Remember the Crying Girl?

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JOHNSTON, Iowa
Last night I called my wife and told her I loved her, after listening to Rick Santorum’s speech to his supporters at the final town hall meeting before Caucus Day here in Iowa. Santorum paid tribute to his wife, Karen, and also to his children, who have worked so hard and sacrificed so much:

Being away from home this past week — I flew out to Iowa the day after Christmas — I could appreciate how sincerely Santorum felt about his family’s role in his campaign. He went a long time with very little money to hire staff or buy ads, and so his wife and kids made phone calls and did a lot of other work necessary to keep his campaign going. The first time I covered him in August, at an event held in a barn amid the cornfields near Roland, Iowa, his wife and kids were serving ice cream:

And then, on the day of the Ames Straw Poll, I bumped into three of his kids while they were just wandering around seeing the sights:

Longtime readers of this blog know that I was on the Cain Train from the get-go, and the main reason I covered the Santorum campaign back in August was as a favor to my Twitter buddy Lisa Graas, who has been a Santorum supporter all along. In October, when I went to the Value Voter Summit in DC, both Santorum and his wife lobbied me to get behind their campaign. But I’m very keen on loyalty, and despite my friendliness toward Santorum, I rode the Cain Train all the way to the end.

Readers may remember how it hurt that Saturday when I had to explain to my 13-year-old Jefferson that “suspend” means “quit.” And you may also remember that I had taken Jefferson with me as my assistant when I went to cover the Values Voter summit, when Jefferson posed for a picture with Senator Santorum:

If you remembered all that, congratulations: My own memory is kind of shaky sometimes. I’m awful with names, for example, and haven’t been able to keep the names of Santorum’s kids straight in my mind. So now we come to the whole point of this post, what happened last night at the final town hall meeting of Santorum’s Iowa campaign.

When I walked into the Pizza Ranch, the first person I talked to was Shane Vander Hart of Caffeinated Thoughts, who was one of the first Iowa bloggers to endorse Santorum. Shane recalled how for a long time it seemed his candidate was doomed and now . . .

Well, we were standing behind Carl Cameron, who was doing a live remote for Fox News. And it seemed like every other reporter on the planet was in that pizza restaurant. Clearly, Santorum had become the hot ticket in the Hawkeye State. Santorum’s family was with him, and at one point I found myself talking to them, which became the lead of my column today for The American Spectator:

ALTOONA, Iowa — A teenager stood beside the salad bar at Pizza Ranch here Monday night, surrounded by a huge crowd packed into the restaurant for Rick Santorum’s final Iowa town hall meeting before Tuesday’s caucuses. Carl Cameron of Fox News was there, as was conservative talk-radio host Laura Ingraham and so many reporters and photographers that some Republican voters who had come to see the surging Republican presidential candidate were forced to park in the lot of a nearby Hy-Vee grocery store. This vivid evidence that the former Pennsylvania senator has suddenly become the man of the hour in the Hawkeye State clearly made an impression on the brown-haired girl standing beside the salad bar.
“Our prayers are paying off,” said 13-year-old Sarah Maria Santorum, whose father soon emerged from the throng, stood on a chair and addressed the crowd. …

“Our prayers are paying off.”

Understand that I wasn’t “interviewing” Sarah Santorum. We were just talking, and I made some remark about how huge the crowd was, and then she just said that sentence clear out of the blue. It made such an impression that I immediately jotted it down on a scrap of paper.

Advanced Reporting Seminar, for you newbies: You get the best quotes when you just talk to people, instead of interrogating them in a confrontational manner. Be informal and friendly, put people at ease and listen to what they say. You’ll learn a lot more that way, whether you get a quote or not, and people will say real honest stuff rather than reciting talking points.

But my memory is shaky and I’m bad with names, so when I sat down to write my column — in the deli department of the Hy-Vee grocery story, which has free WiFi — I wanted to make sure I had Sarah’s name and age right. And when I Googled her name, one of the results was that picture at the top of this post.

Yeah, it’s her: The Santorum kid who gave me that quote was the same girl who cried so helplessly on national TV that night in 2006 during her dad’s concession speech. I’d forgotten all about that, until I saw the picture. Then I remembered how the video clip had been played over and over on the news, and also on late-night comedy shows while people mocked the way Sarah and her family cried. And I remembered my wife saying how bad she felt while watching that little girl, hugging her doll, and crying for the whole world to see.

Amazing that I’d talked to her without recognizing her — a poised and cheerful young lady — as that same little girl. But even more amazing, I think she’s exactly right when she says, “our prayers are paying off.”

As I write this, the folks on “Fox and Friends” are marveling at how Santorum went from single digits in the polls to being a serious contender in the space of just a few days. Say what you will, I call it a miracle.

