Why Bachmann Needs to Attack Santorum's Conservatism

There is a close and undeniable affinity between Santorum and Bachmann. They definitely appeal to the same broad constituencies. Of all the candidates, they are the two consistent conservatives, and neither one can gainsay the the other's conservatism. So, what distinguishes the two?

The most obvious difference is experience. Santorum was elected to Congress at 32 years of age. His first act as a freshman backbencher was to join with freshman to form the famous Gang of Seven to expose and overturn the corruption of the House Bank. As a result, a number of significant congressmen were humiliated and forced into retirement, and the House Bank Congressional Chairman Dan Rostenkowski was thrown in prison. At 43 years of age, Santorum had authored and nursed into law a dozen or more pieces of legislation, and arose to the third ranking member of the U.S. Senate. His resume goes on and on.

It was not until she was 50 that Bachmann was elected to her first term in Congress where she has served as a backbencher for the last five years. Her resume is thin. She serves on the House Intelligence Committee, not as chairperson. Otherwise, she was a tax lawyer prior to her election. She has not yet authored a piece of legislation that has become law.

Bachmann appears to continue slide from her high water mark. She has responded in two ways. First, she is attempting to drum up grassroots support by doing a whirlwind 99 county tour of Iowa. This may backfire. Iowa voters know that Santorum did the hard work of making substantial visits to every one of the state's counties with considerable face time with Iowans; this contrasts sharply with Bachmann's 10 minute campaign stops from county to county, which may come across as a feeble attempt to reproduce Santorum's significant feat. Besides, voters will not be impressed by a 10 minute campaign stop after having stood waiting in rain and snow for 90 minutes for her entourage to arrive, often late.

Bachmann's other attempt to stop her slide has been to question both Santorum's conservatism and principles. At issue was Santorum's endorsement of his fellow Pennsylvania Republican senator, Arlen Specter. Specter was a RINO, and he was facing conservative Republican Pat Toomey in a contested primary. On one hand, a Santorum endorsement of Toomey would do little to help Toomey defeat Specter, but on the other hand, if Santorum backed Toomey, Specter would likely retaliate by using his chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary to block pro-life Bush nominees to the Supreme Court.

Faced with this conundrum, Santorum met privately with Specter, and offered his endorsement in exchange for Specter's support of any pro-life Bush nominees to the Supreme Court. The gambit worked, and Specter supported Bush appointees Roberts and Alito, both of whom were strongly commended by most of the Republican candidates in a recent debate. In the end, Specter deserted the GOP, and became a Democrat, but he kept his agreement with Santorum. Toomey did run against him in 2010 and won. However, Santorum's political sensibilities were justified in that first, Toomey just barely defeated Specter the Democrat in a landslide year for Republicans (how much less were his chances of defeating Specter in 2004!), and secondly, the court now has two more solid conservatives who will likely serve for two or three decades.

Most conservatives find Santorum's rationale sound, and label Bachmann's attack against Santorum as pure political maneouvering. But why is Bachmann only now making this political attack against Santorum? The attack may arise from recent calls for her to bow out of the race so that conservatives can coalesce behind one candidate.

The stakes are high; if conservatives do not get behind one candidate, they will hand this primary to either Romney or Gingrich. Since Bachmann lacks a substantial campaign in New Hampshire and South Carolina, a number of conservatives realize that even if she were to win Iowa, she will merely play the roll of spoiler in the end, either against Romney or Gingrich. Although conservatives love Bachmann, they realize that Santorum is the better candidate not only because of his experience in getting difficult legislation passed and signed into law, but also because if he scores big in Iowa, he has a substantial organization necessary to sustain his campaign into Super Tuesday. All in all, he is the only conservative alternative who can beat Romney and Gingrich.