Rick Santorum Is Kinda Coming Back for 2016
Ben JacobsFour years after winning Iowa, the former senator is struggling to crack 6 percent in the 2016 GOP field—and maybe that’s right where he wants to be. But why is he bashing Reagan?
Among potential Republican presidential contenders in the 2016 Iowa caucuses, Rick Santorum is polling at around 6 percent. He’s mired behind more than half-dozen candidates, some of whom have never campaigned the Hawkeye State, let alone won the first in the nation caucuses. But while the former Pennsylvania senator may not be in an ideal position for a presidential hopeful, he’s still light years beyond where he was was at this time four years ago.
Indeed, Santorum didn’t start regularly cracking the 6 percent mark in polls until December 2011, just a month before the caucuses. That was after spending more than a year going back and forth across the state, where he boasted about visiting all 99 counties.
On Friday night, the former Pennsylvania senator tried to jump-start a return to the top of the polls in front of a crowd of about 125 at a picnic in Boone, Iowa, held by the county Republican Party. Santorum arrived long after the event had started, as an array of election officials and candidates took turns delivering stem winders to rally the party faithful who had gathered for a barbecue dinner in a city park on a pleasant August evening. He emerged from the parking lot with a grin on his face and stuck his hands in his pockets as he loped toward the event, just waiting for someone to recognize him. After so many months in 2011 of toiling in anonymity before crowds of five or 10 people, he was appearing effortlessly before scores of key Republican activists, including Gov. Terry Branstad and Rep. Steve King. But the event didn’t pause for Santorum. Instead, after about 30 or 45 seconds, two women helping to organize the picnic went up to him, welcoming him and taking him off to the side to meet and greet the other organizers.
Both Friday night in Boone and at the bigger Family Leader Summit on Saturday in Ames, Santorum gave what has become his standard stump speech, focusing on themes from his book Blue Collar Conservatives. But unlike some other GOP presidential hopefuls, he appeared more focused on using his book to promote his potential candidacy than the other way around.
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/12/rick-santorum-is-kinda-coming-back-for-2016.html
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But first, let me pause to highlight this sentence:
"But the event didn’t pause for Santorum."
But now that that's out of the way, this guy is one of the few people out there talking about real working-class issues. Most Democrats and almost all Republicans are far too beholden to Big Business to do anything on this front: Sure, they love to talk about the "middle class", but when it comes to action, we find the same Democrats spending their capital playing defense on poverty issues (welfare, SNAP, etc.) and Republicans ignoring the needs of the 99% altogether. Santorum has a way to go to convince me that he's serious about this shit, but I'm holding on to a glimmer of hope that maybe--MAYBE--he'll turn out to be someone we on the left can actually work with on the economic issues that threaten to destroy this country.
If you had told me 10 years ago that I would EVER have anything remotely hopeful to say about Senator Man-On-Dog, I would have said you were nuts.
They've been going with the "next up" scenario for quite awhile now, And Santorum did finish second to Romney last time.
