{"id":4768,"date":"2005-07-21T13:04:19","date_gmt":"2005-07-21T17:04:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/4768.html"},"modified":"2005-07-21T13:04:19","modified_gmt":"2005-07-21T17:04:19","slug":"santorums-incomprehensible-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/santorums-incomprehensible-strategy\/","title":{"rendered":"Santorum’s incomprehensible strategy"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been watching Rick “Man on Dog<\/a>” 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>; he threatened to shut down the Senate<\/a> unless he got his way on Schiavo legislation; he flip-flopped<\/a> on Amtrak funding; flip-flopped<\/a> again on the death penalty; he compared to Dems to Nazis<\/a> during the fight over the nuclear option; and then launched a bizarre initiative against the National Weather Service<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Even more recently, Santorum stood by his assertion<\/a> 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<\/a> in personal religious matters.<\/p>\n

And next week, Santorum’s new book<\/a>, 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s true; it just doesn’t make any sense.
\n
\nAt this point — and, admittedly, it’s still early — Santorum is poised to lose<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

I’m afraid this is not entirely a rhetorical question. What is<\/i> Santorum thinking? I can’t figure it out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4768\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}