Daily Santorum: Attention minus
Rick Santorum is getting the attention the wanted. And with that comes increased scrutiny.
RS has won profiles the last couple days from the NYT and the LA Times, both of which paint him as an underdog of course, but still could help separate him from the GOP pack. NYT:
Mr. Santorum has no campaign headquarters, no speechwriter, no advance team, no advertising budget. Campaign finance records show he raised just $582,000 through the end of June; Herman Cain, the former pizza executive, raised $2.5 million. Mr. Santorum is supporting himself by giving speeches, he said, and running through savings.
He insists he can win the old-fashioned way, through shoe-leather politicking.
LA Times, in South Carolina:
While the ground shifts for those in the top tier, Santorum plods over hill and dale, spending almost all of his time and what little money he has in the early-voting states, turning in reliably pugnacious performances in debates (when he gets to speak), and finishing what pundits described as a "surprising" fourth both in August at the Iowa straw poll and Sept. 24 in the Florida straw poll.
"Hopefully, people are recognizing that I've got something to say," said Santorum, 53, between bites of salad and chili in a nearly empty Chili's Grill & Bar here before a scheduled visit to a chicken restaurant across the street. "In the first Fox debate, they asked everybody one question and then they didn't ask me anything for 45 minutes. Like I was a potted plant. It was very frustrating."
There is also more on his financial disclosure form, which is required of all presidential candidates. The Wall Street Journal has a pdf of his full form, and notes he made almost $1 million last year and his assets are tied up in rental properties he owns around the Penn State campus and college savings plans for five of his children.
Liberal site Think Progress sees something they don't like: that he's a lobbyist for Consol Energy and the industry-friendly American Continental Group, and state and federal disclosure sites don't list him as a Consol lobbyist.
But at least he's not getting Rick Perry-like scrutiny, like the kind the WashPost did about the racially-charged name of the Texas governor's former hunting camp. Santorum has been one of the main critics of Perry at debates, which has greatly helped his underdog run, but don't expect him or other GOPers to follow up on the attack line, Michael Tomasky writes at the Daily Beast:
And it is instructive, is it not, that no other candidate jumped on this revelation? Think about the conversations that must have gone on in Mitt Romney’s camp, or in Rick Santorum’s. I bet they weren’t even very long conversations. It’s a charge that emanates from the liberal media, and the last thing in the world, and I mean the very last thing, a candidate chasing Republican primary votes wants to do is sound like that. It’s a dead certainty that we won’t hear another peep about this story from them.
Schedule: Three events in Iowa