The best case for Mitt Romney’s nomination relates to the glee Democrats express whenever any other contender surges in the Republican contest. Virtually every Democrat I know salivated at the prospect of facing another Texas politico who tends to get tongue-tied under bright lights, and who once confused Social Security with Bernie Madoff’s nastiest work; or a former Speaker whose career is soaked in scandal and influence peddling, and who gets churlish under fire. Democrats also lit up e-mail chains on Tuesday night with zeal over Rick Santorum’s finish, and with snide observations about how the harder edges of his social conservatism will play with swing voters.
Democrats don’t want Romney. But it is striking how much of the Romney fear factor is a reductionist, fairly lazy analysis based on the thinnest of factors. One element is the state of current polls, which generally put Romney a little ahead or a little behind Barack Obama, while no one else is close. However, early polls are gauzy, out-of-focus snapshots, and they illustrate mainly that the line of attack on Romney has largely been that he is insufficiently conservative, a charge that doesn’t exactly jar non-conservatives. Another basis for the fear is the notion that Romney has been vetted, has a largely error-free career, and has an executive polish that is not tarnished by votes in Washington.
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That’s all fair enough. The fact, however, is that Democrats have not had to strain to plan the race they would run against Romney. For four days in the week, they will paint him as a flip-flopper who has occupied both sides of a lot of ground; for three days, as an entitled tool of corporate interests who made millions doling out pink slips on behalf of a shadowy management firm.
Imagine if Axelrod and Co. had to ditch the playbook. 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.
So ... "there are voters" who don't like prohibiting a girl who's been raped from getting an abortion; "there are voters" who don't want time and effort spent on amending the constitution to prohibit the marriage of homosexuals; and, yes, "there are voters" who don't want their President, in the middle of a recession, to make war on contraception.
Who are these voters? I'd call them, oh, "the majority".
And since when do we forsake a candidate because he's wealthy? If we're afraid of being tarred and feathered because Romney's successful, we've truly lost our way.
Gingrich tried it, and failed, and shame on him for it.
In any downturn the public is hostile toward large institutions, public or private, union or corporate, foreign and domestic. Persistent unemployment and despair will produce this effect every time. It was there in 1980; it's there today.
A true leader won't jettison his principles to appease the mood of the public (e.g., Santorum's fancy for tariffs). He'll look beyond today to the success the country will enjoy when the right policies become law.
Santorum's compassion is like Bush's ... McCain's ... Rockefeller's ... a fatal weakness that will doom him even if he's elected. Tariffs, and an expanded role for government in health care and education, and his disdain for traditional economic policies that conservatives promote (and which actually work) all lead to, well, the problems we're experiencing now.
Nothing succeeds like success. Grow the economy by implementing traditional conservative policy and the public will choose sides in our favor, just as they did in 1984, when the "callous" and "insensitive" and "greedy" incumbent trounced his opponent's "compassion" by producing results.
Between Clinton's feeling our pain, and Bush's compassionate conservatism, and Obama's hope and change, and Santorum's sympathy for the middle class, I'm tired of politicians emoting their way into office.
How about a candidate who's smart and shrewd, who has ice water running through his veins at just the right times, and who knows what the flip he's doing?
Tariffs??? Thats the best you can do? Tariffs?? Perhaps you could explain how Romney's myriad flip-flops represent "a true leader (who) won't jettison his principles to appease the mood of the public" And you truly believe that Santorum, not the author of Romneycare, will have "an expanded role for government in health care"?? If policies aimed at improving the lot and size of the middle class is seen as a detriment, we may have lost our way already.
"How about a candidate who's smart and shrewd, who has ice water running through his veins at just the right times, and who knows what the flip he's doing?"
He has icewater in his veins because he's an unconservative, soulless technocrat, who believes in nothing but getting in power.
Santorum has admittedly been overlooked in the presence of the bright shining stars of the Republican primary.
As each star slowly (or not so slowly) burns out, the substance of each candidate is sifted, weighed, and measured.
Santorum's strength is that he recognizes the cultural roots of our problem and just as importantly, is capable of articulating it.
We (conservatives) have been waiting for a standard bearer with courage and conviction coupled with the capability to connect the dots (articulate) to the voters.
We must become a nation of mature grown-ups once again, which requires a leader who is willing to address us as such.
While the entire political consultant class remains mired in polls, image, and cynical marketing ploys, a growing number of Americans long for a leader who knows the truth and is willing and capable to explain it to them.
Santorum couldn't get reelected to congress from PA...and we're supposed to believe he can beat Obama? He's also very much a BIG GOVERNMENT guy and the king of pork. IMHO conservatives are delusional and WILL cause Obama to be reelected.
Jeff Kuhner said yesterday on Savage's show that this is the end of the republican party. Newt is willing to sacrifice the entire party in a childhood temper tantrum....the infighting is so bad, we probably won't recover. Obama won't have to do a thing...the republicans are eating their own.
Really? According to your argument, Lincoln should have gone home after his overwhelming Senate defeat in 1858; and not even considered running for President - let alone running for President in a rematch against the very man who had defeated him in his only attempt at statewide office! Well, that turned out pretty well for Lincoln, for the country, and for the Republican party.
