Daily Santorum: Wrong kind of buzz
Your Hometown Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum is once again carpet bombing Iowa this week. He marched in three different Independence Day parades on Monday and had five media appearances on the schedule today to go along with two campaign stops. The interviews, such as this morning's CBS Early Show appearance, are great opportunities for exposure but in every one, it seems, Santorum is asked some variation of: How in the world are you going to win this thing when your poll numbers are so low? (Or as Time's Amy Sullivan put it: "Santorum’s poll numbers in Iowa are smaller than the number of children he has.")
On CBS, Rick said he's just going to keep trucking along, and Michele Bachmann's surge is just a flash in the pan:
"I understand the buzz around some of these candidates, whether it was Herman Cain early on, now Michele Bachmann, before that Donald Trump," Santorum said. "I'm just out here working hard. I'm meeting people at diners and in their living rooms, folks in Iowa and New Hampshire in particular. They want to meet the candidates, they want to kick the tires, they want to ask you questions."
Santorum argued that voters in Iowa cared more about their interactions with a candidate than polling numbers.
"Iowa, it's a caucus state. The folks who're gonna come out are the folks who have really looked at these candidates and studied hard," he said. "Not who Washington or New York says who's the favorite."
As a member of the All-Powerful Beltway Media Elite -- we have badges and secret handshakes, you see -- I take offense at the notion that we don't determine favorites in the race, but your daily Santorum tracker can put aside hurt feelings for now and give Santorum the benefit of the doubt that his relentless handshaking will pay eventual dividends. Still, he will have to break through being marginalized in the national press and grossed out by Google.
Indeed, it seems much of the buzz that Santorum makes in his coverage is not the kind he would like, as it focuses on his ballyhooed Google Problem. Slate's Chris Wilson took on the topic Friday, asking if Google should correct this problem with its algorithm -- since most people who come across the neologism aren't actually searching for it. Wilson concludes that Google shouldn't reverse the work of Dan Savage -- who got the NYT Magazine treatment this weekend -- but that coverage of Santorum's presidential campaign should eventually drown out the other version of Santorum (which has spawned its own spinoffs, such as this one that employs food in its Santorum definitions):
Santorum has now become legitimately associated with online political protest, and people who search for "Rick Santorum" needn't be shielded from Dan Savage's campaign. But Spreading Santorum doesn't need to be the top result to have that effect. As much as I appreciate Savage's effort, a Rick Santorum victory over santorum will be a sign that Google is working properly. While it is very unlikely that Santorum will get anywhere near the presidency, his bid should put the other meaning of his name where it belongs—down to Result 2 or 3, but still safely on the screen.