Santorum, the Exorcist Candidate
Rick Santorum has become the alternative to Mitt Romney because the former Pennsylvania senator comes across as, to use his words, “the conviction conservative” in the GOP presidential primary. While Romney burned through millions in big-donor contributions, Santorum ran a bare-bones campaign. In December, the New York Times ran a graphic on the candidates’ entourages. Team Romney traveled with a 30-seat plane, campaign bus, security, advance staffers and an average of four other aides. Santorum’s fleet and crew consisted of a Dodge Ram pickup and the occasional staffer.
He’s the underdog - the grandson of an Italian immigrant coal digger who believes his humble roots can gain him traction in middle America. Santorum has written that he stands up to “the ‘Bigs’ - big news media, big entertainment, big universities and public schools, big businesses and some big national labor unions, and, of course, the biggest Big of all, the federal government.”
Problem: He has no business being the GOP presidential nominee.
The 2012 general election ought to be about the role and finances of the federal government, but Santorum is mired in a traditional-values war.
In a 2008 speech at Florida’s Ave Maria University, Santorum described the war as, not a political or a cultural war, but “a spiritual war. And the father of lies has his sights on what you would think the father of lies, Satan, would have his sights on - a good, decent, powerful, influential country, the United States of America.”
I’ll defend to the bitter end Santorum’s right to his deeply held religious beliefs. But a man who wants to be president and represent the American people shouldn’t talk like an exorcist.
In an October interview with the blog Caffeinated Thoughts, Santorum claimed, “I’m not running for preacher.” He actually said that after he asserted that contraception is “not OK because it’s a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”
Do not make the mistake of believing that Santorum’s religious beliefs always skew right. As a senator, he supported legislation to allow convicted felons to vote.