A New Rick Santorum for 2016?
Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum rose to become Mitt Romney's primary rival in 2012 largely based on his focus on social issues. As National Journal reports, it looks like a 2016 campaign by Santorum would attempt to expand beyond that message.
Rick Santorum is in the mood to criticize Republicans. Standing behind a lectern, without a prepared speech, the suit-clad candidate delivers a riff about the GOP's inability to connect with working-class voters. Promises of tax cuts and balanced budgets alone won't win the presidency anymore, he tells a mostly full hotel ballroom of older, white Pennsylvania Republicans.
"We're tired, and we're old, and it's not working," the White House wannabe says, as the attendees nod in approval. "And the problem is America is different; it's a different country. The problems aren't the same as the ones that confronted Ronald Reagan."
No talk of partial-birth abortions. No denouncing contraception. He doesn't mention sodomy, not even once. And if his political advisers get their way, this is the only Rick Santorum we'll see during this 2016 contest.
Santorum's second try for the presidency, his team thinks, will depend on voters believing he is a fighter for blue-collar America and forgetting that he actually likes spouting off about social issues. So his circle has crafted a strategy meant not so much to rebrand him but to bring him back to being the populist challenger who first won office 25 years ago.
The article goes on to explain that the biggest problem in the strategy might be the candidate himself:
There's just one problem: Santorum likes to talk, and he likes to talk about things decidedly off message...
The biggest obstacle to Santorum transforming his image is Santorum. His controversial beliefs on social issues combined with his combative and candid disposition yields an authenticity others lack, but it also generates attention his team doesn't want...
Key to this strategy will be staking out policy positions that differentiate Santorum from his Republican rivals for the nomination, and here his populist agenda has found at least two:
Already, Santorum has a platform that stands out from his rivals. He's the only one in the pack, for example, who has proposed raising the minimum wage and reducing not just illegal immigration, but legal immigration.
Ultimately Santorum's path the the nomination will likely depend both on being seen as something other than just a social issues candidate and whether Republican voters find his populist economic agenda appealing. The first seems achievable by a politician of Santorum's skill, while the second is likely to be a bigger challenge.