Rick Santorum has always been a conservative’s conservative.
By comparison, Mitt Romney is a Johnny-come-lately to the conservative movement, a “conservative” of convenience when it suits him to posture as one. Rick Santorum was a Reagan conservative when Romney was battling the late Sen. Ted Kennedy for king of the leftist hill in Massachusetts.
Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman are unsuitable candidates to wear the mantle of Republican nominee.
Rick Santorum is solid fiscally and socially. He’s the complete package.
And we proudly endorse him as the perfect alternative to the current socialist disaster — the author of America’s many Obama wounds: Barack Hussein Obama.
Vote for Santorum in the Arizona Presidential Primary.
The Writing on the Wall
By Tony Perkins, The Family Research Council
While the press picks on Rick Santorum for his social views, the Wall Street Journal is attacking the former Senator from another angle: his pro-family economic plan. In Monday’s edition, editors complain that the “most disappointing” part of the Pennsylvanian’s proposal is his idea to triple the child tax credit from $1,000 today, which the WSJ claims is “social policy masquerading as economics.” The paper accuses Santorum of unfairly rewarding taxpayers who have children over those who don’t. But at the root of these accusations is a fundamental misunderstanding about how the economy works. The child tax credit, which was originally conceived, developed, and promoted by FRC, recognizes that the American family is the engine that drives the U.S. economy. A world with fewer children means a world with fewer taxpayers.
Sen. Santorum recognizes, as we do, that a modest tax credit now is a small investment to make in the growth of human capital, which is shrinking at an alarming rate. Who does the Wall Street Journal expect to pay down the debt, fund social security benefits, and pick up the tab for big government programs in the future? Certainly not those who aren’t having children. America’s tax policy should reward the families who are raising taxpayers who will carry these economic burdens in the coming years. The principle of fairness applies to the tax treatment of the family: it should get the same deductions in the tax code as business does for similar investments in human capital. It’s simple: if you’re interested in growing the U.S. economy, you’ll support tax credits for married families raising children.
Right on the money!
The Rise of the Santorum Demographic
By Richard A. Viguerie | 1/13/11
Conservative Headquarters
If you want to understand how Rick Santorum pulled-off his stunning photo finish with Mitt Romney in the Iowa Republican presidential caucuses forget all the hot air emanating from the inside-the-Beltway pundits and take a look at the pictures from Rick Santorum’s rallies and speeches in Iowa.
Those crowds, some large, some small, are packed with families.
Everywhere Santorum went he was followed by fresh-faced young parents with small children. Parents dressed in the jeans and khakis indicative of middle managers and folks who work a farm or run a small business that grabbed the kids and took them to see the one candidate who seemed to share their concerns and offer some hope for the future.
Rick Santorum’s personal story of a working class upbringing based on education as a way to economic advancement, a strong marriage, eight children, including a baby who died and another child who is severely handicapped, could be the story of any one of these families.
Plus Santorum’s unwavering support for the traditional values of a nuclear family based on the marriage of one man and one woman certainly resonates with these younger conservatives.
But Rick Santorum’s appeal to these younger voters is deeper than a shared social conservatism – call it the shared investment in the future only young parents have.
Santorum’s economic plan, focused on the middle class, is a major attraction for young families. More than any of the other Republican candidates, Santorum has tapped into the concern these voters have about the slowdown, if not outright reversal, of their upward mobility and what that means for their children’s future.
As liberal writer John Nichols analyzed it in Iowa “Santorum won communities such as Newton, a United Auto Workers town that was hit hard by the shuttering of its sprawling Maytag plant, and Ottumwa, a packinghouse town where the United Food and Commercial Workers union has a rich history. These are both communities where President Obama has visited since his 2008 election, and they are communities where Obama will do well in 2012. But Santorum made inroads where Romney never will. In Ottumwa-based Wapello County, for instance, while Santorum finished first, Romney ran fifth — behind not just Santorum, but Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry. In the Newton area, it was Santorum, then Paul, and then Romney.”
One of the raps against Rick Santorum by economic conservatives, such as the Club for Growth, is that Santorum often deviated from conservative orthodoxy to vote against the North American Free Trade Agreement, vote for a tariff on imported steel and support retaliatory tariffs on Chinese goods.
But by rejecting these Malthusian conservatives’ rhetoric about free markets and free trade, and making renewing American manufacturing through a federal industrial policy an important part of his agenda, Santorum matched the message and votes of “experienced job creator” Mitt Romney, at least in Iowa.
Santorum’s appeal to middle class families and to those who fear they are slipping out of the middle class has defined a new demographic in the Republican electorate – socially conservative, economic security voters. Whether you like Rick Santorum’s response to their concerns or you don’t, these voters are real. If Santorum can keep them together he may very well build them into a potent national base that will continue to carry him to strong finishes – especially as the GOP primaries move through the industrial states.