Rick Santorum, Party Animal

The New York Times came out with a great article today analyzing the GOP’s strategy entering the last three weeks of campaigning. The Republicans are in full crisis mode, “circling their wagons” and cutting off funding to candidates they think are dead in the water. Who are we talking about? In the Senate, that’s DeWine (R-OH), Burns (R-MT), Chafee (R-RI), and (drumroll, please) Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. This should come as no surprise, as Santorum has been consistently trailing in the polls in spite of having almost twice as much money.

What does this mean for Santorum, though? A huuuge party. This summer I spent some time on the Hill in a committee office down the hall from Santorum’s personal office (i.e. where he actually has his desk). When you walk by any senator’s personal office, you notice certain quirks about it. Obama’s has lots of pictures of Lincoln and serves Baby Ruth candy bars (made in Chicago). Kennedy’s has beautiful photographs and tons of Kennedy family memorabilia. I never saw the front (or just-inside) of Santorum’s office, though, because it was always mobbed by 30 people eagerly awaiting His arrival. Yep, Santorum loves getting a war-hero welcome whenever he comes back from a floor vote, and arranges for visiting parties to wait outside his office to shower him with praise, high-fives, and “Senator! Senator!” photo ops. Pretty hilarious when you stop thinking about how creepy it is.

(The funny thing I noticed is that half of the people waiting were invariably schoolchildren who were too young/naive/tied to their teacher with a harness to realize that they were waiting to meet the kind of guy who, inter alia, criticizes Katrina victims for ignoring storm warnings and proposes that we increase punishments for those who decide to “ride it out.” Upstanding dude, Rick Santorum.)

The thing to realize, though, is that this was in June, when Santorum was already ten points down in the polls. It was his way of giving himself a mid-day ego boost; how bad can it be when Mrs. Petley's first grade class is adamant that you are the coolest Vice President ever? Anyway, you can only imagine what sorts of ragers Team Santorum is throwing now that his own party has counted him out.