Santorum Blew it Big in Arizona } Would People Love Mitt Now?

Five Ways Rick Santorum Blew It in Arizona

If we’ve learned one thing through this turbulent Republican primary, it’s that the debates really matter. Newt Gingrich rose and fell on his debate performances, Rick Perry knocked himself out entirely on the debate stage and Mitt Romney crawled back into frontrunner status in part by hiring a new debate coach and stepping up his game.

On Wednesday in Arizona, Rick Santorum needed to bring his A game to the debate to keep his momentum into the big Feb. 28 primaries in that state and Michigan. He didn’t do it. Instead, he left a trail of moments that will likely haunt him in the press, in his rivals’ speeches and in attack ads.

Here are five standouts that illustrate just how bad a night Santorum had:

• Wilted Under Attack On Earmarks Romney has been hitting Santorum for days over the millions of dollars in earmarks he sponsored and voted for during his tenure in the Senate. Santorum tried to deflect the attacks, but instead angrily wandered into a long defense of a practice that’s deeply despised by the tea party base. Then Romney got the last laugh when Santorum tried to tie the millions in government aid Romney bragged about getting while running the 2002 Olympics to the earmark debate.

“While I was fighting to save the Olympics, you were fighting to save the Bridge To Nowhere,” Romney said.

• Let’s Talk About Arlen Specter Romney came at Santorum with an old chestnut: you endorsed the pro-choice Arlen Specter for Senate in 2004 against the pro-life Pat Toomey, he said. It’s a fact from Santorum’s past that’s been dogging him on the presidential trail sincebefore the race began. Santorum went into his long explanation of why he did what he did — essentially, that Specter promised to support all of George W. Bush’s Supreme Court nominees.

But he missed the obvious. Romney attacked Santorum for supporting a pro-choice Republican back in 2004, but Santorum neglected to remind him that Romney was also a pro-choice Republican for most of 2004.

• Pulled A John Kerry You’ll be seeing this clip again. Santorum delivered some genuinely tin-eared answers on his voting record, often invoking complex Senate rules and procedures along the way. The worst may have been a question in which he explained how he voted for a bill that included funding for Planned Parenthood even though he opposed funding for Planned Parenthood. “I think I was making it clear that while I have a personal moral objection to it, even though I personally don’t support it, that I voted for bills that included it,” he said as boos rained down.

These kinds of winding process explanations don’t exactly excite voters outside of Washington — see John Kerry’s “I voted for it, before I voted against it” — but in Santorum’s case, the party is as militantly opposed to compromise as it has been in decades. The crowd, which skewed pro-Romney throughout the night, booed him for his nuanced take on funding one of the GOP’s most hated institutions.

• Tried To Blame President Bush For His Mistakes Why did Santorum do things that conservatives hate in the Senate? Well, the obvious reason: President George W. Bush was asking the GOP to do it at the time and they mostly went along with his proposals. But saying in the Tea Party age, “hey I was just trying not to hurt the establishment” isn’t exactly the smoothest argument and Santorum seemed to step on it with an answer on his support for No Child Left Behind, which he says he now opposes. “You know, politics is a team sport, folks,” he said. “And sometimes you got to rally together and do something.”

Ron Paul sensed weakness immediately, going back to  that exact quote as “the problem with Washington” a few minutes later. “It isn’t an oath to the party, it’s an oath to our office to obey the law and the law is the Constitution.”

• Dragged The GOP Down With Him Conservative pundits sympathetic to Romney have beenmaking the case this week that, whatever Santorum’s conservative merits, he drags the whole party down with his extreme rhetoric. They got plenty of evidence for their case on Wednesday after the GOP received a question on whether they support birth control. Gingrich and Romney practically fell over themselves to condemn moderator John King for daring to even bring it up, insisting that it was an irrelevant distraction from the important issues of the day and their only concerns with contraception were really about religious freedom.

Then came Rick Santorum, who completely deflated their case. He enthusiastically responded to a question about contraception with a lengthy (and seemingly unrelated) sermon about the over-sexualization of teenagers.

“What we’re seeing is a problem in our culture with respect the children being raised by children, children being raised out of wedlock, and the impact on society economically, the impact on society with respect to drug use and a host of other things, when children have children,” he said. “And so, yes, I was talking about these very serious issues.”

Pretty soon the entire podium was following his lead, joining in with their own denunciations of teenage pregnancy and calling for more abstinence programs.

• Bonus: Didn’t Stack The Deck It was clear from all the booing that came Santorum’s way that his supporters either weren’t there, or were clamming up. Gingrich has used crowd response to great personal gain on the debate stage, and on Wednesday it seemed to be Romney who got all the love.

talkingpointsmemo.com
by BENJY SARLIN & EVAN MCMORRIS-SANTORO