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.” Continue reading Remember the Crying Girl? →
