December 10, 2014

I don't believe for one minute that former Senator Rick Santorum actually wants to be president of the United States, but I do believe he's more than happy to rejoin the Republican grifters' club once again and to keep his profile raised so he keeps getting invited back onto our cable "news" channels for more interviews like the one above from this Wednesday's Your World with Neil Cavuto.

Santorum played coy with Cavuto when asked about an article this week in The Washington Post and said he hadn't officially announced, but you don't have to read very far between the lines to know he's going to run in the Republican primary again.

Rick Santorum is running for president again — and says this time will be different:

Rick Santorum won primaries and caucuses in 11 states in 2012, coming in a respectable second in the GOP presidential primary season. And Republicans have a history of bestowing their nomination on the next guy in line, usually an also-ran from the last contest.

Yet the former senator from Pennsylvania is rarely mentioned in the already feverish pre-game 2016 chatter among the political commentariat and the donor class.

That’s just the way he likes it. Or so he says.

“America loves an underdog. We’re definitely the underdog in this race,” he said in an interview Tuesday. Santorum added that being underestimated — again — “has given me a lot of latitude.”

His iconic sweater vests will likely make a return appearance. But Santorum 2.0 will be a very different presidential campaign than the one that came from almost nowhere to win the Iowa caucuses in an overtime decision, he vows.

“I get the game,” Santorum said.

Where he had to build his operation from the ground up in 2012, Santorum now has a grass-roots operation called Patriot Voices, which boasts 150,000 activists across the country. Its current push, an online petition drive to oppose President Obama’s recent executive action on immigration, has generated what Santorum strategist John Brabender says are “30,000 new e-mail relationships.”

Whether Santorum can raise the money he needs is another question. Foster Friess, the benefactor who ponied up $2.1 million to a pro-Santorum super PAC in 2012, says he would support him again. The former senator is sounding out other deep-pocketed donors, whom he declined to identify.

He is retooling his message, hoping to appeal beyond his socially conservative base and reach blue-collar voters who are being left behind in the economy.

"Retooling" meaning dressing up the same old tired Republican policies in a shiny new package and pretending they're all about the little guy don't you know. Which is exactly what he did in the clip above after he promised Neil Cavuto that the first thing he would do if God forbid he were elected president would be to rescind President Obama's executive order on immigration, because he's all about following the rule of law and the Constitution -- and it's got nothing to do with politics. We all know those evil Democrats are the only ones who ever play politics unlike Frothy, whose motives are pure.

Santorum tried playing the "we've got to be the party of the people" game with Cavuto, but he didn't name a single policy position that differs one iota from anyone else in his party. He's long on lofty rhetoric and short on details. We're not going to see him challenged on those details any time soon though, since I'm sure he'll avoid interviews with anyone who would actually try to pin him down on them.

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