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The Spectacle Blog
Sometimes conservatives tick me off. Why? I’ve written on this before: Conservatives spend far too little time actually crediting fellow conservatives in the arena who do the hard work of legislating, of getting real things done. Conservatives these days seem to rush to lionize people who talk a good game, who have a flair for catchy phrases, who rabble-rouse (in a good way), who specialize in media manipulation. Those are important political skills, to be sure. But conservatives of all people should value actual performance, should value the practical skills that make government work while keeping it limited.
Today, one of those conservative workers — who also is excellent on his feet in debates — entered the campaign for president. Rick Santorum for some reason gets treated as if he were a fringe player on Capitol Hill for 16 years, playing to the right wing (mostly) in a sort of gadfly role. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is a guy who rose to the fourth ranking position in the Republican Senate as Conference Chairman, and who all conservatives in Washington knew was THE “go to guy” within leadership whenever leadership wasn’t paying enough heed to conservative views. Santorum wouldn’t just talk a good game; he would actually go into leadership meetings and fight the good fight. There are conservative judges right now who would not be on the bench if it weren’t for Santorum. There are abortion restrictions in law that wouldn’t be there without Santorum. And, lest we forget the single most successful major federal governmental programmatic reform of the past half-century, it was Santorum who was the lead Senate sponsor of welfare reform in 1996. Yes, the House took the lead in many ways in the welfare reform effort (with Florida’s Clay Shaw and Texas’ Bill Archer never getting the credit they deserved for their work on it), but it takes two chambers to tango. It was Santorum who led the way in the Senate. This was not a gadfly; this was an effective legislator at work. Santorum also was a conservative leader on foreign policy, and a key supporter of the Strategic Defense Initiative.
Santorum is an able and effective campaigner against incumbents, having upset incumbents to win in a tough House district in 1990 and in a tough state for the Senate in 1994. He also won re-election in 2000 against the odds, taking Pennsylvania by about seven percentage points even as GW Bush lost the state at the head of the ticket.
By any SERIOUS standard of who should be treated as a top-tier candidate, on the merits, Santorum qualifies.
Finally, if one’s standard is authenticity — of being the same person in private as in public, of not being a calculating political BSer — only Herman Cain, of the apparent field, can fully join Santorum on the podium.
So conservatives should heartily welcome Santorum to the race. And they should expect him to punch well above the political weight for which the cognoscenti credit him.
View all comments (26) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by Quin Hillyer
http://spectator.org/blog/2011/06/06/santorums-bona-fides
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Michael L. Hauschild| 6.6.11 @ 4:29PM
Good Lord,
Go get on Fox news. Breibart took over Weiners press conference, Weiner says he will not resign.
Teflon93| 6.6.11 @ 5:15PM
Santorum isn't a RINO---why would Neocon Review or The Weekly Substandard back him?
Siegfried X| 6.6.11 @ 5:29PM
One reason why conservatives have poor name recognition is because Republican media like American Spectator don't cover them. (Or in fairness maybe I should say didn't cover them until conservative citizens revolted early in Obama's presidency. Up until then it was all RINO all the time, like with John McCain's coronation by the Republican media.)
Teflon93| 6.6.11 @ 6:52PM
Exactly right!
JASmius | 6.6.11 @ 5:31PM
But....Santorum was a senator, not a governor, so he has zero executive experience. That alone disqualifies him from serious consideration.
simon templar| 6.6.11 @ 6:00PM
Hmmm..you mean like the senator from Illinois?
simon templar| 6.6.11 @ 6:03PM
To date, sixteen senators have also served as president of the United States. Three senators, Warren G. Harding, John F. Kennedy, and Barack Obama moved directly from the U.S. Senate to the White House, but I am sure you know better.
Bob K.| 6.6.11 @ 7:49PM
Yeah, but most of those 16 senators had been appointed by their states, rather than elected, so they new how to take instructions!
Bob K.| 6.6.11 @ 7:51PM
That would be "knew how to take instructions." Or orders, if you will.
Mimi| 6.6.11 @ 5:37PM
Thanks Quinn for giving Rick Santorum the High sign. I have liked and respected him for all these years .... mostly for his support for the unborn...he was always there to count on. Recently he did a terrific job in the Republican debate on Fox. I caught his speech on C-Span this morning... he sounded great. I hope to see him catch on ...he looked darn good!!!
C Bowen| 6.6.11 @ 5:58PM
Year after year, he voted for budgets that subsidized abortion via Planned Parenthood.
simon templar| 6.6.11 @ 5:59PM
Quin, you raise a good question..why do some get the attention and others are ignored? Other than the obvious reason we have a liberal lame stream media and our culture tends to lean towards the sensational like the story going on about the weiner's weiner right this very moment, do you have any theory about this?
Michael L. Hauschild| 6.6.11 @ 6:02PM
Just remeber folks, this man sold out one of his fellow conservatives to grease the wheels so he could regain a throne (any throne so it seems) by endorsing Snarlin Arlin. He exemplifies all that is wrong and what we are trying to overcome.
I swear, you people have the selective attention span of Hillary Clinton.
W| 6.6.11 @ 6:35PM
No fan of Snarlin Arlen, but we got Judge Alito, and GWB also endorsed Arlen.
