The Repbulican candidate, who is surging in national polls, is
encountering one of the perils of political success: The same
acclaim that brings confidence also brings greatly increased
scrutiny.
As Rick Santorum has addressed huge, supportive crowds in recent
days -- with hundreds whooping at his jokes and cheering his
blistering criticism of the Obama administration -- he seems to be
displaying a newfound swagger and letting loose with free-swinging
remarks.
But a number of the Republican candidate's statements over the
weekend drew criticism, illustrating one of the perils of political
success: the same acclaim that brings confidence also brings greatly
increased scrutiny.
Mr. Santorum, who is surging in national polls, accused President
Barack Obama of "a phony theology," likened public schools to
"factories" and criticized prenatal testing as a way of encouraging
society to "cull the ranks of the disabled."
As he emerges as a serious contender for the Republican
presidential nomination, Mr. Santorum is moving from a generic
alternative to Mitt Romney to a specific brand of conservative who
will be known and judged by his own views. All weekend, he was
forced to explain and defend his more provocative remarks,
maintaining that some were distorted in the echo chamber of the
Internet and the news media.
Keith Nahigian, who managed the presidential campaign of
Representative Michele Bachmann, another candidate whose provocative
remarks drew scrutiny when she was briefly atop the polls, said Mr.
Santorum now stood to have his statements parsed far more closely
and to become fodder for other Republicans, as well as for
Democrats.
If Mr. Santorum were to win the Michigan primary on Feb. 28 and
Ohio on March 6 -- two states where polls suggest that he has a
chance of defeating Mr. Romney -- "he could very easily have a path
to the nomination," Mr. Nahigian said. "Here we are in the ninth
inning, and people don't know who he is."
Alex Castellanos, a Republican strategist not affiliated with any
of the candidates, said, "Santorum is now being tested -- not just
his position on issues, it's his stability, his maturity that is
being tested."
Saturday in Ohio, Mr. Santorum described the "president's
agenda" as being "about some phony ideal, some phony theology. Not a
theology based on the Bible."
After a spokesman for the Obama campaign called it "the latest
low," Mr. Santorum told reporters he was not suggesting that Mr.
Obama was not a Christian.
"Obviously, as we all know in the Christian church, there are a
lot of different stripes of Christianity," Mr. Santorum said. "I'm
just saying he's imposing his values on the church, and I think
that's wrong."
Questioned further about the remark Sunday, Mr. Santorum said
he had meant that Mr. Obama's worldview placed care of the Earth and
natural resources above human needs.
"The Earth is not the objective," he said on "Face the Nation" on
CBS News. "Man is the objective, and I think that a lot of radical
environmentalists have it upside down."
At another point Saturday, Santorum repeated his
skepticism about the government's role in public education. He
harked back to a pre-industrial 19th century, when many Americans,
including presidents, home-schooled their children.
The public school, Santorum said, arose "when people came off
the farms where they did home-school or have the little neighborhood
school, and into these big factories, so we built equal factories
called public schools."
Education reformers on both the left and right criticize the
uniformity of instruction that dates from mass public education. But
Santorum, who home-schooled some of his own children, makes many
education advocates nervous because he seems to want to
substantially scale back or cancel U.S. government and state
guidelines on standards and equality of access.
Santorum also criticized Mr. Obama's health care law over the
weekend, in part because it requires insurance plans to offer free
prenatal testing. "Free prenatal testing," he said, "ends up in more
abortions and therefore less care that has to be done because we
cull the ranks of the disabled in our society."
"That, too, is part of Obamacare, another hidden message as to
what President Obama thinks of those who are less able than the
elites who want to govern our country," Mr. Santorum said.
The remarks might win Mr. Santorum further support from
evangelical Christians and Catholics who have been galvanized by the
Catholic Church's opposition to the president's insistence that
religious-affiliated hospitals and schools offer health plans with
free contraception.
But the issue also risks pushing away voters, especially women,
who find in such stances an assault on women's control over their
own health decisions. Santorum has said that as a Catholic, he
opposes contraception.
