Rick Santorum isn’t just attending the debate moderated by Donald Trump. He’s also emerging as one of the debate’s strongest defenders.

“Many of my opponents jockeyed to be the first to fly up to New York and use Donald Trump for a photo op and no doubt try and secure an endorsement. But when Donald wants to moderate a debate — they refuse to attend. That’s what’s so wrong with politics today — hypocrisy,” Santorum said in a strongly worded statement issued last night.

Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, and Jon Huntsman have all announced they will not attend the Newsmax/Ion TV debate to be held in Iowa on December 27 — a slew of rejections that prompted Trump to tell Fox Business Network today that he would “look into” whether he should still hold the debate.

Huntsman’s refusal was no surprise: He has long trumpeted the fact that he has not visited Trump Tower. Paul has been similarly distant, and his national campaign chair Jesse Benton almost immediately rejected the debate invite, dismissing Trump as “a reality television personality” in a statement.

But Romney, Perry, and Bachmann have all visited Trump Tower this cycle. Perry publicly went out on the town with Trump, while Bachmann (who has visited Trump more than once this campaign) held a tele-town hall with the Donald in October.

Santorum himself has not paid Trump a visit, nor has he actively pursued his endorsement. But senior adviser Hogan Gidley says the campaign would like to get that endorsement, and rattles off why Santorum’s platform should appeal to Trump. “We would hope Senator Santorum’s campaign and his core convictions and the fact that he’s a full-spectrum conservative would be something Donald Trump would view as favorable,” Gidley says, talking about Santorum’s jobs plan and policy proposals to renew the manufacturing sector and push back against China’s unfair trade practices.

Furthermore, for Santorum, a strong debater, the chance to do one last debate before the Iowa caucuses offers him a crucial chance to stand out from the pack. While some of the candidates have cited the need to do retail politics as the reason they’re forgoing the debate, Santorum has already visited all of Iowa’s 99 counties. Media attention, not talking to Iowans one on one, is what Santorum needs — and with current frontrunner Newt Gingrich committed to doing the Trump debate, media coverage is guaranteed.

Gidley dismisses the objection, raised by Karl Rove and RNC chair Reince Priebus among others, that it’s a mistake for a person who is still flirting with running as an independent presidential candidate to be a debate moderator. “You’d have to debate him eventually, anyway, so why not do it now?” Gidley says.

And in a debate cycle where many of the moderators have been from mainstream-media outlets, the campaign is pushing the meme that Trump isn’t the moderator to be outraged about. “Let’s be honest, at least Donald Trump will have more in common with the candidates than with the vast majority of past moderators,” Santorum said in his statement.

Santorum, whose debate performances have been characterized by his willingness to directly criticize and challenge his rivals, also took one more shot at the Trump debate no-shows in his statement.

“At this critical time in our nation’s history, just weeks before Iowans cast this important vote — many of the other candidates want to hide behind TV ads and mail pieces,” he said. “We plan to be there front and center in person to debate Newt directly, and if it’s just the two of us, we’re fine with it.”

— Katrina Trinko is an NRO reporter.