More Poormouthing of Santorum

Moving beyond the outrageous, the attempts to put down Rick Santorum after his amazing showing in Iowa are already getting silly.

There is much complaining that he really isn’t conservative. Well, gosh, everyone who does not believe exactly as I do is not orthodox and will be excommunicated from my cathedral apartment.

Is Santorum the perfect conservative? No. I particularly disagree with him on national service. But he (and Newt Gingrich for that matter, who is the recipient of similar whinging) is a heck lot more conservative than Mitt Romney. This conservative, for one, trusts Santorum much more than Romney. No perfect conservative is in the running for the Republican nomination. Deal with it, and not by enabling Romney or Obama.

Even sillier are those opining that Santorum’s showing in Iowa is no big accomplishment and doesn’t really matter. Here is one example:

Of course he can challenge Romney in Iowa: It’s tailor-made for him with its heavy evangelical presence and he’s spent months there doing retail politics. Like Ben Smith says, the deeper lesson is that if Santorum can’t even beat a weak frontrunner like Mitt here, where can he beat him?

Well, after months of retail politics, Santorum was still in Huntsman and Bachman territory in the polls nationwide and in Iowa. That he so caught fire the past two weeks is quite a phenomenon and accomplishment . . . and shows how earnestly most Republicans do not want Romney. To write it all off as just those Iowa yokels is ignorant at best. With indications that Bachmann and perhaps Perry are dropping out soon, expect conservatives now to flock to Santorum to stop Romney.

The real lesson is the establishment Romney machine can be beat . . . and Santorum may be the man to pull it off.