Rick Santorum - Blue Collar Conservatives: Recommitting to an America That Works

Copyright 2014 by Rick Santorum

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, website, or broadcast.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014934158

ISBN 978-1-62157-241-1

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Blue Collar Conservatives is dedicated to all the hardworking moms and dads who both pursued their dreams and sacrificed them for their children to forge the greatest country in the history of the world.

To Karen, Elizabeth, John, Daniel, Sarah Maria, Peter, Patrick, and Bella for helping me with this book. You are my American Dream.

CONTENTS

I t was a night I will never forget, November 6, 2012. Another election night, something we had experienced a dozen times throughout the 2012 Republican primary season, only this time we were actually rooting for Mitt Romney to win. I sat with my wife, Karen, and our children at home waiting to see if the exit polls we had seen earlier in the day were going to play out. I felt uncomfortable not being in the action, but mainly I felt frustrated that the two campaigns ended up fighting over mostly minor issues, distracting America from the questions that made this the most consequential election since the Civil War.

Dramatic, dangerous changes are taking place in America, and this election should have been about them. One such change is a fundamental restructuring of Washingtons relationship with the American people. Our freedom as individuals, families, businesses, and communities is being drastically curtailed by imperious bureaucrats who think they know better than we do how to run our lives. The botched implementation of Obamacare has given us a glimpse of what happens when these grand government schemes inevitably fail. People get hurt.

In 2012, so much was at stake, yet so little was debated. For more than a century, the growing left wing of the Democratic Party has been pursuing a secularist and socialist agenda for America. Their method is class warfarepitting one group of Americans against another. Its the rich versus the poor, men versus women, the 1 percent versus the 99, the insurance company versus the uninsured, and the natural gas driller versus his neighbors. They dont want to improve on Americas success, correct its mistakes, and help it live up to its promise. They think that something is wrong with America at its corethat it needs to be fundamentally transformed. Their progress was slow but steady until they achieved their breakthrough in 2008 with the election of Barack Obama and supermajority Democrat control of both houses of Congress.

After four years of unchecked transformation, Americans should have had a chance for second thoughts. But President to press our best argument against the presidentObamacare. As governor of Massachusetts, he signed the law that paved the way for Obamacare, the focal point of a conservative movement that rallied the country in 2010 to a historic victory in the House of Representatives.

That is why Karen and I decided that I should run for president. I felt called to make the case that the establishment candidate could not win on both Obamacare and the 99 percent. I would campaign as a grandson of immigrants who didnt come from money. I would campaign for the working man. I would campaign on Americas first principles of faith, family, freedom, and opportunity, which are the antidote to President Obamas secular statism.

What kept me in the race as I sat at the bottom of almost every national poll were the people I met, particularly in the early caucus state of Iowa. I visited all ninety-nine counties and did about 381 town hall meetings and speeches in that state over the course of 2011. The average attendance at these local gatherings was about twelve, including me, so I really got to know people. What struck me was their passion and concern for our country. They encouraged me to keep fighting, because they believed what I believed.

The conventional wisdom in the spring of 2012 was that President Obama would be defeated. The economy was stagnant. Hope and change had provided no hope and only change for the worse. In a contest between Obama and anybody but Obama, Obama was going to lose.

The pundits, as it turned out, were wrong. Anybody but Obama wasnt good enough. It mattered whom the Republicans nominated from both a policy and personal perspective. The critical swing votersmiddle- and lower-middleincome Americans from industrial and rural communities with generally conservative valuesswung for Obama or stayed home. Ironically, they were the ones who were being hurt the most by Obamas failed economic policies. They generally dont look to the government for help. But our party didnt seem to care about them. After four years of economic insecurity, what hope did we offer them that they would be better off with a Republican president?

Mitt Romneys rsum as a venture capitalist didnt help him here. I defended him in the primaries when others were attacking his Wall Street deals, because people like him create efficient and profitable companies. Venture capitalists nurtured Apple, Intel, and Google. And theres nothing wrong with making money and living well in America. Mitt Romney is a great businessman, problem solver, and manager, and I cant fault him for running on his strengths.

But those strengths played into Obamas hands in 2012. The Democrats and their allies in the media were determined to turn the election, using the politics of envy, into the decisive battle of the great class war. And the Republican establishment obliged by nominating what turned out to be the perfect opponent.

After the election, many Americans were polled on why they voted as they did. Out of all the data and analyses, one fact jumped out at me: those who voted for a candidate because he cared more about people like them chose President Obama over Governor Romney by a margin of 63 percent. Even if you win the argument on political philosophy, leadership, and managerial competence, its hard to win an election when most voters dont think you care about them.

As filtered through the media, Romney was wrongly portrayed to America as an aloof Wall Street millionairelike the but Romney never got across how he would help the peopleand there are millionswhose boats are full of holes.

In my campaign for president, I traveled to corners of this country that national politicians rarely visit, including rural communities with double-digit unemployment. I was down on the Gulf Coast where they are still recovering from Katrina and in the mill towns of Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin where manufacturers are fighting for their lives against foreign competition and a hostile federal government. I was in the oil and gas fields where theyre drilling as fast as they can in the fear that President Obama might shut them down. Thats what he did to the coal towns I visited in Ohio, West Virginia, and Illinois.