Video: Speaking to a crowd at the Americans for Prosperity Presidential forum in Michigan Saturday, Santorum said he planned to "talk to minority communities, not about giving them food stamps and government dependency, but about creating jobs."
As he did in Iowa, South Carolina and Florida, Santorum continues to campaign in churches, calling on people of faith to see this GOP race as a contest between the secular and the religious. He emphasizes that his worldview is grounded in faith and family.
His large family and the fact that his children are home-schooled have become a touchstone for his candidacy, confirming to social conservatives that he is one of them.
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Santorum and his aides insist it is the media that focuses on social issues, but the candidate spent an hour Saturday lecturing to a group of about 1,000 people in a church auditorium in Hixon, Tenn., about the dangers of a feel-good culture.
“True happiness comes from doing God’s will,” he said as the audience at Central Baptist Church cheered and gave him a nearly minute-long standing ovation. “It comes from not doing what you want to do, but doing what you ought to do.”
At a rally Sunday evening in Davison, Mich., that opened with a prayer and gospel hymns, Santorum was introduced as a “man who knows a nation cannot rise without God’s aid.”
He defended his record as a conservative and said, “Governor Romney, why are you attacking me as not being conservative enough? How dare you say I’m not a fiscal conservative. Ladies and gentlemen, I know what team I’m on. I’m on the conservative team that stands up for the values that make this country great.”
Santorum’s rallies have consistently drawn protesters who object to his views on gay rights and faith. A protester in Hixon held up a sign saying that America is a democracy, not a theocracy.
On the ground in Michigan, where Romney has hammered Santorum as a big spender who voted five times to increase the debt ceiling and supported expensive, taxpayer-funded earmarks, polls show that support for Santorum among fiscal and social conservatives has been cut in half.
“What Romney’s strategy has done is to erase the lead that Santorum had with fiscal conservatives, but by doing that he also cut into the lead Santorum had with social conservatives because there is an overlay,” said Steve Mitchell, who is president of Mitchell Research and Communications and conducted four polls in February.
Mitchell said that roughly 50 to 55 percent of voters in the Michigan race identify themselves as evangelicals, and Santorum is working to boost his support among those voters even as his credentials as fiscal conservative have been assailed.
“His campaign in Michigan is made up in a large part of evangelicals,” Mitchell said. “That’s why he is taking that stand; he is really trying to bring home the social conservatives at the end of the race.”
While Romney has cast himself as the conservative businessman, Santorum has positioned himself as the candidate with the common touch, highlighting his blue-collar roots and his Catholic faith — he has often said that he comes from a place where people tote a Bible in one hand and a gun in the other.
And by slamming Obama for being a “snob,” Santorum, if only indirectly, also points a finger at Romney’s wealth and status as the establishment’s candidate.
“He is making an indirect appeal to those voters who might have looked oddly on Mitt Romney’s Cadillac comment,” said Ron Bonjean, a GOP strategist. “But there is not a cohesive overall national strategy. He is throwing mud on the wall to see if it will stick. And he wants to ratchet up the fiery rhetoric to activate the base and get them out.
“These are short plays because, in the long run, the game is going to be for independents.”
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