This morning Michelle Malkin declared for Santorum. She has a fairly thorough listing of her reasons, and considerations both for and against him. I don't normally read Ms. Malkin -- I saw her endorsement linked on Memeorandum -- but it is good to see one of the big players join in on his side.
UPDATE: Santorum gave a pitch in Minnesota at which he was asked how he would win among moderates. That's been a challenge to him raised here, too, so you might be interested in his answer.
Only toward the end did a process question get asked, when a caller politely challenged Santorum to explain how he’d win moderates. Santorum replied that moderates don’t tend to be issues voters, but respond to enthusiasm and momentum, and that the important task was to rally the base as happened in the midterms. Neither Romney or Gingrich are consistently conservative enough to do that, Santorum argued, while his record gave the GOP the best chance to stoke conservative enthusiasm. He also said that he had a track record in Pennsylvania of winning Reagan Democrats, which he would do throughout the Rust Belt and Midwest. “Will I lose California by a wider margin than Romney?” Santorum asked, and replied that he certainly would — but losing California and New York by a marginally smaller amount won’t do the GOP any good in November anyway. Santorum insisted that he could do better in the center of the country than any other Republican, and that would make the difference in November.
14 comments:
I suspect he's right that moderate voters respond to enthusiasm and momentum, but I question whether they are indifferent to issues. I think they're indifferent on in the positive sense, and can easily be driven away by issues whenever the candidate alarms them with the strength of his convictions.
That certainly will be the lever that people will try to use to break him, should he win in the primary and move on to the general. Maybe it works; but GWB was pretty convicted, and although he won narrowly, he won convincingly in 2004 in a hotly contested race.
Santorum's point about Reagan Democrats is well-taken, I think. He's clearly a friend to blue-collar families, who are going to be motivated by one particular interest this year. If he can take the midwestern swing states, he could do very well.
Of the remaining four, I prefer Santorum. I agree with Texan99 about issues; that said, if he simply says that he will uphold current federal laws about certain social issues while focusing on improving the economy, reducing the debt and improving the nation's security, I suspect moderates will give him serious consideration. Despite the breathless cries of the feminist punderati, I highly doubt that a Santorum presidency will usher in a new dark age for women's rights and I hope that most moderate and independent voters can see that.
I'm glad to hear that his daughter is doing better.
LittleRed1
Santorum replied that moderates don’t tend to be issues voters, but respond to enthusiasm and momentum, and that the important task was to rally the base as happened in the midterms.
Hopefully said moderates aren't paying close attention to Herr Santorum's election strategy :p
D'oh! I forgot that it doesn't matter, as they'll just blindly follow the crowd (having no minds of their own).
"Amused by" is probably a better description for my reaction to his answer than "interested".
That's because you're thinking of yourself as a "moderate," but you're really not one. I've noticed you've used the word several times lately, but your own position is highly conservative.
For example, the post today about nature v. nurture suggests institutional action to guide the population along the lines of virtue. That is the traditional conservative position; and it becomes even more traditional and even more conservative when you make the adjustment to it proposed by your readers, that of using not always or usually government, but often social organizations instead. This is the old "God and country" position, which would have been recognizably conservative in Benjamin Franklin's day.
It also happens to be in line with Santorum's social conservatism, as you know. What you were suggesting is more or less precisely Catholic dogma, which seems to guide much of Santorum's thinking.
Now, if you're talking about moderates as such, I think what he's saying about them is almost a tautology. A moderate is someone who's neither a liberal nor a conservative nor a libertarian nor anything else, particularly; they vote for reasons that don't have to do with ideology. In other words, they're not issues voters almost by definition.
I don't know if Santorum's assessment is correct, but it is at least plausible and a good answer.
We do well to remember that of all the nominees, there is none that will not be attacked by the Democrats, fairly or not, not on the basis of ideas but on the basis of the kind of person that he is. It's what they do. They attempted to portray both Bushes, John McCain, and Bob Dole as extremists, so I don't think we can expect a campaign of ideas this time around.
It's what they do.
