From Cambridge to Brooklyn, from Georgetown to Hyde Park, from West L.A. to pretty much the entire Bay Area, you could almost hear the howls of anguish this morning. They even reached across the Pacific. “SANTORUM? Oh, America, how you disappoint me,” Jeremy Tian, a writer and actor from Singapore, tweeted in response to my earlier post.
Ladies and gentlemen, I feel your pain. Ever since Santorum was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1994, I have regarded him as a particularly off-putting character. But the strength of the feelings that Santorum evokes pretty much explains why the former Pennsylvania senator, even at this late stage, could put a serious fright into Mitt Romney, and, just conceivably, could take him down.
To educated liberals of almost any description, Santorum is an abomination. It’s not just that he’s a pro-life, anti-gay, anti-contraception Roman Catholic of the most retrogressive and diehard Opus Dei variety. It’s his entire persona. With his seven kids, his Jaycee fashion code, his nineteen-seventies colonial MacMansion in northern Virginia, his irony bypass, he seems to delight in outraging self-styled urban sophisticates: the sort of folks who buy organic milk, watch The Daily Show, and read the New York Times (and The New Yorker, of course).
But it’s precisely his in-your-face, street-corner conservatism that makes Santorum potentially a strong candidate.
As he has displayed in Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, and Missouri, he is attractive to Republican inhabitants of small towns and rural areas, many of them alienated Evangelical Christians who take it as an article of faith that President Obama is merely the public face of a secular conspiracy intent on altering their country beyond recognition. And Santorum isn’t just a religious candidate. With his hardscrabble roots and message of economic populism, he can also appeal to less devout but economically squeezed middle-income Republicans and Reagan Democrats, of whom there are many. Although his pledge to restore American manufacturing to past glories isn’t very believable, it does signal to voters that he cares about bread-and-butter issues.
Ever since the political realignment of the nineteen-sixties and seventies, when the civil-rights movement prompted many southern whites and northern ethnics to switch parties, Democratic strategists have learned to fear Republican candidates, such as Ronald Reagan, who combined conservative social views with populist economics. Santorum is no Reagan. He sometimes comes across as bitter and twisted rather than sunny and optimistic. But he is plowing a fertile patch, and he has some other things going for him, too.
One of these is the current controversy over contraception and the Catholic-run hospitals and health organizations, which, wrongly or rightly, many religious people see as the Obama Administration violating the church-state divide. Commenting on Santorum’s strong showing in yesterday’s elections, Michele Bachmann said to Fox News’s Greta Van Sustern, “It really reflects what is on people’s minds…. I think you are seeing a lot of people reacting against President Obama’s policies.” Bachmann went on: “The voters in the heartland feel very strongly on family issues, traditional values, and pro-life. Santorum is reflective of those values.”
Santorum’s other big advantage is that Romney, despite his big victories in Florida and Nevada, is not a very strong candidate, particularly in the middle of the country. Whereas the Mittster may be right-wing enough for Republicans in the Northeast and Florida (but not the Panhandle), in the Midwest and the South—and now in the Mountain West—the effort to market him as a conservative is running into stiff resistance. With money, organization, and a divided opposition, he remains the prohibitive favorite to win the nomination; but, as Nate Silver commented this morning, he can’t afford many more nights like last night.
Much hinges on the Michigan primary, which takes place on February 28th. Often a pivotal state in the general election, Michigan is one of Romney’s many “home” states, and in the polls there he has been leading handily. But this time last week he had big leads in Colorado and Minnesota, and a lot of good that did him. Defeat in Michigan would be Romney’s fourth successive loss in a mid-Western state, and it would raise serious doubts about his ability to win the nomination.
For Santorum, a victory in Michigan would give him the momentum to go into Super Tuesday and knock out Newt Gingrich, who is now reduced to playing the role of spoiler. With Gingrich absent from the race, Santorum would have the chance to test his theory, which certainly received an affirmation yesterday, that in a head-to-head contest—or a three-way contest including Ron Paul—he can defeat Romney.
I can even imagine Newt dropping out of his own accord—almost. If, as many people believe, his main goal now is to put the knife into Romney, the easiest way to do it would be to call off his own campaign, which is sputtering, and endorse Santorum, with whom he remains on reasonable terms. That would leave the non-Paul conservatives united against Mitt—a scenario that would create alarm in his Boston HQ. How likely is such a thing? Not very, perhaps. But Newt is a bright fellow, and the logic of the situation will be clear to him. (In a speech in Cleveland this morning, he didn’t comment on yesterday’s results.)
Santorum’s immediate task is to raise money and build a national organization in double-quick time without losing the energy and authenticity that powered his victories on Tuesday. The authenticity part shouldn’t be hard. As he displayed in Iowa and again last night, the language and cadences of contemporary conservatism come naturally to him. His portrayal of President Obama as an out-of-touch élitist who “thinks he’s smarter than you” and “thinks he knows better than you” tickles the erogenous zones of right-wing Republicans in a way that Romney, a genuine member of the élite to his bones, can’t hope to mimic.