And now read the rest of my column at The American Spectator.

It’s not every day a journalist gets to cover a miracle in the making.

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52 comments

  3. Sorry to be such a downer, but I just think people should try to come to grips with it. The only candidates with the money to compete with Romney, and this to just a very limited extent, are Perry and maybe Huntsman, and of course Paul whose funding source I would really be very interested in seeing. The party won’t accept Newt or Bachmann, and though they might be able to accept Santorum if he pulled off a miracle series of wins, unlikely as that is, it wouldn’t make any difference.

    My advice, for what its worth, and not that anybody gives a damn about taking it, is if you want to reform the system of the GOP start at the ground level and work your way up. 2010 was a good first start, but that’s all it was, a good first start.

  4. Rick Santorum has a very lovely family who seem to be very supportive of his run for President. Whatever happens to his Presidential bid, he is blessed to have such a supportive family.

    Thanks, Stacy, for your coverage of his campaign. I know much more about Santorum now than I did before which is a good thing. He’s not my first choice (I was bummed out by the Cain implosion too.) but he seems like a good man; I would have no trouble  voting for him if he became the candidate, but as I’m a registered Dem but DINO, I won’t be voting in the Republican primaries.

  6. Nice post about a Good Man with a Great Family.

    You’re a really good guy for writing so respectfully and affectionately about the decency and humanity of Santorum’s Family.

  7. Not to rain on your parade RSM, but I saw this post and figure I better bring it to your attention:

    An old but very relevant commentary by Jonathan Rauch:
    In his book he comments, seemingly with a shrug, “Some will reject what I have to say as a kind of ‘Big Government’ conservatism.” They sure will. A list of the government interventions that Santorum endorses includes national service, promotion of prison ministries, “individual development accounts,” publicly financed trust funds for children, community-investment incentives, strengthened obscenity enforcement, covenant marriage, assorted tax breaks, economic literacy programs in “every school in America” (his italics), and more. Lots more.
    Via David Boaz, who points out Santorum’s explicit rejection of “the whole idea of personal autonomy” and the “idea that people should be left alone.”
    http://volokh.com/2012/01/02/rick-santorum-big-government-conservative/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+volokh%2Fmainfeed+%28The+Volokh+Conspiracy%29

  8. So I was right all along, he is a Big Government Conservative after all. Just when I was resigned to him being the “Not Mitt”. But it doesn’t really matter, cos like I said, Mitt is going to be the nominee. And that is more than especially true if he wins Iowa and New Hampshire both. I’m pretty sure that would be unprecedented.

  10. “Paul whose funding source I would really be very interested in seeing”

    Paul’s funding sources — at least those who’ve given him more than $200 — are on file at fec.gov.

  11. People would watch less sports if the outcomes were determined before the game took place.  Do you think it might be that way in politics too?

  12. When we get discouraged about the state of the Republican Party, we can at least remember what we’re up against . . .
     
    From RSM’s post (above): “Then I remembered how the video clip had been played over and over on the news, and also on late-night comedy shows while people mocked the way Sarah and her family cried.” Who the hell mocks are young girl who is crying after seeing her father face a difficult setback?   

  15. Santorum’s late surge is rather amazing, possibly even “miraculous.”  Looks like he might pull it off.  But Hucklebee won last time on a late surge, and it didn’t do him much good in the long run.  Personally, I am rather suspicious of Santorum’s conservative credentials. 

    All the above notwithstanding, your post, Mr. McCain, is a moving and elegant piece of writing of the sort that keeps me coming back here.

  16. You fail to appreciate their detestation of Santorum.

    The two issues upon which Santorum is most passionate about are abortion and homosexuality.

    And both of those issues are something of a sacrament now for the Left.

    ESPECIALLY in Hollywood, where many have had to make their bones so to speak, on both of those issues.  The lavender mafia is real and tremendously powerful in Hollywood.

    The younger brother of my sister’s friend went to Hollywood after graduating college to get a job in the technical sections of Hollywood productions.

    Within a month he came back shell shocked.

    EVERY SINGLE interviewer expected him to suck him off for consideration.

    And that was decades ago.

    And that was when they were still supposedly in the closet.

    Now they’re out and triumphant, rampant and dominant.

    Of course they were mocking Santorum, they can’t help themselves.

  19. Having to accept Mitt Romney as the nominee feels like being force-fed a crap sandwich, which might be a great lunch menu for the terrorists at Gitmo, but until the American people realize that we deserve better than that, we’ll continue to get the generic GOP candidate, who’s only usefulness will be to keep “the other guy” from winning.

    I miss Herman Cain.

