Keep Watching Out for Rick Santorum

The South Carolina headlines will trumpet Gingrich’s win, and most of the stories will focus on the Gingrich/Romney dynamic. But you heard it here first: continue to watch out for Rick Santorum. His 18% in South Carolina placed him as a solid third—well ahead of Ron Paul, and actually closing in on Mitt Romney.

But forget the snapshot, and look at the moving picture:

1. Ron Paul has officially flamed out. He had one-fourth of the debate stage in South Carolina, with more time to articulate his messages of economic libertarianism and international isolationism. Americans like a lot of the first part; they just can’t stomach the rest. He’s made it a three person race, whether he stays in or not.

2. Santorum has always been solid in the debates because of sheer authenticity. He isn’t flashy but he is plainly very knowledgeable, has come to his views based on real political experience, and wears his faith and family values—which are shared by the majority of Americans who pull the wagon (as opposed to those riding in it)—on his sleeves (or is it his sweater vests?). He connected very well in the last South Carolina debate; he is sharpening the distinctions between he and Romney/Gingrich. His head on attack on Romney and Gingrich for supporting individual mandates as part of their approaches to health care reform reached and demolished the targets. Nothing symbolizes the Obama regime’s assault on liberty more than Obamacare, and the central concept on which Obamacare depends is the government’s ability to mandate what individuals do with their health care dollars.

3. We love Gingrich’s debate performances as much as anyone. Sticking it to the mainstream media in the persons of Juan Williams and John King is something Main Street America has been longing to see from a conservative political leader. The absence of a take-it-to-them attitude has been an endless source of frustration. But now that South Carolina has put the spotlight back on Gingrich, his warts are going to show, again.

His climate change video with Nancy Pelosi is one strike.

And no matter how the pundits try to instruct us that South Carolinians have definitively proved that Newt’s marital baggage doesn’t matter, the fact is that it still makes Main Street America very uncomfortable. Rick Santorum, his wife and his seven children will continue to draw attention as a breath of fresh moral air in a society that does not like the Clintons or the Newt baggage nearly as much as the media would have you believe. That is strike two.

But the third and most important strike against Newt will actually come from a more thoughtful review of what he did to take out Romney: he campaigned as a class warfare liberal. Pundits and political junkies can rave all they want as to the brilliance of the tactic and will excuse it because Newt’s political survival was at stake, but the American conservative voter will continue to scratch his/her head over just what kind of ‘convictions’ Newt really has.

We were never big fans of Mitt Romney (see here), but Newt’s attacks on Bain Capital and the Cayman Islands (gasp!) were and are, in his word, despicable.

Our view is that Newt delivered a blow to the media that Americans have wanted to see for more than a decade, and he rode the standing O’s from the debates to a primary win. But Americans are dead serious about the 2012 election; they are going to continue to think about Newt and, in the end, the three strikes will call him ‘out’. And that’s because Rick Santorum is on deck.

4. Santorum has no personal baggage. The biggest knocks on him have been related to his votes while a Representative or Senator that smell of ‘big government conservatism’—such as the No Child Left Behind act, and the Medicare prescription drug benefit. Those knocks have some merit, but they are relying too much on hindsight. It’s only in the context of Obama’s out-of-control radical leftism that the Tea Party has been given birth, and a fresh and much needed re-thinking of government’s role and size have occurred. In the environment in which Santorum actually voted, his positions were not without conservative justification—and he has stood by them and explained them without clever re-positioning. And again, his personal and family life and campaign messages in 2012 just reek of authentic American conservatism—much more than Gingirch—and his working class connections and “I do my own taxes” comment connects him to the American middle class more than Romney could ever dream. And they give considerable confidence to Americans that his conservative instincts can be harmonized with the mood of America in 2012.

The ‘brokered convention’ narrative will also pick up steam in the coming weeks, and we’ve always said we prefer Sarah Palin if she would be willing to jump in. But we think Santorum will start to shine even more brightly as the Florida debates now take center stage. We’d guess that Romney and Gingrich will throw so much s*** on the wall that they will both smell, and Santorum may emerge as a healthy and strong alternative. He just might win Florida, and be off to the races to an outright win of the Republican nomination. We won't be surprised.

Paul Gable

January 21, 2012