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Rick Santorum Has Figured Out What The Tea Party Hasn’t: How To Do Anti-Elitism Right

by Frances Martel | 11:51 am, January 21st, 2012

» 22 comments

The final Republican debate before South Carolina had, to put it mildly, its moments. But of all the plot twists and heart-stopping verbal sniping of Thursday’s debate, it was the bold eloquence of goofily uncomfortable Peter Sellers character Rick Santorum, the long-standing (at least before Iowa) afterthought of the 2012 campaign, that stole the show in launching a few perfectly-placed stones from his slingshot at Goliath of grandiosity Newt Gingrich.

It is difficult for one who believes in small government in all capacities to admit that Santorum landed a perfect blow last night. This is a candidate who won Iowa by promising to micro-manage the private lives of every American, who openly sings the praises of earmarks and doesn’t understand what the Internet is. While many argue– with a fair amount of backing– that he is one of two only true “ideas” candidates, many of those ideas are unsavory and badly thought out. But he won no particular points on policy during this debate, as he has in debates past, but for style.

In the most earnest and plastically tender-hearted way, Rick Santorum told Gingrich, to his face, why anyone with even a modicum of understanding of how true intellectuals speak and behave would find the former Speaker an aberration: he is a delirious megalomaniac– almost sociopathic– unfeeling towards others and possessed of an ambition so toxic it robs him of the foresight and wisdom decades of political experience should have granted him. And it was not in his starkest words that Santorum lay into Gingrich so viciously, not in saying that his thoughts were “not cogent” or in coining the most succinct truism about this bizarre character to have come out of this campaign: “Grandiosity is not a problem with Newt.” He didn’t quite have Gingrich reduced to ashes by reminding the audience that he had “no discipline, no ability to pull things together” as Speaker of the House.

It was when he expressed a sense of concern for Gingrich, when referring to him as a “friend” and saying, “I love him, but at times he has that, sort of, worrisome moment that something is going to pop.” “Newt’s a friend; I love him.” How sweet. Santorum was not worried that Gingrich was insane– though, of course, the implication is rather obvious. Santorum was worried that Gingrich had striven to become an elite for so many years that he finally had done so: he had become the splitting image of the painting conservative believe resides in Barack Obama‘s attic.

Sure, Paul Krugman, like all broken clocks, was right at least once when describing Gingrich as a “stupid man’s idea of what a smart person sounds like,” and Peggy Noonan came up with the description of the century when perfectly pegging him as an “angry little attack muffin.” But the downturned noses of Sunday morning regulars are not a particularly surprising image in relation to a charlatan like Gingrich. They are, for all intents and purposes, elites.

RELATED: New Mitt Romney Ad Calls Gingrich Undisciplined, Says He ‘Helped Re-Elect A Democratic President’

But Santorum’s attack, so personal and cruel in its accuracy, goes after Gingrich in a manner someone who would find Sarah Palin‘s attacks on the “elites” concerning can embrace. He did not dismantle Gingrich for writing many books or knowing things, the way many of the anti-Obama Tea Party supporters do– and the way Santorum has attacked the President in the past. Santorum was not attacking from the position of one of many invidious professional small-time media shouters who fell upwards into cable news pseudo-celebrity and could never stand (or understand) just how that suspicious “Obama” built a reputation for being so gosh-darned smart– after all, nothing says “dumb” like a resume full of leadership positions in community aid groups and a Harvard degree! Santorum is a scholar in his own right. He was attacking Gingrich for being a charlatan, an dilettante, a politician whose public attitude was so astronomically out of touch with the reality of his intellectual shortcomings that he was unceremoniously defenestrated from the most powerful position in Congress. In so many words, Santorum challenged Gingrich to prove to us he was not the political equivalent of Miss Cleo.

And it was the most lovely moment of Santorum’s campaign. Santorum, as true an everyman as one finds in politics (look at how adorably unpolished he was as a freshman Congressman! p.s. yes, that’s Rep. Maxine Waters and Speaker John Boehner beside him), made us forget that this very fact renders him incapable of understanding many basic concepts of social order– it’s what puts him what feels like somewhere to the right of the Pope on many social issues– and struck the perfect chord of anti-elitism that the Tea Party had been searching far and wide for since 2009. And he did it by hitting at the heart of what Gingrich is by hinting to precisely what he is not: an intellectual. The flaw in most of the attacks on President Obama is that they target him as an “elite” in a way that requires said “elite” to not be worthy of his positions.

