6 days ago
Return of Rick Santorum, culture warrior?
(CNN) - Rick Santorum is sounding more fire and brimstone than a play-it-safe front-runner for the Republican nomination.
In the span of 48 hours, Santorum interrupted a slow holiday weekend news cycle with a series of thunderous claims that included his belief that the president's value system constitutes a "phony theology."
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"Oh, not a theology based on the Bible, a different theology, but no less a theology," Santorum said.
He also sharply criticized a federal requirement that health insurers cover prenatal care, saying it leads to more abortions.
"Prenatal testing, amniocentesis, does in fact, result more often than not in this country in abortions. That is a fact," Santorum said on CBS' Face the Nation.
The resulting national media narrative is that this is the return of Santorum, the culture warrior.
But top aides to the former Pennsylvania senator are pushing back hard on that narrative.
"He can separate his personal beliefs from public policy," Santorum spokesman Hogan Gidley told CNN. Gidley noted Santorum's personal opposition to contraception did not lead to the introduction of legislation seeking its criminalization in Congress.
"He never touched contraception," Gidley said.
Gidley wondered why reporters are focusing on Santorum's opposition to same sex marriage when President Obama and Mitt Romney take the same position.
"Why is it he's the only one who gets these questions," Gidley asked, referring to Santorum.
Part of that comes with the territory of a self-described "full spectrum conservative" whose own Twitter page states that "…self-evident foundational truths and rights (are) given by God."
Santorum's bio on his campaign website highlights the former Pennsylvania senator's Congressional record and touts his action on several issues that are critical to social conservatives.
"Senator Santorum wrote and championed legislation that outlawed the heinous procedure known as Partial Birth Abortion as well as the 'Born Alive Infants Protection Act,' the 'Unborn Victims of Violence Act,' the campaign bio states.
In 2005, Santorum led the Republican charge in Congress to intervene in the life of Terri Schiavo, a Florida woman who was living in a vegetative state and whose family was at war over whether to remove her feeding tube.
In other words, Santorum the culture warrior never went anywhere. He's always been here.
For now, the flamethrower rhetoric may be working with Republican voters. The latest Gallup daily tracking poll finds Santorum 10 points of Mitt Romney and well ahead of the rest of the field. Newt Gingrich is a distant third.
GOP strategists say Santorum's tough talk on the President is likely part of a larger strategy to appeal to voters who once backed the former Speaker.
"The opening they see is with conservative primary voters, such as those who had been leaning towards Gingrich. You can certainly see that in Arizona," former Republican National Committee spokesman Doug Heye said.
For Santorum, there is little down side in turning off moderate Republican voters. They are likely to back Romney anyway.
"It doesn't hurt him. Those aren't the voters he's targeting and not ones whose support he's likely to receive in the primary," Heye said.
Instead it's the battle for the lucrative anti-Romney vote. Gingrich once owned a sizable chunk of this GOP electorate with the rhetorical flourish that Mr. Obama is a "food stamp President."
Santorum resurrected one of his own controversial lines of attack over the weekend when he appeared to warn Americans against sitting idly by as the U.S. did in the years leading up to World War Two.
"After a while you find out some things about this guy over in Europe who's not so good of a guy after all," Santorum said Sunday.
Asked by reporters whether he was comparing the president to Adolph Hitler, Santorum responded, "No, of course not."
He added: "It's a War World II metaphor. It's one I've used a hundred times."
Gidley said it was a larger point about Washington.
"Whatever the issue, it seems Washington is taking our freedoms away, bit by bit by bit," Gidley told CNN.
"And the same thing happened to Europe," Gidley added.
Santorum's rise and rhetoric now have the attention of the President's re-election team, which now views the former Pennsylvania Senator as a serious contender.
"I think the idea Rick Santorum could be the nominee is a very real one. And obviously we're looking more at, at what Rick Santorum is talking about and what he's offering," Obama re-election spokesman Robert Gibbs said after an appearance on a Sunday talk show.
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