Santorum: New race, new focus, same sweater vests

WASHINGTON — Rick Santorum won primaries and caucuses in 11 states in 2012, coming in a respectable second in the GOP presidential primary. And Republicans have a history of bestowing their nomination on the next guy in line, usually an alsoran from the last contest.

Yet the former Pennsylvania senator is rarely mentioned in the already feverish pregame 2016 chatter among the political commentariat and the donor class.

That’s just the way he likes it. Or so he says.

“America loves an underdog. We’re definitely the underdog in this race,” he said in an interview last week. Santorum added that being underestimated again “has given me a lot of latitude.”

His iconic sweater vests will likely make a return appearance. But Santorum 2.0 will be a very different presidential campaign than the one that came from almost nowhere to win the Iowa caucuses in an overtime decision, he vows.

“I get the game,” Santorum said.

Where he had to build his operation from the ground up in 2012, Santorum now has a grass-roots operation called Patriot Voices, which boasts150,000 activists across the country. Its current push, an online petition drive to op- pose President Barack Obama’s recent executive action on immigration, has generated what Santorum strategist John Brabender says are “30,000 new email relationships.”

Whether Santorum can raise the money he needs is another question. Foster Friess, the benefactor who ponied up $2.1 million to a pro-Santorum Super PAC in 2012, says he would support him again. The former senator is also sounding out other deep-pocketed donors, whom he declined to identify.

He is retooling his message, hoping to appeal beyond his socially conservative base and reach blue-collar voters who are being left behind in the economy.

“If the Republican Party has a future, and I sometimes question if it does, it’s in middle America,” Santorum says. “It’s not in corporate America.”

That is a theme he has sounded for years, though it often got overlooked in the 2012 campaign, where most of the attention was on Santorum’s culture warrior credentials.

“Part of what I had to do last time was lay out my bona fides” on moral and social issues, Santorum said. “That’s done.”

At the same time, Santorum is likely to have more competition for the support of social conservatives than he did in the last campaign.