Santorum rides high as workingman’s warrior
WASHINGTON — Rick Santorum climbed to the top of the GOP presidential heap on a ladder forged from bluecollar conservatism — wooing working-class Republicans with tales of his own family’s coal-mining history and an economic message rooted in the need to revive American manufacturing.
But the former Pennsylvania senator has always been a culture warrior at heart. Santorum’s weekend musings about limiting access to prenatal testing for pregnant women, and his accusations that President Barack Obama adheres to a “phoney theology,” gave Americans a fresh glimpse of the polarizing style of politics that has long been central to his career.
The sudden pivot to social issues also underscores Santorum’s calculation that the GOP nomination can be won by appealing to “guns and Bible” Republicans, voters who feel economically disenfranchised and culturally alienated from East Coast elites.
Speaking to Tea Party activists in Columbus, Ohio, Santorum suggested Obama favoured increased abortions of disabled babies because of requirements in his new health-care law that women receive free prenatal testing.
“Why? Because free prenatal testing ends up in more abortions and, therefore, less care that has to be done, because we cull the ranks of the disabled in our society,” said Santorum. He added it was “another hidden message as to what President Obama thinks of those who are less able than the elites who want to govern our country.”
Santorum said doctors should not be forced to do some types of screening that he says “encourage abortion” — like testing to determine Down syndrome.
In a political environment already overheated following the Obama-catholic Church fight over free birth control, this is rhetoric meant to fan rather than douse the flames.
Santorum was just getting started, however.
Treading into territory generally occupied by “Obama is a secret Muslim” conspiracy theorists, Santorum warned of a hidden Obama agenda.
“It’s not about your job. It’s about some phoney ideal, some phoney theology,” he said. “Oh, not a theology based on the Bible, a different theology.”
Asked later if was questioning Obama’s religious beliefs, Santorum pandered to the fringe with a coy dodge: “If the president says he’s a Christian, he’s a Christian.”
It’s no coincidence that Santorum has begun injecting more talk about religion and left-wing social engineering into his stump speeches.
The strategy shift comes ahead of pivotal primaries in two Rust Belt battle- ground states — Michigan on Feb. 28 and Ohio on March 6 — where evangelical voters and working-class Republicans could sway the outcome.
Mitt Romney’s campaign has conceded it can’t — and won’t — try to challenge Santorum’s cultural warrior status, mindful its own candidate was once pro-choice on abortion.
Santorum already has an edge in blue-collar bona fides over Romney.
He often tells the story of his immigrant grandfather, who fled Italy in 1925 to dig coal from the mines in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny Mountains. Santorum says he remembers his grandfather’s “enormous” hands and how “those hands dug freedom for me.”
Santorum has paired his family’s up- by- the- bootstraps background with a plan to boost manufacturing by reducing corporate taxes to zero — an incentive he says would prompt companies to bring factories home from overseas.
So far, the message is resonating.
In Michigan, where Romney was born, a Detroit News poll last week showed Santorum with a four-point lead. A Rasmussen poll in Ohio, the biggest prize on Super Tuesday, shows Santorum with 42 per cent support and Romney with 24 per cent.
To be sure, Santorum’s surge also reflects the absence of enthusiasm for Romney, a candidate who lacks an animating message to stir the Republican soul.
Whatever the reason Santorum has risen, here’s the reality: If he wins in Michigan and Ohio, there will be panic in the ranks of the Republican establishment.
The party elite has always been behind Romney because they see him as the safest choice — the candidate least likely to disintegrate in the heat of a general election fight against Obama.
To his critics inside the GOP, Santorum could scare away independent voters and poses nearly as great a risk in November as Newt Gingrich.
He takes a tougher line on abortion than many prolife Republicans, opposing it even in cases of rape or incest. He has compared homosexuality to pedophilia and bestiality.
Some Republican strategists see Santorum as a particularly vulnerable with women. He has voted in favour of funding for birth control but also said he wants to fight the “dangers of contraception.” He has questioned whether military women should serve on the front lines of combat because of “emotions that are involved.”
In a 2005 book, he said “radical feminists” had undermined the traditional family by “convincing women that professional accomplishments are the key to happiness.”
Santorum says he only meant that society should “affirm both choices” women make, whether to stay home or have a career outside the home.
Those nuances might well get lost in the rough-andtumble of a fall campaign. For now, though, the workingman’s culture warrior is still riding high.