Oct 18, 2006 3 min read

It should surprise no one that with mere weeks left before an election in which he continues trailing his Democratic challenger Bob Casey Jr., U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum has resorted to flogging two old standbys: illegal immigration and the nuclear threat posed by Iran. Like a jockey guiding his horse down the home stretch several lengths behind the leader, Santorum is flailing away with the whip of those two issues, hoping the electorate will focus on them instead of others (such as the budget deficit and the floundering war in Iraq) on which the incumbent Republican is more vulnerable.

But the problem for Santorum is two-fold: Not only is he a 12-year incumbent in a federal government completely controlled by his party for the past six years, he’s also the third-ranking Republican in the Senate. If illegal immigration or the supposed nuclear threats posed by Iran and North Korea are the huge problems he makes them out to be, it’s fair to ask what he and his party have done over the years to nip them in the bud. After all, they’ve for a long time had the votes to do pretty much anything they want. But when, before last year’s run-up to this year’s election, did they start sounding these particular alarms?

Instead of making those issues the bogeymen of this election year, Santorum should be held accountable for why the Congress in which he’s a leader and the president of his party have permitted either of these situations to reach alarmist proportions, if indeed that’s the case. It’s not enough to simply talk about would-be threats to national security and what needs to be done to prevent catastrophe, when you’ve supposedly been on watch for more than a decade.

Instead, we have Santorum continuing to insist that Iraq “by all accounts had weapons of mass destruction,” without addressing why those accounts were wrong in the first place. Only diehard conservatives and Bush administration apologists continue promoting that belief, which is the same as promoting a lie.

Santorum also would have us believe that having the “Eye of Mordor”(a tool from the fantasy book “Lord of the Rings”) focused on Iraq for the past five years is the reason we’ve been spared from further terrorist attack. He may be right, but there is no empirical evidence to support that assertion. It could also be due to myriad other factors, including enhanced airport security, the blatant weakness of which was the main reason 9-11 happened in the first place.

Despite running a heavily negative campaign against Casey, Santorum has been unable to overtake his challenger in the polls. That shows voters are more interested in reality and issues than in new bogeymen. It’s about time.