Two months ago, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum threw his hat into an already crowded ring for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. His announcement on D-Day invoked his “courage to fight for freedom.”
While Santorum isn’t the only conservative in the field, he does have a nice pedigree for soliciting Republican support. During his tenure in Congress, Santorum was known as a go-to guy for social conservatives. In that time Rick authored or sponsored bills to protect newborn infants, promote adult stem-cell research (as opposed to embryonic stem-cell research), and maintain workplace religious freedom.
Yet in order to stand out in a group of perhaps a half-dozen candidates of varying conservative credentials, Rick had to move beyond his social conservative base and come up with other issue arguments which appealed to both Tea Party regulars and Republican voters at large who may have recalled his ignominious 18-point defeat by current Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, Jr. in 2006.
(continued at Pajamas Media…)
