I’m not much of a Santorum fan — to me, he seems like Mike Huckabee without the charm or political talent — but it’s hard not to notice the narrative jiu-jitsu here.
The “narrative jiu-jitsu” involves something I explained yesterday: It is actually a libertarian position to defend the Catholic church in this ObamaCare fight over mandatory contraception coverage. Liberals are accusing conservatives of wanting to ban contraception because conservatives are against forcing Catholic institutions to pay for contraception.
As far as the professor’s disdain for Santorum as “Huckabee without the charm”:
A. Santorum’s got a law degree. He’s never been a Baptist preacher (or a Baptist anything else);
B. Huckabee never led Ohio by 18 points; and
C. Nobody in Megadeth ever endorsed Huckabee.
Also, Huckabee never promised to make me the first U.S. Ambassador to Vanuatu, which is kind of important.
Update (Smitty): linked at Daily Pundit. I’ll reply on Stacy’s post that for those who are truly grasped by Christ, preaching is about the highest possible calling. I happen to worship in a Baptist church. Thus I’ll allow that, while it is not by any means impossible that Huckabee is in fact carrying out God’s will (and I certainly can’t judge that) the whole politics/entertainment thing strikes us knuckle-dragging fanatic Baptists as just a trifle odd. No one in the New Testament became an un-Disciple. Except Judas. I view with skepticism any ordained person who segues into politics or entertainment, or, in Huckabee’s case, both.
The news today that Dave Mustaine, who may or may not be a loyal reader of this blog, endorsed Rick Santorum today came to me via a print copy of the DC Examiner while attending to a private, non-work-related matter at my job site.
Isn’t the resemblance striking? But I think the resemblance goes deeper than superficial:
Talks to God every day? Check.
Goes to court when he has to? Check.
Nothing better to do than be prompt at work, broke due to clearing his bills? Check, check, write that frickin’ check!
Guitar case closed, my friends.
a thousand thank-yous to Belvedere for photo support.
The really big news, however, is that Santorum now leads Romney 36-29 in a Quinnipiac poll of Ohio.
Freaking huge, man. If Santorum wins Michigan — Romney’s home state — on Feb.28 and then follows up with a Super Tuesday win March 6 in Ohio, that’s going to change the whole race. Those are big states with lots of delegates, and if Santorum wins those, he’s going to win a lot of other places, too.
Why? Because Romney would have to spend a lot of money for ads to try to defend his aura “inevitability” and, as Zeke Miller points out, Romney’s fundraising capacity is not infinite:
Over 82 percent of Romney’s haul from individuals in 2011 came in donations greater than $1000 . . . And as Rick Santorum stays in the game with a growing pool of small donors — to whom he can return for another $20 or $100 when the millions they’ve given him runs out — Romney’s campaign has launched an intense, late scramble for the cash to fend off his conservative challenger.
Well, how ’bout that? Small donors like you — folks who have given Rick Santorum $25, $50 or $100 — are collectively more powerful than the GOP Establishment guys who have ponied up thousands each. And if you haven’t contributed yet, what are you waiting for?
UPDATE: Before letting myself get distracted today — and not just by short skirts and post-punk musical allusions — I intended to post the newest ad by Rick Santorum:
That’s pretty clever: Pre-emptively warning voters about Romney’s (so far successful) tactic of burying his rivals with multi-million-dollar negative ad blitzes, so that when Team Mitt attempts to repeat that tactic, Romney’s negative ads become the subject of news coverage. Now Santorum just has to raise enough money to run that ad in every state.
Visual: Series of shots of a Romney trying to fire a mud gun in the direction of a Rick Santorum cutout. As the spot progresses the Romney character becomes increasingly frustrated with his inability to hit Rick Santorum with his mud-firing gun. The final visual show the gun backfiring, and covering Romney in his own mud.
Voice Over: “Mitt Romney’s negative attack machine is back on full throttle. This time Romney’s firing his mud at Rick Santorum. Romney and his Super PAC have spent a staggering 20 million brutally attacking fellow Republicans. Why? Because Romney’s trying to hide from his big government Romneycare, and his support for job killing cap and trade.
(Type on Screen): Romney Advisor Admits Romneycare Was Blueprint for Obamacare.
Voice Over: And in the end Mitt Romney’s ugly attacks are going to backfire.
(Type on Screen): Romney’s Negative Ads Could Cost Him With Voters.
Rick Santorum: “I’m Rick Santorum and I approve this message.”
The press release quotes Santorum spokesman Hogan Gidley:
“At this point, Mitt Romney’s act is old, tired and wearing thin with voters. In every primary state, Gov. Romney’s strategy has been the same: hide from his own record and instead, unleash his well-funded DC attack machine to destroy his opponent. I think it’s very telling that Gov. Romney refuses to talk about his own record and why someone should vote for him and instead chooses to tear down Rick Santorum.
