As a Santorum supporter, I’m delighted to see the attacks being mounted against him lately. And they’re coming principally from three quarters – Liberals, who are scared of his conservatism, establishment Republicans, who are also scared of, or maybe I should temper that to “worried about” his conservatism, and Romney supporters, who are trying to paint him as Liberal.<\/p>\n
The thing is, they’re not getting anywhere. They’re offended at one of Santorum’s campaign donors, Foster Friess, making the joke that some might consider off-color about old-fashioned methods of birth control. As Rush Limbaugh put it on Friday, “All Foster Friess did was have a cute, funny way of describing virtue.” Besides, this was just one of Santorum’s donors, not Rick himself. AB Stoddard on tonight’s Fox News Special Report panel had it sized up correctly when she asked, “Is this just the media beating up on Rick Santorum? The Republican voters will love<\/em> that.” The same with all the other attacks. I can’t think of one that has any serious substance to it, and they don’t seem to be getting much traction. And I absolutely love how Santorum refused to berate Foster Friess when questioned about it. Here is a man of principle who knows when he is right.<\/p>\n And then there are the Romney people, trying to say that Santorum is liberal and Romney is conservative. I love the Romney people. Many of them are LDS and I’m LDS. But I’ve had some comments on this blog and some personal conversations with people trying to make that point and I don’t pay much attention to them. If they can’t admit that Romney is a moderate, it has to be because of something like they are too emotionally invested to listen, so what’s the point of discussing it? Tell me you like<\/em> government programs, and so you like Romney. Or tell me that you think that strategically a moderate will get more votes in the general election. Or try to sell Romney’s r\u00e9sum\u00e9. But if you really think he is the true conservative in this race, you’re wearing blinders, and an argument will only stir up bad feelings and will get us nowhere. Don’t try to dredge up votes here and there from Santorum’s Senate career. I’ve been around too long and I know how the Senate works, and I lived through those issues. A lot of Republicans in Congress felt they needed to support President Bush’s programs, even though they expanded government. Voting to increase the debt ceiling was routine for years. But Santorum’s ratings from the American Conservative Union were consistently in the 90s. If you want to ignore that and focus on blemishes in his record, and also can’t perceive the “government solution” instincts of Romney, then I can’t help you and I don’t want to argue.<\/p>\n And so Santorum, who is spending practically nothing in Arizona, is surging here. The latest polls put him within three points of Romney. I said a week ago I didn’t think he could win in Arizona, because of all the LDS support of Romney. Now I’m not so sure.
\n