The national environment was tough for Republicans, but that wasn't why Democrat Bob Casey Jr. routed U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum.Can't really argue with that.
Media scrutiny of Santorum might have been tough, but that didn't cost him the election, either.
It was all about Rick Santorum, and much of it was self-inflicted.
Pennsylvania's U.S. Senate election was a referendum on Santorum, a polarizing and often controversial figure in state and national politics who frequently was his own worst enemy, political analysts and insiders said.Some details.
There was his book that criticized the "weird socialization" of public schools and suggested that women who worked instead of staying home to care for their children were being selfish.And so on.
There were questions over his Pennsylvania residency and allowing state taxpayers to pay for his childrens' cyberschool tuition while he lived in Virginia.
There was his involvement in the Terri Schiavo right-to-die case in Florida, and his comparison of homosexuality with bestiality.
Santorum could have inoculated himself from many, if not all, the personal issues that stung him.Yea, he could have done all those things, but then the guy who did that wouldn't have been Rick Santorum.
He could have bought a house in southern Adams County, repaid the cyberschool, and not gotten involved in the Schiavo fight, Gerow said.
Santorum, who moved to Virginia in 1995, did consider buying a house in Gettysburg in 2001, but abandoned the idea because he felt it was too long of a commute to Washington, D.C., a close associate said.
They did, though, get one last jab into the media:
Santorum kept a low profile yesterday, declining media requests for interviews or a news conference. Aides said he wanted to spend time with his family before returning to Washington, where Congress is to return Monday for a lame-duck session.I'll let that one pass.
But he also had no interest in talking with the media that he felt had been unfair to him.
"You guys ripped him so much," spokesman Robert Traynham said.
The surprise was not that he lost Tuesday but that he didn't lose sooner. His brand of conservatism was unusual for Pa. His first election to the Senate, against Harris Wofford--during a great year for the GOP--he didn't even crack 50 percent in a three-person race. He only got 52 percent against Klink, and Klink ran a rather mediocre campaign.(And still ended up closing a huge gap in the last few weeks of the race.)
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