Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum was on his grind in Iowa and his reward was a virtual tie for first place in the Iowa Caucuses last week, a mere six or eight votes – depending on who you believe – behind former Massachusetts Gov. Willard Mitt Romney.
Santorum’s finish was probably even sweeter for him because of all the Republicans in Iowa, he spent the least money and Romney spent the most and they finished essentially tied.
So, this was Santorum’s moment in the sun and he did not disappoint. Just before midnight on the night of the caucuses Santorum, the grandson of a Western Pennsylvania coal miner spoke poignantly about the funeral of his grandfather.
He said his grandfather worked in the mines until he was 72. He talked about kneeling at his casket and staring at his enormous hands and he said as a little boy that all he could think about as he stared at those hands was, `those were the hands that dug for my freedom.’
It was a powerful moment…
Santorum supporters say the guy is real, he is who he appears to be; plain spoken, blue collar, solid, social conservative.
But, there’s another side of Santorum, a decidedly more insidious side.
“I would not make Black people’s lives better by giving them other people’s money,” Santorum said during an event on the Monday before the Iowa Caucuses.
Be clear, the plain spoken everyman who spoke so eloquently about his grandfather’s hands digging for freedom, is the same guy who trades in garden variety Republican race-baiting.
Initially, Santorum simply denied he said, “Black people.”
“I looked at that, and I didn’t say that,” Santorum told Bill O’Reilly during an appearance on the conservative commentator’s show following the perceived gaffe.
“If you look at it, what I started to say is a word and then sort of changed and it sort of – blah – came out. And people said I said `Black.’ I didn’t,” Santorum added.
Then he dusted off the old, “some of my best friends are Black,” routine.
“I can tell you as someone who did more work for historically Black colleges, I used to have every year, I used to bring all the historically Black colleges into Washington, DC to try to help them, because they get very little federal money through the bureaucracy, and so I help to try to introduce them to people in the Department of Education so they could have more resources,” Santorum explained.
Denials and excuses aside, I heard the statement about “blah” people in Iowa and it’s clear to me what he was saying.
The notion that somehow Black people are sitting around waiting for Rick Santorum or anybody else to hand them “other,” (see White) people’s money is plainly racist of course, but it’s also a well-worn page ripped from the Republican play book.
It’s the same play book Ronald Reagan contributed to with his largely made-up nefarious narrative of the “welfare queen,” who had multiple aliases and addresses all in an effort to collect, “other people’s money.”
It’s the same play book that instructs Newton Leroy Gingrich to label President Obama, “the finest food stamp president in history.”
The GOP play book is filled with passages of rambling, raucous race politics, “birther” non-sense, charges of Socialism, appeasement and apologist leveled at President Obama. We’ve heard it all before, we know what the GOP is.
And we know who Santorum is.
He’s the same guy who constantly polled in the single-digits as a possible candidate for the GOP nomination in 2008, a race he never entered.
Santorum is the same guy who got his doors blown off by 17 points by former Pennsylvania Gov. Bob Casey in 2006 when Santorum lost his bid for re-election to the U.S. Senate.
And he is the guy who got his grind on in Iowa visiting all 99 counties, and rode his social conservative bona fides in a state receptive to his message and scored an improbable finish.
But, there’s a reason Santorum usually resides at the back of the GOP pack, because most of the country rejects his rhetoric…all of it.
And at the New Hampshire primary this week Santorum was brought back down to earth, his time in the sun in Iowa decidedly short. In New Hampshire he fell back to his typical single-digit poll performance with a 9 percent finish in the Granite State.
Well, I guess the sun even shines on a dog’s behind every once and awhile.
