Rick Santorum And Populist Republican Politics

Scott Galupo is right about Santorum’s speech. I was remiss not to link to it over the weekend. Good for Santorum for saying:

One after another, they talked about the business they had built. But not a single—not a single —factory worker went out there . . . Not a single janitor, waitress or person who worked in that company! We didn’t care about them. You know what? They built that company too! And we should have had them on that stage.

The Republicans would do better if they didn’t spend so much of their time talking as if the vast majority of the public were stowaways on the S.S. Entrepreneur . Santorum also tried to walk the pro-working-class walk during the primary. Some of his ideas were good (increasing the exemption for dependent children.) Some of his ideas were not-so-good (ending the corporate income tax for manufacturers but not other firms.) On the whole, his tax plan doesn’t look like it would have brought in enough revenue to fund any level of government spending that our politics is likely to produce. Still, Santorum was maybe the only 2016 Republican presidential candidates who took the problems of the lower middle-class seriously. Too bad he couldn’t resist getting suckered into self-destructive culture war fights.