U.S. News --- CAPITAL JOURNAL: Santorum Grasps Key Realities for Republicans
Republicans already obsessing about the 2016 presidential sweepstakes have paid little attention so far to Rick Santorum. That's a mistake.</br></br>A mistake not because Mr. Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator and unsuccessful 2012 presidential candidate, is likely to win his party's nomination. He's a long shot if he runs again.</br></br>It is a mistake because Mr. Santorum has written a new book, "Blue Collar Conservatives," that shows he grasps two important realities that seem to escape many others. The first is that, outmoded stereotypes notwithstanding, blue-collar Americans, particularly working-class whites in the South and Midwest, today comprise a core element of the Republican Party. The second reality is that, because of the alienation these people feel from both the political and economic systems, the table is set for a new period of populism.</br></br>That helps explain why longtime private-equity executive Mitt Romney, though an accomplished and experienced figure, wasn't the ideal standard-bearer for the party in 2012, Mr. Santorum argues. More important, he says, these realities suggest Republicans need to rethink their policy focus going forward.</br></br>"We Republicans have neglected to focus our policies and our rhetoric on the plight of lower-income Americans," he writes. Later, he adds: "Our focus on tax cuts for individuals not only leaves us open to the 'tax breaks for the rich' sloganeering of the Left but seems irrelevant to the nearly 50% of the population who don't pay federal income taxes today."