The crux of most Tea Party arguments tends to be that the President just isn’t as smart as Democrats would have you believe, that he doesn’t deserve getting excused for a “57 states gaffe” or mispronouncing “Navy Corpsman” when Palin and company are routinely called idiots by the media. This argument routinely fails because the President doesn’t demean people on a regular basis the way Gingrich does– nor does he lose staffers en masse like Gingrich has, or have major personal integrity issues. Nor does the President have to face the reality of a record of employment in Congress so contentious it rivals the media career of Keith Olbermann.

Santorum did not bother to attack Gingrich on individual gaffes– that always feels petty, whether against Vice President Joe Biden or Rep. Michele Bachmann. He did not go after his past as a professor or the 21 books he has written. Santorum, unlike the Tea Party in reference to President Obama, did not make an anti-academic or anti-knowledge attack on Gingrich but, rather, a pure anti-elite one: that, having lived so many decades in Washington and suffering from a crippling ego problem that reduced him to a catty puddle of bile, Gingrich isn’t as smart as he thinks he is. And having someone so far on the American right (which bizarrely means being the most pro-big government candidate in the race– try explaining that to Europeans!) embarrass Gingrich so thoroughly goes a long way in crafting an image of Santorum as brutally honest, to himself as much as to anyone else.

2012 elections, barack obama, CNN, debates, newt gingrich, Republicans, Rick Santorum, Sarah Palin

Anonymous

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С А S Н S Н А R Р . С О М
http://gregingleright.weebly.com/ Greg

The Teavangelicals distaste for Obama comes from somewhere deep in the corn-fed gut.. Where the bile brews and the stink is made. Rick has the advantage of a team dedicated to the craft of takedown… A more thoughtful operation.
Anonymous

I believe the Tea-Party distaste of Obimbo comes from that part of the body (brain) that eludes the Liberal mentality. As with most of the delusional applied vile attacks, this one resides in the Liberal pablum fed rectum of the Obamacon dogmatic mentality. More commonly associated with “breaking wind’, and just as significant.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_WH3ZLMM7CUKUHUIMK4TKXW6SQE John

The Tea Party caused the biggest wave election in history in 2010. Rick Santorum lost his Senate bid by 18%. Interesting article but I don’t think the facts are with you.
http://gregingleright.weebly.com/ Greg

Thank you for such a poorly ordered nonsense retort as evidence.
Anonymous

Your more than welcome. Anytime I can address your nonsense, I’ll be more than glad to help.
http://gregingleright.weebly.com/ Greg

Your inversive reflex overwhelms all else.
http://profile.yahoo.com/JAARWDCYY2PLCBIPG4E3UUPTP4 Tom

you both just sound so stupid
Anonymous

I am not for Santorum getting the Republican nomination, let alone president. However I found his remarks re: Gingrich as quite sensible, cogent and intellectually brilliant. He used facts, not ad hominem. I think the former senator from PA showed an impressive show of brilliance in how he was specific in facts.
Anonymous

Wow. Many words to put forward in an analysis so wrong-headed in it’s approach, supporting evidence and conclusions that it’s astounding. Supporters of the Tea Party are being characterized in this article as ones naturally inclined to be against people who “know things.” Just wow.

How insulting, how bigoted, and how typical.

And how simple mindingly wrong as to not get that criticisms of Obama’s occasional verbal gaffes, stutters or malapropism are to illustrate ad nausium the clear double standard that exists in the media, repeated by this author, to which public figures are held merely owing to the politics he holds.

Yet to the meat of the analysis. Of course, Santorum’s evisceration of Gingrich in the exchange highlighted here had nothing to do with anti-intellectualism (mostly the purview of the modern left whose leadership pushes little but feelings of hope, change, tingles, blame and racism) but with the man’s character. It was quite a decent moment for Rick; though given, perhaps, on the wrong stage. A South Carolinian audience would rather like the idea of putting a rabble-rouser, an undisciplined, and occasional bomb-throwing talker, into office. Indeed, Gingrich, knowing his audience, took the opportunity to play up that angle complete with the chord-striking characterization of himself as being a “rebel.”

