The mainstream media has almost unanimously counted Rick Santorum out as a factor within the 2016 Republican primary. The former senator is often left out of polls, while Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee remain as resident firebrand bomb-thrower and religious right magnet, respectively. But why is Rick Santorum being treated as a non-candidate when he has all but declared a second go at the presidency? I’ve asked this before: Why is Rick Santorum being ignored?
There’s no denying it: Rick Santorum was the 2012 runner-up in the GOP primaryhad to admit, but some would claim that if you keep in mind the fresh crop of GOP contenders in 2016 and the weak 2012 bench, Santorum is not the usual “next in line.” Rather, he’s just the Pat Buchanan to Mitt Romney’s Bob Dole. That assumption is wrong. Upon closer look, we see that Santorum is probably a fairly compelling 2016 candidate for GOP primary voters:
1. Look at how many states he won: Santorum won as many states (11) as Romney did in 2008, yet posed more of a threat to the eventual winner than any GOP second-placer since McCain 2000 post-New Hampshire and pre-South Carolina. You know which other second-placer got double digit states in a losing bid for the GOP nomination? Ronald Reagan in 1976. The next most was John McCain in 2000 with 7. Santorum is by no means the typical “next in line” claimant, but he can make that claim with a straight face.
2. Look at which states he won: He came close to beating Romney in Michigan, reducing Romney’s 2008 margin of victory so much that even Romney had to admit he “didn’t win by a lot.” Santorum also won Iowa, though his decision to not skip New Hampshire for South Carolina coupled with the election night vote totals giving the slim victory to Romney, lost his momentum and allowed Newt Gingrich to emerge as a competing Not-Romney candidate. (Still, Romney’s close Iowa ‘win’ gave John McCain a chance to mock Romney, and McCain insulting Romney is always a delightful occurrence.) Santorum also won Minnesota and Missouri.
3. Iowa: Rick Santorum is actively fostering the relationships he’s built in Iowa, the retail politics capital of the universe. He won Iowa with a very clever and definitely lightning-strikes-at-the-right-moment strategy: Meet every activist in Iowa several times, visit all 99 counties over and over, make a decent impression and build up goodwill, and wait for everyone else to implode. In 2016, Santorum will have no problem asking the same people to give him another shot and stick it to the GOP Establishment, because …
4. What kind of people already voted for Santorum?: Answer – people who will vote for him again. Yes, many who voted for Santorum later in the primary did so because they couldn’t stomach Romney. Did these GOP primary voters ever think it would be Santorum when it was first Bachmann, then Perry, then Cain, then Gingrich? No, but they didn’t really have to hold their noses for Santorum, the way pro-Romney voters had to for Mitt. They got comfortable with Santorum, and perhaps when faced with a choice between Establishment/”pro-amnesty”/”RINO”/hardly-Tea Party Jeb (because Jeb will be called a RINO), many of these voters will go with what they know. After all, voting for the comforting policies of the past is the absolute core of Santorum’s conservative appeal.
5. Foster Friess: The multi-millionaire investor has already sunk millions into Santorum before and has pledged to do it again. If you put $10 million giving national name recognition to someone within the GOP base, what’s $20 million more? After nearly winning Michigan — losing, arguably, thanks to the near-endless Super PAC money being spent against him by Romney — Santorum said, “A month ago they didn’t know who we are but they do now.”
6. The 2016 crop is actually not that good: Marco Rubio is a dud with no constituency. Ted Cruz, who is counting on a Barry Goldwater-esque once-in-a-generation far right wing nomination, forgets that the party establishment (yes, there is a very powerful party establishment still) really wants to win back the White House, that no one in the party likes him, and that he himself was born in Canada. Scott Walker has the charisma and presence of a lima bean. Paul Ryan is running for 2024, not 2016. Rand Paul will be the nominee in 2020, not 2016. Mike Huckabee is teasing a presidential run as he launches the Huckabee Post, a new online conservative news site. Perhaps he’s keeping his options open, but Huckabee has been called the most successful losing presidential candidate ever — why spoil that? Rick Santorum is actually more compelling as a now candidate than anyone else: Paul, Walker, Cruz, and Rubio will all have another shot, and Huckabee’s time is long gone. Not Santorum. Not Jeb. Their time is now and only now.
7. Rick Santorum has nothing to lose by alienating himself from the existing GOP: Unlike even Ted Cruz, who will have to consider his future in the party, Santorum can keep on going throughout the primary against Jeb Bush until the money runs out. This doesn’t mean that he’ll suddenly start winning later primaries after Super Tuesday once Jeb is the presumptive front-runner — it means Santorum can level real attacks against Jeb, and make the claim very early that …
8. He is the last chance the GOP will ever have at remaining its “true” self: While Ted Cruz lobs the real personal attacks against Jeb, Santorum will offer a more philosophical contrast, probably in the stage whisper voice he puts on when he wants to sound earnest. He’ll make the “two roads” metaphor, offering himself as the last exit to the good old America, a nice hint to older, anti-immigration (and yes, racist) voters who don’t like the “browning of America.” Santorum, after all, has a habit of revealing his true feelings about race when a primary’s under way, and no doubt he’ll fall into coded, if not blatant, language regarding Latinos, immigrants, and other non-white demographics. Jeb’s racially blended family, however, is a fantastic political asset both within and after the primary, offering the GOP its compromise to the undeniable demographic changes. (The contrast between Jeb and Santorum’s families will end up helping Jeb in the long run — Santorum will be taken as the old GOP, with Jeb seen as the new GOP.) If Santorum doesn’t win, the GOP is no longer his GOP — he might as well be who he wants to be, and candidates who are who they really are most appeal to voters.
So what’s my point? Is it that Santorum is a real threat to Jeb or even a real possibility as the 2016 nominee?
No. Of course not. It will be Jeb. In fact, a rise in Santorum as the ultimate anti-Jeb will simply solidify Jeb as the Establishment/sane people/we-can’t-lose-down-ticket-races-and-the-House candidate even sooner. Santorum winning Iowa and South Carolina will only make Jeb’s probable Florida victory more heavily promoted by the GOP-powers-that-be. The GOP is very eager for a short primary — it’s even trying to change the entire process to keep it as short as possible and move the convention forward. Any Santorum surge would be a disaster because it would drive the narrative that the GOP cannot learn from its past and that it is still mired in it.
And that narrative — the “GOP still is a place for Santorum/GOP is trapped in the ’50s” narrative — serves Jeb’s narrative, too. Not only does Santorum scare any Paul Ryan or Scott Walker (or Chris Christie, if he even runs) supporters into falling in line behind Jeb, it also negates labeling Jeb a “candidate of the past.” Santorum is thus the throwback, not the candidate named Bush. The Prodigal Bush/”Jeb’s his own man” storyline that I believe will be the centerpiece of his biography is affirmed, and Jeb is free to win a nomination without anyone ever noticing that he is indeed the ultimate political throwback that deep down all levels of the right-wing are craving after eight years of Barack Obama.
By playing to his own strengths, the sweater-vested ex-senator from Pennsylvania plays to the former governor of Florida’s — and for this reason alone the media should be paying attention to Rick Santorum.
This piece was originally published on ClintonBush2016.com.
For more 2016 predictions, check out ClintonBush2016.com.
Cliff Benston is a graduate of NYU’s MFA fiction program and lives in New York.