“Maybe Gov. Romney feels entitled to the Republican nomination but regardless, his actions and those of his SuperPAC are sad and desperate. The American people deserve more than the negative, false and misleading attacks Mitt Romney is dishing out. The choice is clear and the people are rejecting a candidate like Mitt Romney who only wants to attack his opponent, but one like Rick Santorum who focuses on building up all Americans and restoring this country to greatness.”
Rick Santorum and his wife Karen greet supporters
at a barn near Roland, Iowa, Aug. 6, 2011
How many times on the campaign trail did I hear Rick Santorum describe himself as “Steady Eddie”? Not the flashiest guy at the dance, he’d say, but at the end of the evening, he was the one the girls were proud to bring home to meet their mother. Back when he was still in single digits in Iowa, Santorum gave that little talk at nearly every campaign event, to reassure Republican voters that no matter what the polls said, and no matter what they were being told about “electability,” they should listen to their hearts and vote for the “consistent conservative.”
Seems like a million years ago, doesn’t it? I’m thinking back to that August afternoon in a barn amid the cornfields near Roland, Iowa, when I showed up on a Saturday as a favor to Lisa Graas, to cover her favorite candidate, the guy nobody believed could win. Now take a look at the headlines today:
That last headline should serve to remind you of something I kept in mind back when nobody else was paying attention to Santorum: Blue-collar Catholics are a vital “swing” constituency, and a Republican who can appeal to those voters is always formidable, whether in a primary or a general election. People kept talking about the evangelical vote in Iowa, but there are a quite a few Catholics in Iowa, too, and once they “came home” to Santorum in the closing weeks of the caucus campaign, that helped boost him up to double digits in the polls. And then, just about the time he pulled even in Iowa with Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, a lot of other Republican voters said, “Hey, let’s take another look at Steady Eddie.”
Bottom line of Chait’s analysis: It’s really a lot harder to judge “electability” in advance of the general election campaign and Santorum might be more trouble for Obama than most experts imagine.
Of course, such a question takes us off into an unpredictable future. Santorum still has an enormous uphill fight if he’s going to beat Romney, and we’ll have to wait and see if Santorum can withstand the tsunami of negative attack ads that Team Mitt will inevitably unleash against him. Meanwhile, however, we find Santorum earning a certain grudging admiration from unexpected sources:
“I’ve wondered about him and the whole concept of working women and family. But stylistically, which is a part of the game . . . he has something that Mitt Romney doesn’t. There is a connect. I mean, I don’t agree with anything he says, but I like the guy.”
— Mika Brzezinski, MSNBC
This is something I’ve noticed with some of the young liberal reporters who were “embedded” on the Santorum campaign: They disagreed with him without hating him. Why? I think it might be that “Steady Eddie” factor. Even when his campaign seemed utterly hopeless, Santorum just kept on going, and he never budged an inch on the issues. Maybe you think he’s an “extremist,” but he is a sincere extremist — he really believes what he believes in, and isn’t just pandering — and he also shows a stubborn courage, sticking to his guns no matter what, even when he knows his views are unpopular.
It’s that kind of stubbornness that wins Santorum admiration, and sometimes even surprising agreement, from people you would never expect to hear praising him. (Barbara Walters? Hello?)
One more thing: America loves an underdog.
If by some miracle Santorum actually ends up winning the Republican nomination in Tampa, he’ll be one of the biggest comeback stories in American political history. Defeated for re-election to the Senate in 2006, he entered the presidential campaign with seemingly impossible odds against him. The mainstream media ignored him and, with few exceptions, the pundits gave him no chance at all. In the first six months after he announced, he raised less than $1 million, and finished 2011 with less than $300,000 cash on hand. Just three weeks ago, many people were still saying Santorum might as well quit. And now . . .
Well, a lot of flashier guys have come and gone from the 2012 GOP field, but Steady Eddie’s still at the dance, isn’t he?
All of which stories were published after I sent my column to The American Spectator last night and yet — if we judge by the Memeorandum aggregation — no bloggers are linking my column, which prefigures everything that these other stories are all about.
That’s what happens to writers whom Tabitha Hale decides are “Not Good Enough for BlogCon,” you see: No matter what you do, everybody ignores it, because they know that everything you do completely sucks. Your friends are embarrassed to be associated with you, and next thing you know, you have no friends at all. Hell, even I am ashamed to link my column now:
Several reporters, photographers, and TV camera crews were crowded into a small conference room Friday afternoon at the Marriott Wardman Park hotel in Washington. Hundreds of people were lined up outside the room, waiting to enter the “Rick Santorum Meet & Greet” which the program of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) listed as scheduled to begin at 1:30 p.m. The appointed time slipped past and, like the crowd waiting in line, some in the media gang inside the room began to grow impatient at the delayed arrival of the candidate, who had given a well-received speech that morning in the hotel’s main ballroom.
