washington from running roughshod over everyone else. Roe v Wade is a terrible decision whether you support abortion or not. It is a state issue. The problem is the fed, through the judiciary, decided to force itself into a situation that will be different from state to state. I would expect California and Iowa to have very different stances and laws on the practice. What is wrong with that? Let the pro-life try and convince the other side why abortion should be more restricted as opposed to adding an amendment to make it illegal everywhere. We just went through the annual creche complaint season. The feds have zero reason to be involved.
Cultural issues are local. The ones trying to get into our bedrooms and schools and public places isn't the conservatives - its the Feds. And it is killing the inderpinings of society that foster risk taking, and responsibility, and success. And thatis what the young don't understand.
Richard, do you support free trade (MFN without conditions as currently implemented) with a China that heavily subsidizes its industries, produces some of its goods using slave labor in prison camps, and uses the profits to fund a military stategy that opposes our interests and may eventually threaten our safety and even the existence of civilization? I understand that it's more profitable to have someone in a (totalitarian!) third world country make goods, but even economics doesn't exist in a vacuum.
I'd certainly vote for Santorum over Obama. However, my Italian immigrant background can match his and more, and is hardly the point in 2012.
Santorum's focus and attitude while he was our PA senator was ideological. He was abrasive and very unappealing to liberals and moderates. In 2008 the country moved against the Republicans but he sunk lower than most in suffering a major defeat as an imcumbant Senator to Bob Casey, a very weak candidate who, however, neutralized the abortion issue. People were tired of his combative, one-sided attitude.
We have just had 4 years of governance by unilateral ideology. This time let's have a problem solver.
I don't see it as pandering, or playing the class card. I see it as a useful way of getting to know the man. Where you come from says a lot about who you are.
So...the last couple of decades of economic policy that have embraced comparative advantage and ignored protecting American manufacturing jobs has helped us in what exact ways?
It seems that "fair trade" in its various forms...particularly NAFTA...has turned out to be anything but "fair" to the American worker.
So, the jobs leaving the country went from a trickle to a tsunami...and now what? Oh...the current answer seems to be a continuing increase in the welfare state underwritten by an ever decreasing pool of producers...somehow this does not suggest a winning strategy except at the short term ballot box by those that gain a subsistence existence for doing nothing.
"protecting American manufacturing jobs" - protecting one group's jobs and dispersing the higher resulting costs to everyone else is use of the state to privilege some over others, and is meddling with the means of production. Now, what group wants to involve the state in the means of production?
Great news!! I just knew I was laboring under a delusion by believing that the "New" Ultra Conservatives were anti-Working Class. What a relief to know that a man who favors Corporations so much has been able to masterfully blend the interests of the working stiff and the boardroom stockholders. Isn't propaganda wonderful? It's the only game where a horse (the American Public) is able to be fed enough grease to enable it to swallow a brick.
Santorum has said that he thinks the states can outlaw contraception, and he wants to explain the "dangers" of birth control to the Americans. Will he soon tell us more about that?
Santorum also opposes abortion even in cases of forcible rape. A woman gets raped by some stranger, Santorum believes she has to spend the next nine months pregnant with the rapist's child.
Any candidate who takes that position can forget about winning the female Independent vote.
Whether you personally agree with it or not, it's a political non-starter in a country which is divided on the abortion issue as it is.
Nobody needs to win self-styled independents in San Fran-sicko or Boston or New York. They need to win Ohio, Indiana, North Carolina, Florida, Nevada, and Colorado.
There's nothing wrong with Rick Santorum's position logically either. Murdering the child is unacceptable. It is completely innocent of the crime. Our laws don't even provide for executing the RAPIST, and you want to butcher a little defenseless kid? What kind of irrational monsters have we become as a society?
Now that he thinks he has to win other voters besides Iowan evangelicals...I think his "dangers of contraception" rhetoric will magically disappear, atleast in front of live mikes and running cameras.
Santorum has said that he thinks the states can outlaw contraception
Under any literate reading of the Constitution, of course the states can do that. However, they would not ban contraceptives any more than they would establish Wicca as the state religion. Nor does Santorum, who was making a constitutional point, think they ought to. Anti-contraception laws were never enforced before activists trumped up the case that became Griswold v. Connecticut. I'd love to hear your constitutional defense of that holding.
and he wants to explain the "dangers" of birth control to the Americans. Will he soon tell us more about that?
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