Like Rocky Balboa, Rick Santorum is a working class hero

Sylvester Stallone likes Rick Santorum. He gave his 1994 Senate campaign $1,000 (for the record, he gave $1,000 to Joe Biden, too). Perhaps the mumbling thespian sees something of himself in the Rickster? Both are Italian-Americans, both have worked hard to get where they are. Both are muscular conservatives (one literally, the other more intellectually). Both have played working class heroes. In the latest installment of the Rocky Balboa series, Stallone portrays Rocky as a post-9-11 dropout, living in a post-industrial Hell. Yet, Rocky steps the ring with a younger boxer and matches him blow for blow, round for round. He doesn’t win, but the bloodied old boy leaves the ring with his head held high to the chant of “Rock-y! Rock-y! Rock-y!” That right hook spoke for an entire generation of angry Americans.

Santorum finds himself in a similar underdog role, and there’s as much history resting on his shoulders as there is on Balboa’s. Following his photo-finish in Iowa, Conservatives have to reassess Santorum and decide whether or not he’s going to be a one hit wonder. They face a difficult choice. Rick has plenty of momentum but little money and manpower, making it difficult to win big states later on. But if Right-wingers abandon this newborn frontrunner for Gingrich or Perry, they could split the field and let Romney win by default. No wonder then that a group of social conservatives gathered in Texas yesterday “to unite and to come to a consensus on which Republican presidential candidate or candidates to support”. They need to make their minds up soon.

The factors against Santorum emerging as that consensus candidate aren’t limited to his campaign poverty. For starters, if you Google his name you come up with an obscenity invented by gay rights advocates in revenge for Santorum’s pro-family agenda. In many ways, this filthy neologism is a badge of honour, for it testifies as to how much the candidate gets under liberals’ skin. On the other hand, it’s a sore reminder of how Santorum more often divides than he unites. His conservatism has a rough edge that would alienate many moderate and independent voters were he nominated. He has opined that, “The political base of the Democratic Party is single mothers running households that look to the government for help,” and said, “What we should be teaching are the problems and holes and I think there are legitimate problems and holes in the theory of evolution.” Rick also believes that, “There are no Palestinians” and that the theory of manmade climate change is “patently absurd”. Where other candidates fear to tread, Santorum goes in with fists of steel.

This ought to endear him to conservatives, but even there he has some trouble. The Ron Paul and establishment wings of the party will never vote for Santorum – so that’s about 50 percent of every primary vote lost. But even some Tea Party types have convinced themselves that Santorum isn’t one of them. The morning after Iowa, the Telegraph’s own James Delingpole launched a scathing attack on Santorum as a “big government conservative”. He quoted this analysis by National Review’s Michael Tanner:

“Santorum’s voting record shows that he embraced George Bush–style ‘big-government conservatism.’ For example, he supported the Medicare prescription-drug benefit and No Child Left Behind. He never met an earmark that he didn’t like. In fact, it wasn’t just earmarks for his own state that he favored, which might be forgiven as pure electoral pragmatism, but earmarks for everyone, including the notorious ‘Bridge to Nowhere.’ … He voted against NAFTA and has long opposed free trade. He backed higher tariffs on everything from steel to honey … In fact, Santorum might be viewed as the mirror image of Ron Paul. If Ron Paul’s campaign has been based on the concept of simply having government leave us alone, Santorum rejects that entire concept. True liberty, he writes, is not “the freedom to be left alone,” but “the freedom to attend to one’s duties to God, to family, and to neighbors.” And he seems fully prepared to use the power of government to support his interpretation of those duties.”

One man’s statist is another man’s working class hero, and there’s a case for saying that Santorum is misunderstood by Delingpole and Tanner. The earmarks that Santorum liked (appropriations attached to congressional legislation) were probably liked by his constituents, too. The whole point of going to the Senate is to serve one’s state. Any Senator who put either the best interests of the national taxpayers first, or who sacrificed goodies on the altar of high mindedness, would be a fool. They also wouldn’t be re-elected. Maybe that’s why Ron Paul – who Tanner calls Santorum’s philosophical opposite – also loves earmarks.

Santorum and his voters define the goals of conservatism differently from Paul and Tanner. Free trade is all well and good, and generally provides the best conditions for prices and profit. But it doesn’t guarantee strong families or crime free communities. On the contrary, the mass migration of manufacturing jobs has made the American economy more efficient but its society less stable. Whole communities have been dispossessed. Families have been broken by despondency, addiction and the burdens of low paid menial labour. Much of this has happened in Pennsylvania, Santorum’s home state. For Rick to speak out against the amoral brutality of globalisation is, again, him just doing his job. But it is also natural that a family values conservative should wish to use the state to shield vulnerable people against the excesses of the free market. For what is conservative about maximising profit at the expense of human dignity? If this movement is prepared to step in to save the life of an unborn child, why won’t it do the same for a man’s livelihood?

Combine Santorum’s religiosity with his economic populism and you see the kind of coalition that might put him in the White House. One wing is the Christians who came out for Rick in Iowa – traditional Republican social conservatives. The other is Middle Americans who are feeling the pinch of recession and have been let down by Obama. Columnist David Brooks writes that these working class voters, “sense that the nation has gone astray: Marriage is in crisis; the work ethic is eroding; living standards are in danger; the elites have failed; the news media sends out messages that make it harder to raise decent children. They face greater challenges, and they are on their own.” If Ron Paul’s brand of liberty means being left to fend for yourself, these folks are already living it. What they are looking for is not less government but a government that shares their values and will fight their corner. For the record, Santorum did not support the 2008-2009 bailouts and is a straight-down-the-line Tea Partier when it comes to spending. But his candidacy has shown a unique sensitivity to the plight of ordinary men and women. That puts him at the opposite end of the spectrum to Obama, who has spent a lot of money on welfare boondoggles while simultaneously signing free trade bills with Asia and South America.

And this is why Santorum’s controversial public image could be more of a help than a hindrance. Some people find Rick aggressive and tactless. Others identify with his tough struggle against the Republican elite and the media. Like Rocky, he has entered the ring the underdog. Millions of Americans who feel unrepresented in Washington will be drawn to him. He is the grandson of a coal miner and the son of an Italian immigrant. He says what he believes, and much of what he believes matches the experience of working class voters. Big business is against them, government is against them. All they’ve got is God. Well, maybe now they’ve got Rick Santorum, too.