Santorum’s incomprehensible strategy

July 21, 2005

I’ve been watching Rick “Man on Dog” Santorum for a while now and I’ve noticed that his behavior has become rather odd lately. I suspect there’s some kind of political strategy behind his erratic choices — I just can’t figure out what it is.

Even putting aside some of Santorum’s older nonsense, 2005 has been a strange year for him. He exploited the Terri Schiavo controversy to fly to Florida for campaign fundraising; he threatened to shut down the Senate unless he got his way on Schiavo legislation; he flip-flopped on Amtrak funding; flip-flopped again on the death penalty; he compared to Dems to Nazis during the fight over the nuclear option; and then launched a bizarre initiative against the National Weather Service.

Even more recently, Santorum stood by his assertion that Boston’s intellectual and ideological underpinnings were partially responsible for the Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal. And just this week, he penned an item for the National Review claiming that the government should intervene in personal religious matters.

And next week, Santorum’s new book, It Takes A Family, hits bookshelves. In it, Santorum condemns two-income families, cohabitation before marriage, and moms who work outside the home. It leads me to wonder if he’s intentionally trying to sabotage his career.

“Conservative activists tell me they agree with him on pretty much everything, but would never say it themselves,” said Stuart Rothenberg, a Washington political analyst. “He may have to take a position on a Supreme Court justice or Bush’s Social Security plan, but he does not have to take a position on whether women should be working outside the home. He seems almost eager to evoke some outcry.”

That’s true; it just doesn’t make any sense.

At this point — and, admittedly, it’s still early — Santorum is poised to lose his re-election campaign to Pennsylvania Treasurer Robert Casey (D). With this in mind, one might assume Santorum would go to extra lengths to be more appealing to a broader audience. Instead, he’s going off the deep end.

It occurs to me that maybe Santorum saw Bush play to his base in 2004 and win. If Santorum believes that’ll work statewide in Pennsylvania, against a candidate the state knows and likes, he’s even less in-touch with reality than he seems.

I’m afraid this is not entirely a rhetorical question. What is Santorum thinking? I can’t figure it out.

Prevailing wisdom, or speculation, is that he’s planning to lose the Senate seat as a fighting hero for the right wing, and use that to fuel a Presidential bid in 2008.

The only thing that leads me to believe this speculation is the historic track records of sitting Senators becoming President.

  • he’s planning to lose the Senate seat as a fighting hero for the right wing, and use that to fuel a Presidential bid in 2008.

    That’s sounds about right, but when was the last time someone used a crushing defeat in their home state to catapult a presidential campaign? Nixon, I suppose, was the last one, but even he had to wait six years before losing in California and running for president.

    Hmm, Nixon and Santorum. There are similarities there…

  • Hmmmm. I don’t know myself. I can’t see where losing a race would catapult him into the White House. I think he’s just been bitten by the hubris bug. It certainly seems strange. I can’t see where this picks up votes in the two big cities of the state.

  • Maybe he’s bucking for Falwell’s job..or a AM talk radio franchise.

    Or maybe, he really is crazy.

  • Hubris=crazy. Or a kind of crazy. They’re all going down this road. They all believe that there are loads of people standing behind them that believe in what they say. Actually though, there’s just a few loud people standing behind them urging them on. That’s the folly of the media though, it gives power both to people who know how to use it and people who don’t.

    Keep urging them on.

  • It all boils down to rather Man on Dog is a ‘True Believer’, or a ‘Shit Weasel’. True Believers, like Judge Moore, may be meglomaniacs, but their ping pong ball smooth brains intensely believe what they spout.

    SW’s, like say Tom Delay or Ann Coulter. Don’t really believe in anything. They just pander for power and money.

    I’ve concluded that there is no such thing as in-between. Apply enough pressure, or examine a moral dilemna, and you’ll see which camp someone falls into. Planting male prostitutes in the WH, forced abortion and prostituion in Saipan… Sooner or later, the rubber hits the road.

    M-on-D is undeniably a bit unstable. He might have simply stopped taking his medication and started seeing himself as some sort of messiah who will be swept by the rightous to his well deserved throne. But, being insane does not mean that a person has a moral code of any kind. If he isn’t having visions of Joan of Arc, he has already realized that the ship has sailed on re-electing crazy and dishonest people, at least for his seat, and is pandering the true believers, and their well healed benefectors, for a cushy life after politics.

    -jjf

  • Can we ask every Republican to go on record whether they agree with the number three Republican in the senate on whether women should work outside the house? Or is he the number two Republican?

  • Can we ask every Republican to go on record whether they agree with the number three Republican in the senate on whether women should work outside the house? Or is he the number two Republican?

    He’s number three, but he plans on moving up in 2007 after Frist has left — if he wins re-election, which I don’t think he will.

    As for asking Republicans if they stand by his positions, I think that’s an excellent idea. Let’s start with Liddy Dole and Kay Bailey Hutchison.

  • It really does seem that Santorum has fallen into the trap of ‘believing his own press releases,’ as the saying goes. It’s not hard to visualize the army of camp followers who eagerly agree with anything he says which would encourage him to believe that the rest of the country does, too. Same with Bush, of course. They both live in the same kind of partisan bubble where they hear only what they want to believe and ignore the reality the rest of the world lives with. Brainwashing is sad and evil enough when others do it to you, but when you do it to yourself it’is truly pathetic.

  • On one hand I have to respect him for sticking by what he believes, on the other hand he’s an idiot.

  • Jon Stewart just announced that Ricky will be on The Daily Show next Monday.

    Anyway, as appalling as he is, I’m less and less worried about Santorum’s future in elected office. The more radical he becomes, the more likely he is to lose Pennsylvania, and he’s probably already too far out into wingnut territory to get the Presidential nomination…

    However, here’s something to give you nightmares: Mr. Justice Santorum.

    _____________

  • Today’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (7/23/05) has a story on Santorum’s recent foray in to the wierd. It is well worth a read; the link is below. Here is the opening paragraph:

    U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum yesterday defended the observations on women and work in his new book, and stood by his controversial remarks linking Boston’s supposedly liberal climate to the scandal of priests and sexual abuse.

    In particular, the reporter, James O’Toole, does a very good job of tearing apart Santorum’s defense of his Catholic Online article. Here is the relevant passage:

    In July 2002, Santorum wrote in an article in the journal Catholic Online: “Priests, like all of us, are infected by culture. When the culture is sick, every element of it becomes infected. While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm.”

    That passage has sparked criticism from politicians of both parties, as well as from victims’ support groups, many of whom have pointed out that priests’ abuse was by no means confined to Boston, with widespread documented reports from across the United States and other nations.

    “People are sort of taking that out of context because in 2002 that was the story; it was Boston,” Santorum said yesterday. I mean yes, we found out subsequently that it occurred in a lot of other places.”

    While Boston was the primary focus of the scandal, particularly in the earlier months of 2002, by the middle the year the widespread nature of the problem was apparent and had been extensively reported.

    In June 2002, the month before Santorum’s article appeared, the nation’s Catholic bishops met in Dallas, painstakingly reviewed the widespread reports and approved strict new guidelines for dealing with instances of abuse.

    The article is here:
    http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05204/542549.stm

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