Rick Santorum pitches marriage and cheap campaigning to the Iowans who are finally listening
Rick Santorum. Gage Skidmore, via flickr
9:37 am Jan. 1, 2012
MARSHALLTOWN, Iowa—Rick Santorum, whose candidacy was largely ignored in 2011 before a sudden, pre-caucus surge into relevance, still has the campaign trappings of a no-account also-ran. This is now a selling point.
Others candidates had well-dressed staffers with “earpieces and clipboards, not doing anything,” he told attendees at an event here; he was running “a lean machine.” He said he didn’t have time to update his posters and was a little thrown off by the audio from the televisions in the restaurant he was standing in, which were showing the event on C-Span on a ten-second delay.
In an overflowing side room at Legends Americans Grille, a sports bar on the side of the four-lane state highway heading into Marshalltown, Santorum bragged that this was the 361st town hall meeting his “low-tech” campaign was holding in Iowa. He was trying “to earn their votes.”
The implication wasn’t that this is his strategy because his campaign hasn’t raised much money and couldn’t afford better; it was that even if he were flush, he’d still run this way because it is the traditional and the right way to campaign in the Iowa caucuses.
Dressed in a bright red Iowa State sweater-vest, Santorum quoted from the Declaration of Independence to talk about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” he said that the happiness the founders referred to was not about “enjoyment” but rather “doing the morally right thing.”
Santorum then showed his dedication to the traditional Iowa process by taking question after question after question. Each answer was at least five minutes long. He didn’t hesitate to criticize other candidates, or to challenge some of his questioners: He told one young man who asked about increased funding for AmeriCorps that he was “an ardent opponent” of that program, and that he didn’t believe such things ought to be funded at the federal level.
Santorum offered up lots of red meat on social issues, railing at those Republicans who didn’t quite measure up as conservative, and whose pro-life stands were merely “check the box.” Santorum said that, by contrast, he would be comfortable “advocating a culture of life, moving the ball forward.”
He said “[I don’t] believe life began at conception. I know life begins at conception.”
He also talked a great deal about the virtues of traditional marriage. He cited a Brookings Institution report linking marriage with poverty rates and, in fact, most of America’s societal challenges. The country’s rising incarceration rate and increases in poverty and dependence were all because of the breakdown of the traditional family. He said that federally funded social programs whose agendas didn’t include discussion of abstinence and “marriage” represented a retreat from “the biblical principles” that formed the foundation of “American Civilization.”
Santorum’s earnestness seemed to be well-received by this crowd, some of whom had only recently even considered him as an option. Kathy Zwemki of Marshalltown said she was converted and would support him, because she felt Santorum “was not afraid to tell the truth.”
Mary Etta Fisher, who lived on a farm outside Montour, was a confirmed supporter who was attracted to the fact that the former Pennsylvania Senator was “moral.”
Otto Brandt, a precinct chair in Marshalltown, had long found him “a true conservative” and “pretty consistent,” but had been concerned about his ranking in the polls. Now that Santorum was “broadening out a little better now,” he felt much more comfortable supporting him.
Andrew and Laura Peterson, a married couple in their 20s from Des Moines, had brought their infant daughter Maren into the restaurant in her car seat to see the candidate. The event sold them on Santorum. They had been leaning toward Romney because they “didn’t want to throw their vote away,” even though they “always liked Santorum.” Now, they felt comfortable that he could contend, cheap campaign and all.
