Santorum mixes academia into campaign trail pitch

[January 16, 2012]  HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. (AP) -- Rick Santorum is running for president, but his campaign speeches sometimes sound like he's working toward tenure.

The Republican quotes Irish statesmen and French historians, traces word origins and explains Islam to the Christian conservatives who have great sway in South Carolina's Saturday GOP primary. He recommends books, cites academic studies and doesn't shy from footnoting his own unscripted remarks.

At times, Santorum's events more closely resemble a somber college lecture than a raucous political rally -- informative, if not always inspirational.

"After I left the United States Senate, I wrote and lectured around the country about Iran," the former Pennsylvania senator said to one audience here last week. So, he argues, vote for him "if you're looking for someone who has some understanding and knowledge and has had success in trying to shape Iran policy, someone who has that experience to be commander in chief and has the ability to go out and look at and lecture on that country."

At another point, Santorum explained how the American and French constitutions differ.

"There were no God-given rights (in France) because there was no God," he said. "What happened? Tyranny and the guillotine."

Comments like those are standard Santorum fare. In the stump speech he gives several times a day, Santorum includes red-meat conservative rhetoric but also sprinkles in academic discourse and Senate-speak. And there's another frequent public-speaking device: He throws queries back at his questioners -- and then provides his own answers.

"How many 62-year-olds do you know who can't work?" he asks when talking about early benefits some Americans draw for Social Security. "Do you know how many people take benefits early?" And when voters venture a guess -- he jumps in to correct them, exclaiming: "Seventy percent."

A long-time footnote in the race, Santorum is relishing his new relevance ahead of Saturday's first-in-the-South primary. His surprise finish in Iowa elevated him for the moment as the chief conservative rival to front-runner Mitt Romney but he was shellacked just a week later in the New Hampshire primary.

Now he's looking to rebound in South Carolina, more friendly territory for the social-conservative crusader.

Campaigning in South Carolina over the past week, Santorum has faced audiences eager to pepper him with questions about cultural issues, like what he would do to make it easier for parents to home-school their children and how he would work to end abortion rights. An attorney who has an MBA, Santorum exudes confidence in his knowledge but seldom appears arrogant. His lectures seem designed to persuade his audiences, not convince them of his brilliance.

Some like what they hear.

"Rick Santorum's grasp of the issues is deep," said Alan Lord, a 45-year-old engineer from Lexington who supported former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee four years ago and visited with Santorum in West Columbia last week at an overflowing town hall-style meeting. "I watch him and he clearly knows what he's talking about."

At event after event, Santorum quotes journal studies and his faith in equal measure.

"If it wasn't for immigration, America would be declining in population," he said in Charleston. Then he directed his packed auditorium toward a study of population changes in Chattanooga, Tenn.

Often, Santorum commends one of his recent reads, David Hackett Fischer's "Washington Crossing," to his audiences. He mentions Edmund Burke, the 18th-century historian. He quotes Alexis de Tocqueville's study of American democracy.

And he's been known to mention the origins of basic words.

"We cannot have a strong economy unless the family is a strong foundational unit of our society," he says frequently, as he did this week in Columbia. "The term economy comes from the Greek word, 'home.'"

He also challenges the contemporary interpretation of the Declaration of Independence's call for "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

"Happiness at the time of our founding was not defined the way it is today," he told an audience in Beaufort. "The dictionary definition of 'happiness' at the time of our founders was 'to do the morally right thing.'"

And when a voter in Charleston urged Republicans to impeach President Barack Obama, Santorum said: "I don't think you can impeach a president because you disagree with his public policy ... I hesitate to get involved in political impeachments. That happened once under Andrew Johnson and that didn't work out so well."

Thus began an impromptu mini-lecture on the 1868 trial.

[Associated Press; By PHILIP ELLIOTT]

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