Lancaster Co., Pa. — “We can confuse and confound the pollsters, pundits, and liberal media,” radio talk-show host Sean Hannity challenged a crowd of just under 1,000
Rick Santorum supporters at the Farm and Home Center.
To be honest, a Santorum win at this point would confuse and confound just about everyone. Pennsylvania’s junior senator — the youngest member of the Senate leadership — can’t get ahead in the polls, and the good things he does just don’t seem to be getting any electoral traction. If they did, he’d be far ahead of his empty shell of an opponent, coasting to victory.
It’s been awhile since the Pennsylvania Senate race was in any smart pundit’s “toss-up” list. And then last week, he released a great definitional
TV ad, making clear the danger facing the U.S. and the incompetence of his opponent
— “we just can’t take a chance on Bob Casey.”
The spot was quickly labeled “Rick Santorum’s mushroom cloud ad.” Santorum followed that with a(
nother) dire
speech about the war against Islamic fascism — his “end-of-the-world speech” as I’ve heard it called. His opponent shot back that Pennsylvanians don’t need to be lectured to, and it might be easy to think he has a point.
Santorum’s stump speeches
can sound a little bit like a seminar at the American Enterprise Institute, but on the campaign trail the importance of that speech is clear. Santorum, in the summary version of “The Gathering Storm,” reminds his listeners of basic civics. If it is a politician’s job, in part, to make sure the U.S. is safe from its enemies, it is the voters’ job to make sure their politicians are capable of doing this. Santorum can do his best to explain the threats these enemies pose, but the election is in the hands of Pennsylvanians. “This race isn’t going to be won in polls,” Santorum says. “This race is going to be won on Election Day with your help, getting people” out to vote.
As Hannity put it, “Pollsters, pundits, and the liberal media” aren’t going to decide this election. Voters will.
Yet civics is a two-way street for Santorum, and it seems that some voters just don’t want to hear his sobering message. He continues with it nonetheless, because as a United States senator, serving for however long he is privileged to, he has “the opportunity,” to “do and say things that are important.”
And, truth be told, Santorum lays it on thick, but if you agree with him about what’s going on in the world today, you can’t blame him for routinely making a political rally a deadly serious event. “What happens in this election could affect the history of our country more than any.” “People who are not here to hear this speech can claim ignorance,” he says. Those gathered, though, do not have “that luxury.”
At the Lancaster rally, Hannity, to the beat of Martina McBride’s “Independence Day” — “Let freedom ring!” — helped rally Santorum supporters in the most Republican county in the state for their get-out-the-vote effort. There didn’t seem to be a person in the room who didn’t have his or her marching orders (in fact, a volunteer with a clipboard even tried a hard sell on a couple of reporters). Hannity emphasized voter duty: “The senator has done his job. And he can’t win without your support.” Hannity made clear, always to audible audience agreement: “The stakes could not be higher…This election means everything.” He encouraged those gathered to work toward “a presidential turnout.”
Almost everyone I talked to Saturday got the message. This election is about the threat of terrorism. “We cannot afford to play around,” says Lancaster resident Kathleen Harrison, ready for the phone banks.
Santorum’s in it for the win, but you can sense his understandable frustration. He’s all motivational speaker when rallying the Keystone voting troops, but talking to reporters after the rally in Lancaster on Saturday night, Santorum said of Casey, “My opponent is not campaigning. He’s not saying anything … This guy has brought nothing to the table.”
On the way to a rally with First Lady Laura Bush at the City Avenue Hilton in Philadelphia earlier Saturday, the streets were lined with Santorum signs; apparently no one at the Casey campaign bothered to call some College Democrats to line the other side of the street with their signs. And though nationally the Left hates, hates, hates Santorum in a passionate, poisonous way, they don’t even bother to protest his events, even a stone’s throw away from oh-so-blue Center City, Philly.
The Democratic candidate himself is not seen all too often either. Dems and their empty suit Casey are counting on voter frustration — mainly with Iraq and congress — translating to a vote for the challenger with a familiar name.
The Santorum camp is counting on motivation going a long way for their guy. “It’s all in your hands,” Hannity told the Lancastrians.
And so it is. But first, First Lady Laura Bush (today, Pittsburgh) and Rudy Giuliani (Friday, Wilkes-Barre), among others, will be back in Pennsylvania, hoping they can help motivate voters to reelect Rick. In his
New York Times column on Sunday, David Brooks — who disagrees with Santorum on a whole host of issues, but admires him and his legislative work nonetheless — went national with a
Bono (the U2 frontman and humanitarian) quote that appeared in the
Philadelphia Inquirer earlier this month. “I would suggest that Rick Santorum has a kind of Tourette’s disease; he will always say the most unpopular thing. But on our issues, he has been a defender of the most vulnerable.” Brooks says that a Santorum loss would be “bad for poor people around the world.” He elucidated, “The bottom line is this: If serious antipoverty work is going to be done, it’s going to emerge from a coalition of liberals and religious conservatives. Without Santorum, that’s less likely to happen.” He added, “If senators are going to be honestly appraised, it’s going to require commentators who can look beyond the theater of public controversy and at least pretend to care about actual legislation. Santorum has never gotten a fair shake from the media.”
As Sean Hannity put it on Saturday night, “I’ve seen a lot of politicians in my day, but I’ve seen very few leaders.” Rick Santorum’s been “a consistent leader” and is one of “the right men in the right place at the right time” in the Senate. Or, as Temple University senior Marlene Kowal told me in Philadelphia Saturday afternoon, “This isn’t a political game to him. He has the spine to actually confront serious issues.”
What a waste it would be to lose Senator Santorum to Bob Casey Jr., who’s not even trying — and that’s
before he even gets to the Senate club.
The key question we won't know the answer to until the polls close on election night is: How many Pennsylvania voters get that? — Kathryn Jean Lopez is the editor of National Review Online. 
