Ah the increasingly tangled rats nest of conservative Republican politics in Pennsylvania gets even more snarled as Senator Rick Santorum, trailing badly in early polls for re-election against Democrat Bob Casey, Jr. turns to immigration in hopes it will save his sorry fanny.
While it got little play outside of Pennsylvania, the Santorum campaign unveiled a new television ad with the focus on immigration - an issue which has managed to badly split Santorum's own party. And as thngs have played out since, it appears Ricky's ploy isn't likely to do much to heal that split anytime soon.
It's a scenario which involves lots of old familiar feuding faces in Pennsylvania politics and some bruised feelings from the 2004's Senate Race involving Santorum's colleague and fellow Republican Arlen Specter. More below the fold:
First...Little Ricky's latest commercial:
http://www.ricksantorum.com//Multimedia/Default.aspx#%22
and then click on "Our Side"
which claims Casey favors amnesty for illegal aliens and even supported legislation giving them tax breaks and ordering that they get higher wages than Americans. Santorum says he is a staunch opponent of "liberals like Ted Kennedy" who have been proposing a Senate bill which would allow undocumented immigrants to earn legal status as U.S. citizens. (Casey immediately responded the day the ad broke, pointing out that Santorum on seven different occasions since 2001 voted against proposals to increase the number of U.S.border patrol officers.)
The ad was part of a push by Santorum to raise traction on the issue. According to a posting on the Senator's website:
U.S. Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) today hosted a conversation on Immigration Reform at the Monroeville Volunteer Fire Company #4 in Allegheny County. Santorum sat down with a hometown audience to discuss illegal immigration and its impact on the Commonwealth.
What the message failed to add was that the "hometown audience" was, in keeping with the tactics of Santorum's noble leader george "Bubble Boy" bush, carefully hand picked from those known to be supportive members of the local conservative GOP community and even then, the only questions allowed were ones which were pre-submitted by those in attendance and again, hand-selected by Santorum's staff. This information from a friend of a friend who was able to get inside the Monroeville event, but who was not able to ask any questions because of the carefully regimented format. One wonders when the public is going to begin asking why they are not allowed to ask direct questions of the folks who supposedly were elected to serve their interests.)
Of course it would be natural for Senator Santorum to want to control questions. His meeting was held right on the doorstep of the house he claims to live in as a Pennsylvanian, even though nobody has seen him or his family there in years. He also used the house to win local tax funds to pay for the private education of his children who were not living in the house either. Instead, Mr. Santorum and his wife spend most of their home life in a McMansion in Virginia paid for, in substantial part, by a sweetheart loan from a bank owned by a major campaign donor.).
But back to the unwinding story of Ricky's immigration rant: On the same day Santorum was holding his "conversation" with those just plain homefolks, Senator Specter was also holding a Senate hearing in Philadelphia on that same Senate immigration bill. And by his side was the wingnuts' favorite male punching bag, Senator Ted Kennedy.
Specter, on hearing of Santorum's characterization of the Senate bill as "amnesty" said he disagreed. "Senator Santorum is enttled to his views....'Amnesty' is a buzzword that is used in derogation...I think we're moving past that." Hardly rousing support for his GOP colleague's efforts to rouse the rabble.
For many in the Pennsylvania GOP, Specter is not a popular guy. Remember the 2004 election when a group of ultra-right folks from the Club for Economic Growth decided Mr. Specter wasn't as zealous as he should be in cutting taxes and ran Pat Toomey against him? Given the strength of conservative politics...paricularly in the western half of Pennsylvania that year, Toomey came surprisingly close to upsetting Specter in a party primary, but Specter was able to hang on and did so in part because Rick Santorum and George Bush campaigned for him. That left many hard-core conservatives in Pennsylvania with bad feelings about Ricky as well as Specter and they haven't forgotten.
Now, Specter is paying back the debt he owes by campaigning for Santorum's re-election, but from the events of the past few days and that "damning with faint praise" quote, it appears that Mr. Specter would not be entirely upset to see his "buddy" Rick take a dive.
Observers in Pennsylvania say they are somewhat mystified by Santorum's decision to try and press the immigration issue at this time. He chose to launch the new message in the western part of the state where immigration is not a very big issue. Polls show the voters there are much more concernred about .economic issues including a fair minimum wage, affordable healthcare, taxes and lingering anger over attempts by the GOP-dominated legislature to grant themselves an illegal pay raise.
But maybe it isn't that surprising a choice by the younger senator. After all when you are trailing in polls by as much as 18 percentage points and you have already demonstrated you have no ethical compass or moral base, and that you'll pretty much say or do anything to get elected, it's just par for the course.