Myths around Santorum hard to swallow

According to the sages on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," former Sen. Rick Santorum has tucked under his rotating ensemble of sweater vests something his opponents for the Republican presidential nomination would die for -- a "narrative."

A narrative is a sliver of biography that resonates with an electorate that might otherwise be repulsed by one's actual positions on the issues. The night Mr. Santorum came in second in Iowa, he told a story about his immigrant grandfather who fled Mussolini's Italy in 1925 for the coal mines of southwestern Pennsylvania.

"He ended up continuing to work those mines until he was 72 years old, digging coal," a tearful Mr. Santorum said. "I'll never forget the first time I saw someone who had died. It was my grandfather. And I knelt next to his coffin, and all I could do at eye level was look at his hands. They were enormous hands. And all I could think was, 'Those hands dug freedom for me.' "

"Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough couldn't stop rhapsodizing about Mr. Santorum's narrative. He pronounced him the only candidate in the Republican primaries with a story that real people and real voters could relate to. Mr. Scarborough's ideological opposite, the liberal firebrand Ed Schultz, declared that Mr. Santorum was as good as President Obama when it came to retail politics.

As usual, everyone else at MSNBC politely demurred to the enthusiasm of the hosts, but no one bothered to say the obvious about Mr. Santorum's story -- to have an old man working in the coal mines until he is 72 is not, well, right. He either belonged to the world's most lenient union or none at all. Too bad he never enjoyed the fruits of his labor before he dropped dead.

Meanwhile, longtime Santorum watchers weren't as impressed by the story as pundits on the "Morning Joe" set. They knew Mr. Santorum's speech was a variation of the one he used to kick off his presidential bid on the steps of the Somerset County Courthouse in June. The only difference between then and now is that the same folks who yawned with indifference when Mr. Santorum first recited those words are desperately looking for a narrative they can believe in.

Every pol with vaguely working-class roots has a grandfather whose hands were so big they could barely fit in the casket without intervention from the funeral home. It's practically a rite of passage for an American politician to hint of being descended from Paul Bunyan or Daniel Boone. Rick Santorum is simply the smoothest of the Republican bunch when it comes to self-mythologizing.

There are so many myths, damned lies and statistics about the former senator that one hardly knows where to begin. At least conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer doesn't buy the line that so many others have -- that Mr. Santorum is an "austere limited-government constitutionalist." He does swallow the malarkey about Mr. Santorum possessing a "common man, working-class sensibility."

While it's true that Mr. Santorum has relatively humble roots, he's become a millionaire since losing his Senate re-election bid in 2006. He was compensated generously for a column he wrote for Philly.com, if you can believe that bit of irony. He's also a former consultant for Consol Energy and a recipient of generous director fees from the King of Prussia-based Universal Health Services Inc., the same company the federal government sued in 2010 for Medicaid fraud.

Many folks in southwestern Pennsylvania are still stewing over the notorious 2006 cyber-schooling fight Mr. Santorum had with the Penn Hills School District. That bizarre and pointless scandal was about who would foot the tuition bill for the education of the Santorum children after the family had decamped to Virginia. The family wanted to stick working-class Penn Hills with the bill.

Mr. Santorum, who was in the middle of his failed Senate run at the time, implausibly claimed that his children were still residents of Penn Hills, contrary to reality. These days the Santorum family is way past dissembling about the small house at the center of that dispute. With proceeds from his post-Senate hustling bulging his pockets, Mr. Santorum bought a $2 million home in Great Falls, Va., a neighborhood not likely to be populated by many Reagan Democrats.

Mr. Santorum will figure prominently in this column in the weeks to come. We've only scratched the surface when it comes to his unlikely and ridiculous run for the presidency.

First published on January 6, 2012 at 12:00 am