It's what we do, too. Love and hate blind us. It's been a few years now since I was blinded by love, though it happens. With politicians, though, it isn't love that has ever blinded me.
Grim:
The reason I so often use the term moderate (or RINO) to describe myself is that's what I read every day on conservative sites: that people who believe the things I believe and support the candidates I support are not "real" conservatives.
It's all very well for you (a Democrat!) to tell me that I'm not a moderate, but in the end I'm not sure why I should take this assertion any more seriously than I do all the "true" conservatives who tell me I'm a RINO or a moderate :p
I have a lot of friends (both Dems and Rethugs) who I would characterize as moderates. They absolutely DO have core beliefs. The bases of both parties tend to dismiss any position they disagree with as ill informed, evil, or stupid. In my mind, simple, one size fits all characterizations and refusal to consider anything outside one's world view aren't what I'd call thoughtful positions.
Cass,
You're welcome to define yourself as you like; I'm just telling you that the positions you inhabit would normally, historically, be categorized as conservative.
In any case, remember that I asked you to explain what you meant by your assertion that Romney was a conservative. I could accept some sense in which you are a moderate, but I don't think it will be easy to accept that you are a moderate while he is conservative! If you're going to defend that space for him, surely you're defending it for yourself also.
Anyway, what I think I'm trying to say is that I thought Santorum was answering a different question than the one you thought he was answering. I thought he was speaking to swing voters, who don't tend to be issues voters or ideological voters, but who tend to be motivated otherwise. Enthusiasm among friends and family does seem to be a major source of influence for that class of voters. Another non-ideological class of voters are those who choose how to vote based on their professional associations, e.g., union members. Many of those are among the Reagan Democrats, the ones he thinks he can appeal to based on his success doing so in the Rust Belt.
You're welcome to define yourself as you like; I'm just telling you that the positions you inhabit would normally, historically, be categorized as conservative.
And you can tell me that, but the point I fear you are not taking is that a great many conservatives do not agree with you. They have been and still are quite vocal about wanting to purge the party of voters and candidates who (in their opinion) display insufficient conservative ardor :p
The issue here is that many conservatives believe that being a moderate means you're by definition NOT a conservative. That's the point you're not taking on board, Grim.
I'm not claiming that Romney isn't more moderate than I am. I'm saying that I'm moderate AND conservative and so (IMO) is Romney.
So is my Dad, who has voted Rethug all his life, and my husband (likewise), and my mom (likewise) and most of my friends. My Dad follows politics and issues with a passion and enthusiasm that puts most bloggers to shame. The idea that people like him (or me, or my husband) "don't care about issues" and will blindly follow the base like sheep is just stunningly offensive.
This shouldn't be hard to understand and I'm not sure why it seems to be. I keep waiting for my party to wise up and stop talking down to people whose votes they need. So far, it hasn't happened and I'm not feeling hopeful for the future.
*sigh*
"They [inquisitors] have been and still are quite vocal about wanting to purge the party of voters and candidates who (in their opinion) display insufficient conservative ardor "
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"This shouldn't be hard to understand and I'm not sure why it seems to be. I keep waiting for my party to wise up and stop talking down to people whose votes they need. So far, it hasn't happened and I'm not feeling hopeful for the future.
*sigh*"
"The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally — not a 20 percent traitor" --Attributed to Ronald Reagan.
Unfortunately we now seem to be so divided that a union of twenty percent willing to eat the elephant one bite at a time, rather than whole, almost seems an unachievable goal.
The issue here is that many conservatives believe that being a moderate means you're by definition NOT a conservative.
Well, right. If this is merely a semantic matter, I suppose I can accept a "moderate conservative" as something different from a "moderate" in the unmodified sense. It was the unmodified sense I thought we were discussing. A moderate in that sense is neither conservative nor liberal (indeed not almost by definition, but by definition!).
I will agree with that, Grim. To me, the division of people into tidy little categories (when the boundaries themselves are but poorly defined and the people's positions fall along a spectrum rather than clumping in convenient "chunks") doesn't make much sense.
People disagree as to issues, but also as to implementation: the "how do we get there from here" part. Or, what bthun said :)
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