If Only Santorum Were a Rich Man

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle,than for a poor man to enter American politics.” (Matthew 28:21)

 Not much in Rick Santorum’s campaign resonates with me.

His stances on social policy swing back and forth between extreme and extremely offensive. His opinion that women shouldn’t serve in the military; or that gay people should just stop being gay; or that recreational sex is sinful; or that rape victims should be forced to give birth to their rapist’s child; or that contraception is Satanic; or that college is for snobs; or that institutions of enlightenment suck the faith from a man’s soul like a nasal aspirator sucks boogers from a baby’s nostril; or that the separation of church and state “makes me throw up”…

Touché.

But there is one Santorum rant that isn’t completely off base: his view that Americans, and American democracy, can’t be bought.

From the L.A. Times, reporting at a Santorum event outside of Daytona, Ohio:

Growing up in a steelworker town, growing up having to fight for everything you got is exactly the kind of person that we need to have not just in the White House, with the big problems that are facing this country, but in this election, someone who doesn’t think you can buy it, someone who knows you can’t buy it. You’ve got to earn it, you’ve got to fight for America.

He’s right, in principle.

Mitt Romney’s only asset is his money—his 28-to-1 fundraising advantage, to be more precise. And even though he was flying first class in a private jet while Santorum was stuck driving a pickup truck through Iowa; even though Romney has spent the better part of seven years creating a national campaign team while Santorum still doesn’t have a national campaign headquarters; and even though Romney continues to outspend Santorum by two- or three-to-one margins in early primary and caucus states, the former Massachusetts governor still doesn’t have much to show for it. He barely held off Santorum in his home state!

Santorum said that he would be running away with the race if he had Romney’s financial backing, that “This race isn’t going to be won or lost in the fall on money,” and that the eventual Republican nominee’s fundraising edge won’t matter in the long run because he won’t be able to outspend the financially well-oiled Obama campaign machine.

This race is going to be won or lost on someone who can capture the imagination of the American people, someone who can go out and articulate that vision for where our country must go if we’re going to be free and safe and prosperous.

Almost brings a tear to your eye, doesn’t it?

At least for a second—before your bullshit radar turns on and you realize that a Republican nominee without at a hefty war chest will be rebuffed and laughed out of the general election before the celebratory balloons hit the floor at the GOP convention.

In a more perfect world, anyone with a half-decent-looking wife, a half-rack of kids, and a dog-eared pocket Bible on his person at all times should be able to run for president on the Republican ticket.

But this world isn’t perfect, and life isn’t fair.

If Santorum wants to claim that he is a real conservatism, he should get a better paying job and quit bitching about being the poor candidate. A good Christian would look at Newt Gingrich and be thankful, not look at Romney and complain about the influence of money in politics.

Bemoaning the power of the dollar in our “democratic” system is a liberal cause—one that will isolate him from the millionaires who now fund Republican presidential campaigns.

Though I agree with Santorum in principle—that money shouldn’t influence elections—I realize also that those are the words of a runner-up, a second-place finisher, a loser.

A winner would say, “Give my campaign your energetic, your rich, your bundles of cash yearning to be spent; send these, the mansion-dwellers with storm windows, to lift me up to the golden door!”