Conservatieven kijken maar eens naar Rick Santorum

Santorum is the great paradox of the Republican field: At a time when primary voters say they are desperate for a candidate of conviction and consistency, Santorum is both on a range of issues, yet he hasn’t had a proverbial moment. Too earnest and too conventional, he lacks the personal pizzazz that has temporarily boosted the Republican shooting stars. He’s worked to make up for it with an admirably tireless 99-county grass-roots campaign in Iowa that has taken voters and the issues seriously.

Santorum’s calling card is his social conservatism, and he’s competing for Iowa’s evangelical voters with Texas governor Rick Perry and Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann. Santorum is more knowledgeable than Perry and more careful than Bachmann, and he has demonstrated more swing-state appeal than both by winning two statewide races in heavily Democratic Pennsylvania. His 18-point reelection shellacking in 2006 is his albatross, although Ronald Reagan himself might have lost in Pennsylvania in that GOP annus horribilis.