Canada: "Saint Santorum"

The National Post

Saint Santorum: Faith and conservatism fuel bid for Republican presidential nomination

By Ian Vandaelle

Iowa is known for few things, oft forgotten in the centre of mid-western America. Most famously, it is known as the birthplace of Captain James Tiberius Kirk and now for the rebirth of Rick Santorum’s political career.

After six years in the political wilderness, Mr. Santorum scored a resounding victory in the Iowa caucuses and followed up with wins in Colorado, Missouri and Minnesota, catapulting the former senator from relative obscurity into the upper echelon of Republican candidates.

Such a meteoric rise seemed improbable, if not impossible, after his career was torn asunder in 2007.

His 12-year hold on one of Pennsylvania’s senate seats was gone, his reputation in tatters due, in part, to his blunt commentary on cultural issues and rigid stance on traditional values.

He lost the election by 18 percentage points; an almost unheard of margin for a veteran incumbent. But such high and lows are a feature of his career, one marked by success and scandal, exhilarating victory followed by devastating defeats.

Mr. Santorum is often contradictory. He defended former president Ronald Reagan’s decision to supply arms to Iran, while expressing a willingness to attack the country. He calls himself a vanguard of American conservatism but has a moderate voting record. He is a staunch Republican who supports big government.

The would-be presidential candidate was born in Virginia and grew up in the gritty working-class town of Butler in western Pennsylvania, known for its steel mills and shuttered manufacturing plants.

He likes to talk about how his grandfather fled Italy under the fascism of Mussolini for the U.S. in the 1920s and found work in coal mines.

“He ended up continuing to work in those mines until he was 72 years old, digging coal,” Mr. Santorum said after his Iowa victory.

“I’ll never forget the first time I saw someone who had died. It was my grandfather. And I knelt next to his coffin. And all I could do — eye level — was look at his hands. They were enormous hands. And all I could think was those hands dug freedom for me.

Mr. Santorum’s competitive streak was evident early on, earning him the nickname “Rooster” for his combative tendencies, as well as a prominent cowlick.

His surge of support is tied almost directly to his strong Roman Catholic faith and his ardent belief in conservative policy.

But it was not always that way. By his own admission, there was a time when his faith was tenuous at best, before he and his wife Karen rediscovered their Catholic roots.

When they first met, Ms. Santorum was living with the man who delivered her — Dr. Tom Allen, a Pittsburgh obstetrician and abortion clinic founder, who was 40 years her senior.

The Santorums now have seven children, all home-schooled by Ms. Santorum and the couple espouses traditional values, including a staunch opposition to abortion and homosexuality.

Those beliefs are held so dear that when tragedy struck and a pregnancy complication put Ms. Santorum’s life in danger, they refused to abort the fetus. Ms. Santorum went into labour at 20 weeks, delivering a baby, Gabriel, who died two hours later.

They slept in the same bed as Gabriel that night, and took the dead baby home to introduce him to their other children before arranging a burial and funeral.

Ms. Santorum later wrote how her daughter Elizabeth cuddled the dead baby and said, “This is my baby brother, Gabriel; he is an angel.”

Mr. Santorum reportedly kept a framed picture of the child on his desk in his Senate office.

After earning an honours BA in political science from Pennsylvania State University and an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh, Mr. Santorum got a law degree from Dickinson School of Law in 1986. He then practised law for four years.

However, his meteoric rise began when he wrested a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives from Doug Walgren, a seven-term Democratic incumbent.

Democrats redrew the electoral district after his win in an effort to ensure it was a one-time fluke. Undaunted, Mr. Santorum won a second term, and was elected to the Senate soon after.

This boldness has always been evident, said Terry Madonna, director of a pollster group based at the Franklin and Marshall College in New Hampshire and a longtime Santorum acquaintance.

“He’s very tenacious and undaunted by a challenge,” Mr. Madonna said.

“Rick is very smart, he’s very ambitious, he’s very aggressive, and he also has a little bit of a sense of self-importance. Tell me that’s not the mark of all politicians.”

But that boldness, combined with Mr. Santorum’s strong conviction on cultural issues has led to problems. He famously compared consensual homosexual relationships to abusive “man on dog, man on child” sexual scenarios.

The comments led gay rights activist and columnist Dan Savage to establish a new neologism for Mr. Santorum, leading to what has been referred to as his “little Google-problem.”

That neologism, as determined by readers of Mr. Savage’s column, is defined as “the frothy mix of lube and fecal matter than is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.”

The website containing the definition is routinely the top Google search result of Mr. Santorum’s name despite his efforts to get it changed.

Mr. Santorum has also come under fire for his role in the case of Terri Schiavo, a Florida woman who was living in a vegetative state and whose family was divided over her right to die. Mr. Santorum voted to have a judge intervene.

Critics have also labelled him a “prince of pork” for pulling millions of federal dollars back into Pennsylvania.

However, said Mr. Madonna, it is his authenticity and off-the-cuff style that draw voters in.

“Rick has a problem — he has moments when he is unrehearsed and unplugged,” he said.

“But through these primaries, he’s been amazingly disciplined. Voters, I think, appreciate his authenticity, even though he says some provocative things.”

But Mr. Santorum’s improbable push to the White House may be derailed for one reason: money. He bet the farm on winning the Iowa caucuses, pouring in huge amounts of time and money.

As he attempts to refill his coffers, his main competitor, Mr. Romney, has huge amounts of cash and a wealthy super PAC supporting him.

“I presume that Romney’s super PAC is just going to annihilate Santorum, like he did to Newt [Gingrich] in Florida,” said Mr. Madonna.

“In the end, he may just not have enough money to win the nomination. But I’m not prepared to rule him out.”

If Mr. Santorum wins, it will be because he has established himself as the most conservative candidate, while hoping voters don’t hold his moderate voting record against him.

Mr. Santorum will also have to paint Mr. Romney as a centrist, said Mr. Madonna.

Which is exactly what he did on Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.

Mr. Santorum tried to sow doubts about the electability of Mr. Romney and courted conservatives with pledges of fidelity to their causes.

Mr. Santorum criticized the view held by many Republicans that while Mr. Romney is not the most conservative hopeful, he would be a strong candidate in the Nov. 6 election against Barack Obama because he would appeal to swing voters.

“Why would an undecided voter vote for a candidate that the party’s not excited about?” Mr. Santorum said.

He took aim at Mr. Romney’s health care plan developed when he was Massachusetts governor, calling it “the stepchild of Obamacare,” the White House overhaul that conservatives want to repeal.

“Conservatives need conservatives now to rally for a conservative, to go into November to excite the conservative base, to pull with that excitement moderate voters and to defeat Barack Obama in the fall,” Mr. Santorum said.

At the same forum, Mr. Romney urged conservatives to overcome their doubts and get behind him.

“I’m here to ask you to stand with me shoulder-to-shoulder as we fight for America,” he said.

Mr. Madonna said the challenge would be who could present themselves as the most conservative.

“At some point, Republicans will have to decide, is Rick Santorum the purest conservative we have?” he said.

“To convince them, he will have to rely on Romney not sealing the deal and selling Americans on his conservative stance.

“America is a centre-right country, and given the option between the two, most American are going to vote for the right-wing politician over the centrist one.”

National Post, with files from Reuters

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/02/10/rick-santorum/