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National Review
Santorum, the
Blue-Collar Brawler
His message for Romney: Bring on the re-match.
January 12, 2015
By Eliana Johnson
I’m sitting across from Rick Santorum at a Corner Bakery Cafe on North
Capitol Street, near the U.S. Capitol, when a news alert flashes across
my phone. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Mitt Romney has
told a group of his top donors that he is seriously considering a third
White House bid.
Santorum smiles broadly. “Bring it on,” he says. The surprise runner-up
in the 2012 Republican primary, Santorum won eleven primaries and
caucuses before eventually conceding a hard-fought battle to Romney.
Now, he wants a rematch.
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Though the 2016 Republican field is likely to be crowded with
candidates looking to woo conservative Christians, Santorum is not
cowed. Asked what unique space he thinks he would fill in the field, he
says, “The winner.”
“If we get in, we’re getting in to win,” Santorum says. “I’m not
getting in to play a role. I’d get in because I think I have what it
takes to win a primary and because I think I have what it takes to win
a general election.” He talks like he’s already announced his campaign.
“I’m not just in it to win a primary,” he says.
Santorum isn’t shying away from a confrontation with Jeb Bush, either.
“Most Americans earn what they get. They don’t start off with a head
start,” he says. He acknowledges that there are benefits and drawbacks
to nominating somebody like Bush, a political legacy with
near-universal name recognition, but it doesn’t take much prodding to
get him to offer his own opinion. “Obviously if I thought it was really
a good thing, I probably wouldn’t be sitting here at the table,” he
says.
Santorum has long delighted in poking his finger in the eye of the
Washington establishment and, based on the media coverage his
preliminary campaign moves have generated – close to zero – one might
suspect that the establishment is repaying him in kind. But Santorum
has proven he has the ability to make himself a force despite long
odds. His brashness and refusal, at the age of 35, to respect the
Senate’s traditional rules of seniority in many ways prefigured the
dozens of lawmakers who would be swept to office by the Tea Party. His
election to the Senate in 1994, a rebuke to Clinton health-care plan
that he denounced gleefully on the campaign trail, may prove relevant
once again on the debate stage in 2016...
Read the rest of the article at the National Review
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