“We’re a long way from Iowa,” I remarked to Santorum spokesman Hogan Gidley, recalling how few reporters had covered the underdog candidate during the long months he spent crisscrossing the Hawkeye State and speaking to small groups of Republican voters. A mere two months earlier, in mid-December, Santorum had been sixth in the Real Clear Politics average of Iowa polls, with less than six percent. He had somehow miraculously surged to a win in Iowa, then endured a month of disappointing finishes in New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida and Nevada, Now, fresh from triple victories last Tuesday in Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri, the former Pennsylvania senator was riding a wave of momentum, attracting the kind of crowds (and swarming media coverage) that follow a bona fide presidential contender. . . .
(Yes, I understand that my feelings of worthlessness may be symptomatic of Post-CPAC Syndrome, a type of depression resulting from the realization that it’s another 36o days until the next one.)
Update (Smitty): can we exert enough peer pressure to get Belvedere to come down with Da Tech Guy next year?
Andrea Tantaros of Fox News interviews Rick Santorum
at CPAC in Washington, D.C., Friday, Feb. 10, 2012
HAGERSTOWN, Maryland
Back home from CPAC with about 300 business cards, two days’ growth of beard, and a voice hoarse from rocking out with Chris Cassone at Friday’s “Unsustainable Bar Tab” reception. Also, I’ve got beaucoups of photos and videos that I was unable to upload during the conference due to frustration with bandwidth issues. (Wombat suggests that it was my equipment rather than the WiFi connection that sucked. However, it is a curious fact that as soon as I hooked up the trusty Toshiba Satellite to my home network, it worked perfectly.)
Smitty previously noted that Rick Santorum has taken his first lead in a national poll — you can see the full breakdown at Public Policy Polling (PDF file) — and I would further suggest that you keep an eye on polls in Michigan over the next week or so. The current Real Clear Politics average has Santorum in fourth place, but all of the polls included in the RCP average date back to late January/early February, before Newt Gingrich’s embarrassment in Nevada, and before Santorum’s Tuesday hat trick in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri.
Sources close to the Santorum campaign say they’re going to challenge Romney in Michigan, which may seem like a kamikaze mission in Romney’s home state, but Santorum believes his message can win over blue-collar voters in the industrial Midwest — a belief that would appear to have been ratified in Minnesota and Missouri. Although the odds are long, Santorum will campaign hard in Michigan, which holds its primary Feb. 28, knowing that if he can upset Mitt there . . . well, game on.
Money? Extrapolating from early reports and cryptic hints from sources close to the campaign, I believe Santorum raised $5 million online last week, and when I talked Saturday morning to a top official with Santorum’s direct mail team, his comment was, “I can’t wait until Monday.” The boost Santorum got from last week’s hat-trick would obviously take a few days to produce a response from folks whose contributions involve checks sent by snail mail, and his team expects a huge influx of such contributions to come pouring in Monday and continuing through the week. Continue reading Memo From the National Affairs Desk: Santorum’s National Iowa-Style Strategy →
Earthquake Thursday in Vanuatu: A sign and a portent?
Just announced at CPAC: Mitt Romney wins 38% of the straw poll vote at CPAC, followed by Rick Santorum at 31%. Newt Gingrich placed third with 15% and perennial CPAC straw poll winner Ron Paul a distant fourth with 13%. More details in this article at the Washington Times.
“There are a lot of yellow-stained drawers in Washington Cocktail Party haunts this morning.”
— Bill Quick, Daily Pundit
The Establishment is nothing if not confident and, although their confidence was surely shaken by Rick Santorum’s Tuesday sweep, Mitt Romney still has an overwhelming advantage in terms of money.
The Mitt Machine is probably even now gearing up to flood the airwaves in upcoming primary states with TV attack ads highlighting scandals like the time Rick got a C-minus on his fifth-grade report card.
People who don’t live in New Hampshire or South Carolina probably don’t realize that the Romney campaign aired attack ads against Santorum in those states, labelling him a “Washington insider” addicted to “pork barrel spending.” Indeed, one reason Newt was able to beat Mitt in South Carolina is that Santorum’s Iowa win distracted Team Romney from their previous destroy-Newt-at-all-costs mission.
Given that history, I do not underestimate Romney’s continued likelihood of winning the nomination. Beating Mitt is going to be a lot harder than most conservatives imagine, and if you don’t want Romney to be the GOP nominee, you’d better start praying now.
