A G.O.P. Leader and Star Struggles for Traction
2006-10-31
Source: New York Times
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rss feedThere is no better snapshot of the brutal political climate facing many Republicans in these final days than this: Senator Rick Santorum, the third-ranking Republican in the Senate, stubbornly behind in the polls, warning with anger and growing frustration that voters should not - must not, for their own good - reject him for his Democratic opponent, Bob Casey, the state treasurer.
Assailing Mr. Casey's national security credentials, the Santorum campaign has run a television commercial that shows a mushroom cloud, missiles streaking through the air and the faces of North Korean, Iranian and terrorist leaders. It concludes, "We just can't take a chance on Bob Casey."
Mr. Santorum began the final stretch of his campaign with a series of speeches on "The Gathering Storm," offering a dark, Churchillian vision of the threats facing the United States - like the threats, he said, that faced England in the years leading up to World War II.
But Mr. Santorum all but acknowledges that the national security issues that proved such a fundamental strength for the Republicans in 2002 and 2004 are far riskier for his party this year.
"People ask me, 'Why are you giving a major foreign-policy address two weeks before your election? Don't you realize this war is not popular?' " he said Friday. But he plowed forward, to an audience of about 75 in a Holiday Inn in the western Pennsylvania city of Johnstown, one of several stops on his tour.
The political world has changed fundamentally for Mr. Santorum, who rode an anti-establishment wave into the Senate in 1994 but is now at risk of being swept out of office by a very different wave. He has spent millions, campaigned hard, attacked his Democratic opponent on every imaginable front, closing with what Democrats assert is "a campaign of fear and smear." But Mr. Santorum has remained consistently behind in the public polls.
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