  20. […] Greater Grace Temple is located at 1010 East 56th Street. Greater Grace Temple services are televised on Saturday and Sunday each week. See the schedule here. We have many, many men like Dr. Tyler in this country. Let’s stop putting their opinions at the end of the more-of-the-same rants. God bless America’s good and responsible parents. They are the hope of our Nation. Visit The Other McCain, who is reporting live from Iowa for video of the Santorum remarks.  […]

  24. I was going to post the same thing from Boaz, but you beat me to it.  I’m sure Santorum is a nice man with a good family.  But he’s also a big-government conservative, the former Senate #3 in the worst years of big-government Republican excess, and a person who is frankly hostile to the traditions of limited government so carefully set up by our founding fathers. It would indeed be a miracle if Santorum won the Presidency.  It would be an even bigger miracle if the cause of limited-government conservatism was helped by a Santorum victory.

    He’s a thinner Mike Huckabee without a divnity degree.

  25. Stacy is a fine thinker and an elegant writer, and that is why I too come back here.  Unfortunately, he’s chosen for whatever reason to put those fine skill sat the service of two entirely inadequate Republican candidates (and that’s not me being a Paulbot– I’d  also consider Romney, Perry, and maybe even Bachmann at least adequate, with varying strengths and weaknesses that would have at least made them far superior to Santorum or Cain).

    I know Stacy is a believer in the power of prayer, so I will hereby pray caucus night that Stacy will see the error of his ways (in this particular race) and repent.  🙂

  26. Polls – as questionable as their reliability is for primaries, much less caucuses – have been uniform in one thing:  that 40% or more of the Iowa caucus-goers say they could still change their minds.  Since only those few who suffer severe head injuries will break for Paul, I believe they will divide between those going for Romney for electability, Santorum as part of his late surge, and to the lower-tier candidate who has been drawing the larger crowds the last couple of weeks.

    So, my bold prediction:  Romney wins, Santorum second, and a third-fourth dead heat between Paul and Perry.  Gingrich, who has shown himself to be the nasty little man we all knew and scorned in the last few days, finishes a poor fifth just ahead of Bachmann.

  27. Rick Santorum may be bigger government conservative than he portrays himself now, but he is certainly no worse and likely better (as in being for less government) than Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich on that issue.  

  31.  I love how right wing nuts actually think they are the decent people, while trying to screw over deny rights to every group they don’t agree with.

  35. Paul has over 4.6 million on hand, has raised over 12 million and has spent almost 10 million. 
    95% of contributors are individuals.

    The latest moneybomb, taken over the last week of December, raised 5.5 million dollars.

  36. Absolutely. We’re demons, don’tcha know.  For the good of our souls, they could burn us at the stake.

  37. Got a pretty hard roof over his head, Pagan.  Don’t let your dissapointment over Bachmann color your thoughts too much.

    If Mitt is the nominee, the chances of a serious third party in 2016 rise quite a bit.

    And right now, I see a lot of the Libertarians doing exactly what I said they do.

    A strong man is lifting a heavy load from his car into his house.  And a chihuahua is yapping about his ankles, trying to trip him.

    The strong fellow is the Conservatives who are trying to reform things back to a Constitutional governance.  The Libertarians, they say they want Liberty, but more than that, they hate the Conservatives so, they are the chihuahua spreading confusion and disorder.

    I think tagging Santorum as a big gov’t conservative is garbage, and I think most who say it know better.  Or they have their own private meaning to the word.  But, even if he were, he’s less than Mitt Romney.

    So again….Libertarians are lapdogs for RINOS.  And it is very possible that the only way to defeat the RINOs is to crush the Libertarians first.  Then we can go toe to toe in the Main Match with the Corruptocrats once we boot the Chihuahuas through the ceiling.

  41. Of course…that is why I supported Cain….but…the MSM will have their way so Santorum is the best choice/hope remaining, despite his flaws.

  45. Yes, now that is comelling commentary after all I always look to 19 year olds who know so much about the world that we should listen to them.

    Especially the current crop of hapless feminized capons currently in College.

  46. It’s not disappointment over Bachmann, its just the realization that the only one with the money to win is Romney. What’s even worse than that is if anybody else won the nomination the only way that person would get the necessary funding and support would be if he suddenly became Romney Jr.

  47. Adjoran and EBL-

    Just concentrate on the down ticket races and electing the right kind of people to the House, Senate, and state offices. Then hope it makes a difference. It probably won’t, but there’s no sense in being too negative.

  48. Any way of knowing where these people work or otherwise get their money? For example, I’m curious as to how many of them get their money from some George Soros enterprise or the other.

  49. If you’re right, then its pointless to fight. Since I want to fight, and I don’t believe its pointless, you’re wrong.  🙂

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