Santorum surges from behind in Iowa
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Santorum surges from behind in Iowa
This reminds me of that scene in the movie "The Perfect Storm," when the terrified meteorologist looks at the radar in panic and says, "It's happening!"
At the start of the month, Rick Santorum needed the following things to happen in order for him to be competitive in Iowa: Newt Gingrich needed to fade. Evangelicals needed to move toward his campaign. Then voters needed to see some tangible sign of momentum, in order to speed up the tortoise-like pace of his Iowa campaign.
The former Pennsylvania senator has now gotten at least a dose of all three ingredients. Gingrich’s campaign has lost ground in every recent Iowa poll. Santorum won the endorsement of a number of high-profile Christian conservatives, including the head of The Family Leader. And today, Santorum placed third in an Iowa poll for the first time, running fairly close behind Mitt Romney and Ron Paul in a CNN/Time magazine survey.
The survey may not be all it’s cracked up to be: it only tested Republican voters, even though non-Republicans can get access to the caucuses. But it also followed a PPP poll released Tuesday night showing that Santorum has the highest net favorability rating of any Republican candidate in Iowa.
Whatever else, Santorum seems all but certain to post the highest finish in a presidential primary or caucus of any former Philadelphia Inquirer columnist, which is quite an achievement. On one level, it's shocking that Santorum's rise in the polls has taken so long -- putting ideological critiques aside, he's clearly one of the sharper tools in the GOP's rusted 2012 shed, and he's targeted his appeal to the same evangelicals who gave the Hawkeye State to Mike Huckabee in 2008.
I think his biggest problem, politically, is that he talks like someone who's spent most of his adult life as a Washington insider, circa 1990s, and doesn't know how to "bring tha crazy" the way that the talk radio/Tea Party faction of the party likes it. Yes, a man who spoke in a political interview about "man-on-dog sex" isn't crazy enough for the modern Republican Party. Ponder that. And, at the end of a day, Santorum is a man who wears out his welcome -- his 59 percent rejection by Pennsylvania voters in 2006 was the highest I've ever seen for an incumbent senator not facing corruption charges.
Santorum's surge means people may finally look at his actual record. It won't be pretty. The real Senator Rick Santorum was a shameless pimp for Big Pharma who battled to hold back the working class Americans at companies like Wal-Mart and Outback and who founded a charity which was exposed (by Your Blogger) as not especially charitable. Maybe that kind of record is "evangelical," but not in any sense that I'm familiar with.
"Mitt Romney will be the President Elect this time next year." . . . Please explain that to those who think the Tea Party/evangelical base is still relevant.— montani semper liberi- "Mitt Romney will be the President Elect this time next year." . . . Please explain that to those who think the Tea Party/evangelical base is still relevant.— montani semper liberi
- Why is no one talking about the fraud he committed in getting his home school district to pay for his kids schooling?— ganjoka
- Exactly, I've asked this before. Did he ever pay back the $67,000 that he stole from the Penn Hills School District? I'd google it, but, well, you know...
— one_eyed_jack - Wait -- if Santorum really does slip from the rear, the others in the GOP clown-car will make sure his pecadilloes are well-aired. — plainerenglish
- Beyond the flatulent bowels of Philadelphia, in middle America, Santorum is admired and respected. Iowa isn't Kensington.— Disco Dave
- Well that's pretty frightening. What does that say about the idiots in middle America? It says, middle America is way out of touch. — bushmciworlcomenron
- Hey Disco Duck, do they admire and respect fraud in Iowa? Then I guess they will love him. I always thought theft was a sin. — one_eyed_jack
- Beyond the snake handling, tambourine shaking bible belt Santorum is regarded as what he is: a religious fanatic and bigot who admires the 19th century style, government hands off economy that brought us child labor, unsafe conditions, grinding poverty and state government sanctioned racial terror.— mick-of-the-moment
- Whoever came up with that headline is a comedic genius.— pragmaticrealist
- Is that why his own neighbors in Penn Hills ratted on his kids absence from the local district, and he had to ask the Capitol police (not the local cops) to check if anyone was peeking in his empty house?— montani semper liberi
- Rick the Rooster is also famous for blaming liberal Harvard and MIT as the reason Catholic priests in Boston fiddled with altar boys. So much for conservative notions of personal responsibility, eh?— montani semper liberi
- Anyway, I suspect mischief will ensue in Iowa a la Rush's idea for the Ohio Dem primary in 2008. Just sayin'.— montani semper liberi
- Santorum is surging from a behind in Iowa ? ..ewwwwwwwwwwwww! (HTML deleted)
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