Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum has blasted some of the people who’d be his key rivals for conservative Republican primary goers’ hearts and votes in the 2016 Republican Presidential nomination sweepstaks as “bomb throwers” – a sign that he intends to fight for the voters who briefly made him a front-runner last time and doesn’t intend to mince words.
Rick Santorum sharply criticized a group of potential rivals for the Republican presidential nomination in an interview that indicated he intends to reclaim conservative primary voters ahead of another White House bid in 2016.
Mr. Santorum, the runner-up to the Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, in 2012, took direct aim Friday at Mike Huckabee, Senator Rand Paul and Senator Ted Cruz, each of whom could offer the party’s right wing a fresh alternative to Mr. Santorum in conservative states with early primaries or caucuses.
Discussing Mr. Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and winner of the 2008 Iowa caucuses, Mr. Santorum raised four policy issues that he said would prompt questions about Mr. Huckabee’s fealty to conservative principles. Mr. Santorum was even harsher when discussing Mr. Paul of Kentucky and Mr. Cruz of Texas, both first-term senators, dismissing them as “bomb throwers” with scant achievements.
Them’s fighting words and the words of someone who sounds as if he’s all in.
The early salvos from Mr. Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator, highlight the fierce competition already underway to win support from conservative activists.
The criticisms also illustrate the two simultaneous campaigns already taking shape. While former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and perhaps Mr. Romney begin vying for commitments from center-right contributors, elected officials and activists, a parallel race is taking place among more conservative contenders including Mr. Santorum, Mr. Huckabee and the two senators.
And primaries the winner is often he or she who benefits most by a split in the voters on the other ideological side.
Already, there is notably less restraint in the language used by the more conservative aspirants than in the public statements from the establishment-backed potential candidates.
….“Do we really want someone with this little experience?” Mr. Santorum asked, referring to Mr. Paul, Mr. Cruz and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who is also in his first term. “And the only experience they have basically — not Rubio, but Cruz and Paul because I don’t think Rubio is going to go — is bomb throwing? Do we really want somebody who’s a bomb thrower, with no track record of any accomplishments?”
Mr. Paul’s top strategist responded that the party should not take advice from a politician who was soundly defeated in 2006.
“Senator Santorum lost re-election in his home state by 18 points nearly a decade ago, and has spent the time since then trying to convince people to elect him to an even higher office than the one he was booted out of,” said Doug Stafford, senior adviser to Mr. Paul. “We will pass on responding to his alleged wisdom.”
Santorum’s biggest threat may be Huckabee:
Mr. Huckabee, who has a following of Christian conservatives, may present the biggest obstacle to Mr. Santorum, who narrowly won the Iowa caucuses in 2012. But Mr. Santorum said Mr. Huckabee would have considerable vulnerabilities on the right.
“He has to talk about Common Core. I love talking about Common Core,” Mr. Santorum said of the education standards that have become deeply unpopular among conservatives. “He has to talk about immigration and the Dream Act. I love talking about immigration and the Dream Act. He has to talk about taxes; I haven’t voted for a tax increase. I have a 100 percent record on taxes, signed every pledge every year.”
…Reminded that Mr. Huckabee had once backed a cap-and-trade program to reduce carbon emissions, Mr. Santorum exclaimed: “Climate change. This guy was for climate change.”
Mr. Huckabee’s spokeswoman declined to address the individual issues, instead criticizing Mr. Santorum for “pulling the pin on grenades tossed in our own G.O.P. tent.”
But pulling the pin on verbal grenades is really what conservative Republicanism has become all about in recent years: over the top language, going after others, but spending far less time offering a thoughtful affirmative case in detail about what a conservative would do and why if elected and how — in unemotional terms — a conservative approach would be a more effective one than a liberal one or a moderate one. Could it be that they don’t know how to make the case — or one can’t be made on many of these issues?
Perhaps 2016 will produce a conservative who finally will.
But it looks for now as if it’ll be rhetorical business as usual. Talk show hosts must be smiling. And so, most likely, is Hillary Clinton.
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Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.