Is Rick Santorum the Sharron Angle of 2012?

Lifting from steebo77′s quotations of you from your last column put on HotAir, Why Romney is better poised than Santorum to win the White House (posted here 3 days ago)…

Jennifer Rubin, January 17, 2012:

Santorum, on the other hand, is just getting warmed up with his blue-collar pitch and has a message that can translate beyond Christian conservatives.

Jennifer Rubin, January 19, 2012:

If the issue is whether Romney or Santorum is more electable, you have an interesting debate. Santorum will turn off upscale, more secular voters but cut into Obama’s share of working-class voters. Romney gets the suburbans and upscale singles but will arguably have a harder time with blue-collar voters.

Jennifer Rubin, January 21, 2012:

Rick Santorum, as he did in Iowa, gave a terrific, well-conceived speech Saturday night stressing his message of equal opportunity and emphasizing his appeal to working- and middle-class voters. Declaring that Republicans must also be a party with heart that values work and focuses on lifting up all Americans, he effectively wove together his dual economic and social messages.

Jennifer Rubin, January 22, 2012:

Rick Santorum showed brilliantly on Thursday how to pin Gingrich down and keep him on the defensive.

My own view is that any one of you would be preferable as a candidate to Newt Gingrich, as would either Rick Santorum or Mitt Romney.

Jennifer Rubin, January 27, 2012:

There was some question as to whether Santorum would be able to build on his success in Iowa. He now has set himself up to do that and to show the right that conservatism is more than attitude. As a smart and articulate proponent of conservatism with an interesting twist on traditional free-market economics, he’ll be a welcomed alternative to the Newtonian politics of outrage, anger and self-delusion.

Jennifer Rubin, January 30, 2012:

The hard right had every chance to select a more principled and ethical conservative. But Rick Santorum simply wouldn’t do, you see. The hard right, or at least the screechiest faction of it, doesn’t really want a viable, consistent conservative. Lacking the ideal conservative (who doesn’t exist anyway) they’d rather have a standardbearer as angry and vitriolic as they are, who will surely crash and burn, leaving them to grouse about the GOP “establishment” and the “socialist” president.

Jennifer Rubin, February 1, 2012:

Really, as an exasperated Santorum supporter put it to me last week in observing the right-wing media’s obsession with Gingrich: “What’s wrong with Rick?” He spotted the jihadist menace in the 1990s, fought for a ban on partial birth abortion, was instrumental in reforming welfare and has an impeccable personal life and an economic approach that is more than standard-fare Wall Street Journal supply-side dogma (e.g. it combines pro-growth and pro-family policies). So naturally, the right wing had no choice but to back. . . Gingrich!

Jennifer Rubin, January 24, 2012:

It’s quite telling that conservatives who merrily went along with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), an American hero but arguably the worst GOP candidate in decades, are angst ridden over selecting an overly-prepared Romney and are ignoring the consistent conservative (Santorum) for whom they pleaded.

Jennifer Rubin, January 26, 2012:

As for Rick Santorum, he’d be smart to stress that while Gingrich was bouncing around like a ping-pong ball in a wind machine on Iraq, he stood four-square behind President George W. Bush and the surge, even at the cost of his own seat. Santorum is a far more sober and consistent conservative than Gingrich and stands to gain the most should Gingrich begin to implode. By taking on Gingrich’s crazy schemes (janitors in schools, men on the moon, etc.) and hammering away at his past support for the individual mandate and TARP, Santorum can try to reestablish his own standing as the most viable not- Romney in the race.

Jennifer Rubin, January 15, 2012:

And Rick Santorum is, along with Romney, a candidate who thrives on the power of his argument and policies.

Jennifer Rubin, January 15, 2012:

Moreover, maybe voters aren’t in the mood for the phony intimacy of politicians. They’ve gotten more cynical, not so touched by biting-the-lower-lip politicians who tout their humble origins. They want answers. They want competence. They want a feasible game plan for diverting the country from the path to fiscal ruin. They want someone who is going to do more and talk less. (In this regard Santorum is very smart to emphasize what he has done so as to assure voters he can deliver in the future.)

Jennifer Rubin, January 20, 2012:

And here is where he and Rick Santorum are more alike than not.Both Santorum and Romney had family who came from poverty, both have immigrant stories and both will outwork and out-grind the opposition. They don’t seek elite approval (as Gingrich does in snuggling up to D.C. elites) because they are grounded not in the power culture of D.C. but in family and faith. Both Santorum and Romney view Gingrich’s egomania as comical if not nutty. They’d no more paint the portrait of the universe in which they are transformational agent of history than they would cheat on their wives. Whatever you think of their politics, these two share a normal self-image, which stems from understanding there are larger things than simply one’s own self-aggrandizement.

So uh, yeah, Ms. Rubin. Now you want to say he’d sink the party? Good luck.

Stoic Patriot on February 20, 2012 at 8:33 AM