The Other McCain

Three of Rick Santorum’s children outside the Ames Straw Poll, Aug. 13, 2011

“Rick Santorum is seemingly so impossibly behind in the polls that it’s difficult to think he’s running for president for his own ego or because he’s particularly power hungry. In fact, what praise Santorum receives is always praise of the same ilk: He fills his niche well, speaking eloquently and evenly about social and foreign policy issues that desperately need to be addressed but threaten to be overlooked in this economy-dominated cycle. Why doesn’t that score him more points with voters supposedly sick of politicians who care more about themselves than they do about the issues?”
— Tina Korbe, Hot Air

One of my beefs about the “Second look at Gingrich” trip is that it is being promoted by people who never gave Rick Santorum a first look. If you’re scouting around for your next favorite Not Romney candidate, certainly Santorum is more plausible than Newt. (Today’s headline: “Gingrich Said to Be Paid at Least $1.6 Million by Freddie Mac.”)

Santorum’s brand of conservatism may not be your particular cup of tea, but there is no denying that he is a man of firm principle, untainted by even the slightest hint of corruption or scandal. Neither can it be denied that Santorum has campaigned tirelessly despite all discouragement. He has held events in all 99 counties in Iowa and you might think that some of Herman Cain’s critics — who have slagged him for his alleged neglect of Iowa — would give Santorum credit for his relentless campaigning in the Hawkeye State.

But no: The bandwagon-jumpers, who have flitted around from one Republican candidate to another, always want to jump onto a bandwagon they think can win, and so the media’s pre-emptive judgment that Santorum is not a contender becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s a matter of perception and reality, and that Saturday in August when I caught up with Santorum at a barn party in Roland, Iowa, stands out in my memory for the contrast between the perception of Santorum’s campaign and the reality.

When a candidate is bumping along in single digits in the polls, there is the tendency to think he’s got no support at all. Yet there was Santorum in a barn in the middle of a cornfield, surrounded by dozens of ordinary Iowans who were enthusiastically devoted to his candidacy, and telling them confidently that he was going to shock the world by winning the Iowa caucuses and going on from their to win the Republican nomination and then defeating Obama.

It was a classic Iowa moment and, despite everything, I cannot even now — with just 48 days remaining until the Jan. 3 caucuses — rule out the possibility that Santorum’s “Little Engine That Could” campaign might indeed succeed. Stranger things have happened in this weird year, and once the bandwagon-jumpers realize that the Newt Bubble is foredoomed to failure (see Maetenloch’s post at the generally pro-Newt AOSHQ for a few hints) I wonder if Santorum might finally get that first look he has been so long denied.

Iowa blogger Shane Vander Hart has endorsed Santorum, and his list of reasons for supporting Santorum begins with this:

He is a man of integrity. What you see is what you get. There hasn’t been any doublespeak. He doesn’t have any skeletons in his closet. He doesn’t flip flop. He’s a strong family man. If you spend any time around him it is quite evident that he loves his wife Karen and their seven children. He has strong character, and is faithful both to his family and God.

It is fashionable among pundits nowadays to derogate social conservatism as a spent force in GOP politics, but if the Christian Right has any remaining clout, surely it has clout in Iowa, and Santorum’s family-friendly campaign — his wife and kids traveling with him to every event — has a built-in appeal.

While I’m not sure that Shane Van Hart’s influence will set off a herd stampede toward Santorum, I am reminded of something that Joe Albrecht, spokesman for Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, said to me in August: “Iowans . . . recognize the value of hard work.” They expect candidates to work for their votes, and no candidate has worked Iowa as hard as Santorum has.

Nothing else but hard work can explain how Santorum over-performed in the Ames Straw Poll, where he finished a strong fourth and, as he pointed out in our post-event interview, was massively outspent by all three candidates who placed ahead of him.

Santorum’s strong finish at Ames should have given his campaign a boost, but was overshadowed by (a) Rick Perry’s Phantom Menace, and (b) Tim Pawlenty quitting the next day. Looking back now, three months later, it is supremely ironic to see Gingrich (who got just 385 votes at Ames) in the four-way Iowa front-runner scrum, with Perry fifth (7%) while Santorum is seventh (3%) and continues to be low-rated as a non-contender by all the pundits.

There’s something definitely wrong with that picture and it seems to me that anyone who thinks Santorum will be a non-factor in Iowa is likely to be very surprised come Jan. 3.

UPDATE: Jeff Goldstein says, “Yet again, we’ve been played” — although I hope he doesn’t include me in that “we,” as I’ve been fighting the Conventional Wisdom for the past year. And quite frankly, I think it’s time to start casting a skeptical eye at Fox News coverage of the campaign, because they’ve been pushing their own sort of Conventional Wisdom that’s not quite the same as the MSM’s version, but still quite influential.

Linked by Nice Deb and the Spartanburg Tea Party blog, as well as by Da Tech Guy who says I gave Lisa Graas “the best birthday present ever.” Lisa’s response to that on Twitter caused me to accuse her of sexual harassment.

Not like that’s a bad thing, you understand . . .

UPDATE II: Massive Memeorandum thread on Gingrich’s Freddie Mac deal, and Iowa reporter Kay Henderson provides audio and a transcript of Newt’s exchange with reporters this morning:

Bloomberg’s John McCormick: “Bipartisan commissions have sort of found that ‘influentials’ were sometimes put on Fannie & Freddie just to have them friendly. Is this is a case of that?
Gingrich: “I have no idea…I was approached to give strategic advice. I was glad to offer strategic advice and we did it for a number of companies and Gingrich Group was very successful.”
McCormick: Do you think you were sort of being bought to just be there and be a friendly voice?”
Gingrich: “No, I don’t think that anymore than your institution is being bought by the people who advertise in it.”

The New York Time’s Trip Gabriel: “Do you recall any of the strategic advice you did give?…Expanding housing for low-income Hispanic communities, for example?”
Gingrich: “Well, first of all, if you can do it in a way that is financially sound, every American should be interested in expanding housing opportunities for people whether they’re African American, or Latino or of any background so the idea that you’re thinking about how can we help people learn how to budget, how can we help people learn how to save, how could you help them learn how to maintain a house on a low income would strike me, for more people, would be good things to do, not bad things to do and I’m happy to say I made public speeches to the National Association of Home Builders. I’m in favor of the largest possible home ownership. This is all public knowledge. I’m in favor of doing the right kind of things and you can go talk to Rick Lazio about the support I gave him as speaker on housing reform which he pushed through despite opposition of some of the people like Barney Frank and others, so I think the record there is one of I’m pretty consistent and frankly, I tend to give the same strategic advice in private I give in public.”

….AP’s Tom Beaumont: “Does this remind you that your background comes from being a Washington insider?”
Gingrich: “It reminds people that I know a great deal about Washington and if you want to change Washington, we just tried four years of amateur ignorance and it didn’t work very well, so having somebody who knows Washington might be a really good thing.”

Yeah. Good luck with that argument.