Santorum Silliness

Pennsylvania may well turn into "the state to watch" during next year's midterm elections - not only could House races prove interesting there (as I mentioned in my last post), but the Senate race between Rick Santorum and Bob Casey Jr. will likely rank among the most competitive. In that race, a debate has sprung up over the degree to which Santorum has expressed anything beyond the "party line" on the war effort: Casey has accused the incumbent senator of "not asking the tough questions."

But I have asked the tough questions, Santorum and his staff have been insisting for several weeks. The senator told the Philadelphia Inquirer on August 19 that "he had been critical of war tactics in private conversations with the White House and in public." But his aides admitted later that day that they couldn't find any public statements to that effect. Oops.

It's been eleven days, but Santorum's people are finally trumpeting a discovery: the transcript of a September 21, 2004 press appearance in which Santorum is quoted as saying "There are concerns - I have concerns - about tactics and decisions that were made. I think you'd find a lot of Republicans who are very willing to second-guess our tactics in Fallujah, for example."

Said Santorum media consultant John Brabender "This shows he is not afraid to stand up to the administration, or to say things could be better."

I beg to differ. This shows that Rick Santorum made one statement, almost a year ago, offering one of the most mild criticisms of the conduct of the war I think I've ever seen. Perhaps Santorum has offered more meaningful criticisms in private conversations with Administration officials, but how are we to know that? I'm not entirely willing to take him at his word.

It's perfectly fine if Santorum wants to parrot the talking points on the war in Iraq - most senators and representatives do exactly that. But if he's going to start saying that he's been critical, he'd better have the proof to back that up. And if he does in fact "have concerns" about the way things are going in Iraq, as he said he did in an NPR interview recently, then he's got a responsibility to the people of Pennsylvania and to the Republican Party (as its third-ranking leader in the Senate) to voice those concerns, both publicly and privately.