HAWAII, February 10, 2012 - Supporters of Rick Santorum have good reason to be proud of the GOP's comeback kid. His address at CPAC today revealed a candidate who has the moral intensity to challenge a progressive status quo and who has come a long way in developing presidential bearing.
Santorum's address was not a red vs. blue cheerleader pep rally meant to make Republicans feel good about their brand. Instead it was an adult conversation with conservatives about the future of their movement.
Taking the audience back to a speech he had given after the rise of Barack Obama for the purpose of perspective, Santorum reminded them that the GOP’s defeat in 2008 did not occur in a vacuum.
"Conservatism did not fail our country. Conservatives failed conservatism," Santorum warned, bringing a tense silence that was palpable even for myself watching the event thousands of miles away through the glass of my iPad. "As conservatives we lost heart. We listened to the voices who said that we had to abandon our principles and our values to get things done, to win."
"Well we hear those same voices today," he continued, "that we have to learn our lesson, that we should no longer, that we need to compromise, do what's, what's politically reasonable and go out and push someone forward who can win. Well I think we have learned our lesson, and the lesson is that we will no longer abandon and apologize for the policies that made this country great for a hollow victory in November."
It may not have been what audiences wanted to hear, but it certainly was what they needed to be told. Santorum knocked on the conservative soul of the Republican Party and checked to see if anyone was home. Winning votes is everything, but being different by design is what makes a vote for a candidate and his party worthwhile.
Santorum then said something which the untrained ear might not have caught or completely understood. He made two separate references to "working in the vineyards." The first instance was in reference to himself being a known conservative servant. The second was in reference to supporting other conservatives.
To understand what Santorum was referring to, one must look to Isaiah 65:8. "As the juice of the grape is found in the cluster and one says do not discard it, for a blessing is still in it" the Scripture reads.
The gravity of what Santorum is implying based on that Scripture is that he and others must work to preserve that what is good about the conservative movement. When harvesting in a vineyard, some grapes are bad, some are good, but you don’t toss out an entire cluster, you save what's good about it and in the same way, Santorum essentially implies we ought to keep the parts of the Republican Party that make it a blessing to America.
Santorum's entire speech was tough love to the audience, highly idealistic and reinforced with calls to see the contrast between himself and Mitt Romney. The crowd was mixed with supporters from various campaigns and threw him a curveball mid-speech by calling out the names of other candidates when he asked a rhetorical question of who was best fit to be the next president. Nevertheless, Santorum showed intestinal fortitude and delivered one of his best conservative addresses.
"You are blessed to live in a time when America needs you," he offered in closing, suggesting with a religious twist that conservatives have been called for such a time as this. If many are called and yet so few are chosen, the Republican Party would do well to heed Santorum's words and nominate someone who can indeed draw sharp contrasts with Barack Obama in November.
Danny de Gracia is a political scientist, an ordained minister and a former senior adviser to two committee chairs of the Hawaii State House of Representatives. He currently lives in Hawaii.
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