Rick Santorum, who catapulted himself into the discussion of top tier GOP candidates with a close second in Iowa, is downplaying his history as a Washington insider on the campaign trail. As Dan Eggen and Carol D. Leonnig reported:
Rick Santorum has vaulted to the front ranks of the Republican presidential nomination race in part by depicting himself as a religious family man of lowly beginnings who would bring needed change to Washington.
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But that characterization leaves out two decades in which Santorum was a central and often high-ranking player in Washington politics, with connections to K Street lobbyists and a lucrative consulting career that made him a millionaire.
In the Senate, for example, he played a pivotal role in advancing the controversial K Street Project, a highly organized effort to pressure industry groups and lobbying firms to hire Republicans for influential jobs and punish those who brought in Democrats. Santorum oversaw regular Tuesday meetings with lobbyists in which he solicited their views on pending legislation and discussed potential jobs, according to documents and news reports and a lobbyist who attended the meetings.
After losing a reelection bid in 2006, he capitalized on his congressional experience by beginning a profitable career on K Street as an adviser to industry groups and lobbying firms, disclosure records show.
Santorum’s track record as a longtime Capitol Hill insider is likely to pose a political challenge in the weeks ahead, in part because it undermines his self-portrayal as a reform-minded champion of fiscal conservatism. After spending months languishing in obscurity in the presidential race, he finished just eight votes behind former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney in Iowa’s caucuses on Tuesday and immediately faced allegations that he had backed wasteful spending and special interests.
Hogan Gidley, Santorum’s national communications director, said Thursday that “these kinds of attacks are just what D.C. insiders and elitists do when a guy like Rick Santorum works hard to provide for his family and has success.”
Santorum faced some tough questions at a campaign stop in New Hampshire on his opposition to gay marriage, one of many conservative stances which endears Santorum to parts of the Republican base. As Sandhya Somashekhar explained:
Rick Santorum took on a restive audience Thursday night over the issue of same-sex marriage, which the former Pennsylvania senator vociferously opposes.
Asked by a college student why he opposed the right of same-sex couples to wed, he responded that there was no compelling reason to allow it and suggested that it was akin to legalizing polygamy.
“So, everybody has the right to be happy?” he said. “So, if you’re not happy unless you’re married to five other people, is that OK?”
Santorum’s logic provoked an outcry from the audience, which was made up primarily of local college students but also a number of local conservative voters who were there to support the surging presidential candidate.
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