Is Santorum plausible enough, likable enough, and durable enough to become a serious Presidential contender? I have my doubts, and so do many members of the Republican establishment, Karl Rove included. In the next couple of weeks, the Romney campaign will doubtless coördinate an attack on Santorum’s record, which includes lucrative spells as a corporate lobbyist and consultant, aiming at doing to him what it did to Gingrich in Florida. The manner in which Santorum handles these attacks, and how he fares in Michigan, will determine his fate. Still, one thing is already clear. He’s no longer a fringe candidate.
But it’s precisely his in-your-face, street-corner conservatism that makes Santorum potentially a strong candidate.
As he has displayed in Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, and Missouri, he is attractive to Republican inhabitants of small towns and rural areas, many of them alienated Evangelical Christians who take it as an article of faith that President Obama is merely the public face of a secular conspiracy intent on altering their country beyond recognition. And Santorum isn’t just a religious candidate. With his hardscrabble roots and message of economic populism, he can also appeal to less devout but economically squeezed middle-income Republicans and Reagan Democrats, of whom there are many. Although his pledge to restore American manufacturing to past glories isn’t very believable, it does signal to voters that he cares about bread-and-butter issues.
Ever since the political realignment of the nineteen-sixties and seventies, when the civil-rights movement prompted many southern whites and northern ethnics to switch parties, Democratic strategists have learned to fear Republican candidates, such as Ronald Reagan, who combined conservative social views with populist economics. Santorum is no Reagan. He sometimes comes across as bitter and twisted rather than sunny and optimistic. But he is plowing a fertile patch, and he has some other things going for him, too.
One of these is the current controversy over contraception and the Catholic-run hospitals and health organizations, which, wrongly or rightly, many religious people see as the Obama Administration violating the church-state divide. Commenting on Santorum’s strong showing in yesterday’s elections, Michele Bachmann said to Fox News’s Greta Van Sustern, “It really reflects what is on people’s minds…. I think you are seeing a lot of people reacting against President Obama’s policies.” Bachmann went on: “The voters in the heartland feel very strongly on family issues, traditional values, and pro-life. Santorum is reflective of those values.”
Santorum’s other big advantage is that Romney, despite his big victories in Florida and Nevada, is not a very strong candidate, particularly in the middle of the country. Whereas the Mittster may be right-wing enough for Republicans in the Northeast and Florida (but not the Panhandle), in the Midwest and the South—and now in the Mountain West—the effort to market him as a conservative is running into stiff resistance. With money, organization, and a divided opposition, he remains the prohibitive favorite to win the nomination; but, as Nate Silver commented this morning, he can’t afford many more nights like last night.
Much hinges on the Michigan primary, which takes place on February 28th. Often a pivotal state in the general election, Michigan is one of Romney’s many “home” states, and in the polls there he has been leading handily. But this time last week he had big leads in Colorado and Minnesota, and a lot of good that did him. Defeat in Michigan would be Romney’s fourth successive loss in a mid-Western state, and it would raise serious doubts about his ability to win the nomination.
For Santorum, a victory in Michigan would give him the momentum to go into Super Tuesday and knock out Newt Gingrich, who is now reduced to playing the role of spoiler. With Gingrich absent from the race, Santorum would have the chance to test his theory, which certainly received an affirmation yesterday, that in a head-to-head contest—or a three-way contest including Ron Paul—he can defeat Romney.
I can even imagine Newt dropping out of his own accord—almost. If, as many people believe, his main goal now is to put the knife into Romney, the easiest way to do it would be to call off his own campaign, which is sputtering, and endorse Santorum, with whom he remains on reasonable terms. That would leave the non-Paul conservatives united against Mitt—a scenario that would create alarm in his Boston HQ. How likely is such a thing? Not very, perhaps. But Newt is a bright fellow, and the logic of the situation will be clear to him. (In a speech in Cleveland this morning, he didn’t comment on yesterday’s results.)
Santorum’s immediate task is to raise money and build a national organization in double-quick time without losing the energy and authenticity that powered his victories on Tuesday. The authenticity part shouldn’t be hard. As he displayed in Iowa and again last night, the language and cadences of contemporary conservatism come naturally to him. His portrayal of President Obama as an out-of-touch élitist who “thinks he’s smarter than you” and “thinks he knows better than you” tickles the erogenous zones of right-wing Republicans in a way that Romney, a genuine member of the élite to his bones, can’t hope to mimic.
Is Santorum plausible enough, likable enough, and durable enough to become a serious Presidential contender? I have my doubts, and so do many members of the Republican establishment, Karl Rove included. In the next couple of weeks, the Romney campaign will doubtless coördinate an attack on Santorum’s record, which includes lucrative spells as a corporate lobbyist and consultant, aiming at doing to him what it did to Gingrich in Florida. The manner in which Santorum handles these attacks, and how he fares in Michigan, will determine his fate. Still, one thing is already clear. He’s no longer a fringe candidate.
Original Article
Source: new yorker
Author: John Cassidy
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