Not so well for Senator Douglas.
And let us not forget that Santorum did remarkably well to only lose by 17% when running in the worst Republican year in decades against the heir and namesake of Pennsylvania's most popular politician of the century. Amazing he didn't lose by 30%..
He couldn't get reelected to the Senate, where he had already served 12 years. A lot of the back lash was his support of Arlen Spectre vs conservative-Toomey, as well as the 2006 punishment of George Bush across the board. The guy won two state wide elections in PA when it was going heavily Democrat. Don't count him out. i do not agree with him on the birth control issue, his extreme anti-abortion stance (you have to make rape, incest, mother's health exceptions) and is Intellignet Design push. He has to make some serious concession here to be a legitimate candidate, but he is a smart, shrewed and experience politician that can get votes that republicans haven't got since 1984.
Santorum lost in 2006 to Bob Casey Jr., whose late father was very popular in Pennsylvania. He lost in a year that was terrible for Republicans. If he were to run again against Casey, the election would be much, much closer. Casey Jr. is an empty suit. Having said that, I think Rick should go back to PA and get elected to another office there.
this is the same santorum who voted for the bridge to nowhere, and who would have to built prisons to hold the millions of americans who would fall foul of his morality laws.
I would say, briefly, that there's no confusion involved in Perry's accurate comparison between Social Security and a private-sector Ponzi scheme.
To the main point of this article, I agree with Steyn that culture is more determinative than politics. It's tough, to affirm traditional values cheerfully, and then not to invoke those values to advance a statist agenda, but it needs to be done.
And I think Santorum is much more likely to do that than Romney. Romney hasn't shown a great deal of the sort of political courage this stand would require, and the only time he's been brave is in his misguided defense of Romneycare, which has earned plenty of criticism from the right.
He's recently defended the individual mandate as "fundamentally conservative," in that it encourages individual responsibility -- by having the state coerce you into doing the responsible thing. That is precisely the logic of invoking conservative values to expand the state.
"Virtually every Democrat I know salivated at the prospect of facing another Texas politico who tends to get tongue-tied under bright lights, and who once confused Social Security with Bernie Madoff’s nastiest work"
What is so heinous about speeking the truth???
The fact is Social 'Security' is the biggest Ponzi scheme in the history of the known universe.
Just because it is a sacred cow of statists doesn't mean one can't call a Ponzi scheme a Ponzi scheme.
If any entity other than govt ran a program like SS is run, the responsible parties would be in prison...right next to Bernie Madoff.
Everyone frets about electability of the GOP nominee.
Has anyone seen Obama's poll numbers among independent voters lately, especially among those from the Midwest?
There is a reason that the HuffPo and TNR have writers proclaiming that Obama's re-election team is writing off swaths of the very voters that carried him to victory -- the Prez is toxic in those precincts.
I suspect -- and no one can prove or disprove these things at this point -- that non-conservative voters will be able to relate better to Rick Santorum and his life, and will internalize that similarity when considering his social conservatism.
That is probably one of the most important factors in a national election. While they may wish to gaze upon Romney for four years on TV, the "feel the pain" factor tips decidedly in Rick's favor.
And his Iowa "acceptance speech" highlights the reasons why.
Let's not forget -- it's the incumbent whose re-electability is a steep uphill climb.
One of these days I will wake up and while I am having my morning coffee I will realize that I have been conned all along and that the real name of our political partie(s) is called the Demopublicans, and that all this stuff about idelogical differences is a skillful magic show. Anyway, while I'm having my toast (without jam because of budget contstraints) I still like my own labels, the RePOOPlicans and the DemoCRAZIES.
Romney is not a compassionate conservative? Then why did he say the very, very rich don't need tax cuts ($200,000. per year is the apparent cutoff in describing that class for Romney)? It looks like he plans to raise their tax rate to 35%. He said we have to give breaks to the middle class because they are the ones suffering. If that's not redistribution of wealth and compassionate conservatism, I don't know what is.
What good are tax choices if you raise taxes on those who create jobs? We need a strong conservative who will cut taxes and government spending dramatically. Romney's suggestions are weaker in these areas than any of the other candidates.
I would love to have a candidate who has Santorum's honesty and good sense on foreign policy, Ron Paul's economic slash and burn ideas, Gingrich's debating skills and other smarts, and well, you get the idea. A Churkendoose. Chicken, turkey, duck and goose. I want a little of each. Failing that I want either Gingrich or Palin.
If Romney is so electable, then why do 75% of our side avoid voting for him so far? And if our base is not motivated, then why is he expected to be the best one to defeat Obama? I wonder what would have happened if NR had not decided to run that banner headline against Newt when he was above 30%?
Ah, well, whoever we nominate we must all support, except Ron Paul.
I don't want to deal with the lunacy of a Santorum candidacy. I think he's a decent man but there's probably 45% of the country that does not. They see him as this shrill bigot against homosexuality and I would think turning this election into a referendum on tolerance would be a bad deal.