As the exchange progressed, with Gingrich extolling himself as the idea man behind all that era’s Republican successes (rhetorically sabotaged when he said in response to Santorum that, ‘of course every candidate would rather frame things to put himself in the best light’), one with a familiarity of the time could recall that the house fell in 1994 mainly because (besides the records of previous administrations in contrast to Clinton’s first two years) anti-incumbent sentiment exploded with the revelation of the check kiting scandal – only for Santorum to confirm it inside of a minute; which castigated the speaker’s role in keeping that issue on the back burner – intoning Gingrich’s well-deserved status as a genially corrupt Washington insider politician. Again, a matter of character and not one derisively described in this hit-piece article of “intellectualism” for Newt’s idea a minute leadership.

The Tea Party is a movement of bringing to Washington new Ideas (really, some old ones, re-birthed, of sane, fiscal discipline, limited government and disengagement from it’s overly pervasive world reach). It is opposed to well-used idea’s that are dead wrong, and provably so, ideas that are sinking our country. They are also, it appears, destined to suffer – for the ego-stroking conceits of (quite evidently) an overly sensitive bunch – the insults of them who are inured from demonstrations of their ideas repeated, massive failures.

Anti-intellectualism indeed.
Anonymous

The Tea Party’s distaste of Obama’s governance is his stated goal to “transform” the country from that which it is into something it ought never be – another failed socialist Euro state.
Anonymous

Santorum’s loss was in 2006, another wave election, but in the other direction.
http://gregingleright.weebly.com/ Greg

They are mostly angry evangelicals with a dislike of racial minorities.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/17/opinion/crashing-the-tea-party.html?_r=1
Racial distaste is a rotten product of the sick gut. Those who think judge differently.
http://gregingleright.weebly.com/ Greg

Thank’s much.
Anonymous

There is no Teabagger party. There never was. It was just a distraction so people could ignore the horribleness of the repugs.
Anonymous

“The Opinion Pages”

Yeah, that’s just what I thought.
http://gregingleright.weebly.com/ Greg

Ra-ra-ree kick em in the knee
Ra-ra-rass kinck em in the other knee
Anonymous

Unfortunately for Santorum, there is a recent video clip (from one of the slightly earlier debates) in which he is extolling the virtues of Newt Gingrich and the job he did as Speaker.

Santorum did not come off to the audience the way Frances saw him. In fact, he seemed snarky and bitter to me.
Anonymous

If I am recalling the same debate, he praised the Gingrich he knew back when he was first coming to the congress, as if they were two different people. Perhaps too subtle a point.

It was a decent performance, but wrong for the audience and pales to earlier efforts. He also appears to have caught the Bachmann disease, seeming as if he were trying to distinguish himself a bit too much against the well-off Governor and Speaker of the House. “I” was the only one to do this, or stand for that. “I” won here when. “me, I, me.” Bad stylistic choice, especially considering that’s a criticism against he who is in the back of voter’s minds, Obama.

It never mattered to begin with. Gingrich won the day when he attacked the outside media for the edification of a sympathetic crowd. The question is whether the tactic can be reproduced in Florida.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_VK7U6RFTAUIPW2JR2NGPBP2IYA super

Frances you said”The crux of most Tea Party arguments tends to be that the President just
isn’t as smart as Democrats would have you believe, that he doesn’t
deserve getting excused for a “57 states gaffe” or mispronouncing “Navy
Corpsman” when Palin and company are routinely called idiots by the
media. This argument routinely fails because the President doesn’t
demean people on a regular basis the way Gingrich does– nor does he lose
staffers en masse like Gingrich has, or have major personal integrity
issues.”

Well hmmmmmm
how many chief of staffs has Obama had so far during his less then 3 years in office? ;)
2 press secretaries, 2 CIA chiefs, 2 DOD secretaries. SUre no turn over at all..nothing to see here nothing at all.
What about the people who had acess to the Obama administration and wrote books about it. I think Mr Suskind who wrote an anti Bush book detailed many flaws regarding Mr Obama. Also there is Jodi Kantors book to a lesser degree.
Anonymous

Santorum’s only significance now is:

”Who will he endorse once he drops out!”
Phil S

This is a two man race between Romney and Paul. Santorum and Gingrich are not on the ballot for 500 delegates worth of states. They are not, and will not be on the ballot in other states besides just Virginia. They have no grassroots support and virtually “zero” ground game. They cannot win the nomination.

Period.

All this MSM Propaganda pushing either Santorum or Gingrich is a joke. Anyway you work the numbers, they are out.
You have to ask yourself why the media isn’t telling the American Public the truth. Do the math and see for yourself.

Rick Santorum Has Figured Out What The Tea Party Hasn’t: How To Do Anti-Elitism Right

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