Chuck| 6.6.11 @ 6:03PM
This article is silly, you forgot the big negative, losing 59-41 in '06.
Sandy| 6.7.11 @ 7:20AM
Chuck- Yes he did lose in 06, but it would have been hard for any Republican to win in a blue state, in a Democrat wave year. He campaigned on supporting the Iraq war, when many were getting war weary. We did go on to win that war. If we had cut and run like the Democrats wanted to do, like in Vietnam, the OBL's of the world would have been further emboldened.
He also campaigned on privatizing Social Security, which Bush wanted to do. Need I remind anyone what the Democrats are doing to Ryan for his Medicare reform.
Yup he lost, but he stayed with his principles even though they weren't popular at the time. That should mean something to everyone.
WilliamR| 6.6.11 @ 6:27PM
Rick Sanatorium supported 98 percent of the Bush agenda. He's no conservative.
Quartermaster| 6.6.11 @ 6:49PM
Supporting Snarlin' Arlen and the Bush agenda pretty much draws the line for me. Santorum may have had some golden years when he did the right thing, but he betrayed us later and deserved to lose his bid for re-election in '06.
Being a conservative is about consistency. Santorum may have been a conservative in bygone years, but that's ancient history and he has to live with it now.
Teflon93| 6.6.11 @ 7:16PM
These are good points. Santorum is a lifetime 88.1 from ACU; solid but not stellar. Endorsing Specter was horrible judgment on his part. His 2006 rating was almost perfect---the only vote he took which wasn't conservative was in killing legislation to require victims claiming asbestos benefits to prove injury. But then a lot of weak-need Republicans suddenly rediscover conservatism only in election years.
Bob K.| 6.6.11 @ 7:57PM
I'm from PA. I wish he was back. Now we have Sen. Casey a big "D" democrat. Anybody who complained here about Santorum happy about that? I'll bet he would not have voted for Kagan and Sotomeyer!
Warrior | 6.6.11 @ 10:18PM
Santorum is Conservative when it comes to abortion and marriage neither of which has any enumerated power in the Constitution. On all the important Constitutional issues he voted for increasing entitlements, expanding government and reduction in liberties. He's another version of Mitt, can't run on his record, so he has already started to apologize for it.
1blumett| 6.6.11 @ 10:41PM
Still, keep your eye on Herman Cain. He is not to be ignored.....he should not be ignored.
Sandy| 6.7.11 @ 7:27AM
Thank you for doing this positive article on Santorum. I have been following him for a good while, and he is one of my top choices. Everyone looks at him as being the Social issue guy, in these times of "truces" which Daniels said, and the Libertarian Tea Party people live. He is just as versed and solid on foreign policy/national security. He takes the threat of radical islam as seriously as I do. He also recognizes the threats posed from China and Russia who are not our friends.
I just love the way so many can be/are swayed by the MSM, and the elites in the R party. I see some of the very same complaints against him here that I've read elsewhere, particularly pointing out that he lost his 06 election. Yet no one bothers to look any further into why.
Bob K.| 6.7.11 @ 7:38AM
I can't think of anyone less liked in American political history than Richard Nixon. Remember his speech to the voters and the press after he lost the Governor's race in California? "You won't have Richard Nixon to kick around anymore!"
More incomprehensible things have happened in politics than the possibility of Santorum winning the presidency.
Zilla | 6.7.11 @ 9:20AM
The most important thing I need in a candidate for POTUS is that the recognize the danger from islam and sharia and are not afraid to speak openly about it, that they are serious about the problem we have with CRIMINAL ALIEN INVADERS and that they are opposite Obama on foreign policy issues, meaning no kowtowing to our enemies or throwing our allies under the bus & realizing that STRONG American leadership is crucial to the cause of free people everywhere, and they have to be pro-Israel. Rick Santorum is the best I've seen in the GOP field for those things, I wrote about it at my place if anyone is interested:
http://zillablog.marezilla.com.....ident.html
I am so glad that he's running. Pay no mind to the elites and their blatherings, remember, they thought dhimmi RINO Mitch Daniels was the man and they also support dhimmi RINO Romney. Why listen to those people at all? They do not have our best interests in mind at all.
Oldefarte| 6.7.11 @ 5:06PM
No doubt Santorum is a good and decent person, and a standup conservative to boot; but I will repeat my objection to his nomination [along with others] that he has NO ADMINISTRATIVE/MANIGERIAL EXPERIENCE. The presidency is mostly a job requiring/demanding same. Again, this country does not need a bullexcrement champion [not that Santorum qualifies for same], but we now/currently have the ultimate of same occupying the white house. The listing of silver-tongued devils occupying the WH is endlessly long, and the results of their presidencies are historically noted. We simply need someone who can sit behind a desk [and not be concerned with teleprompters, golf scores, basketball bracketing, and other excrement], make executive decisions, assign policies to subordinates and executively demand their completion, etc. This country is in the process of becoming bankrupt from asinine governmental spending policies by congressmen of both parties [though mainly Democrats], and an administrator with a lazer focus upon managerially solving these problems for the sake of this country's economically welfare and that of its citizens is the one and only criteria that should be expected and demanded by the voters !!!!!!!!