As John McCain looks more and more like the frontrunner (for now) in the Republican presidential race, criticism of his views has intensified. And no one has been more critical of the Arizona senator than his former colleague Rick Santorum. Santorum has taken to talk radio shows in recent days to trash McCain as too liberal. It's not a new argument. Santorum made it back in April, too, when McCain first announced.
I agree with many (probably most) of Santorum's policy critiques of McCain, but Santorum is an odd guy to be lecturing others about conservative purity. When many conservatives were pushing former representative Pat Toomey as a conservative alternative to left-wing Pennsylvania senator Arlen Specter, Santorum was not. He was one of Specter's biggest boosters and many Pennsylvania conservatives still blame Santorum for Specter's continued presence in the Senate. (Specter's lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union is 44; Santorum's is 88. John McCain's is 82.)
Here is what Santorum said about McCain to Mark Levin last week: "The bottom line is that I served 12 years with him, 6 years in the United States Senate as leader, one of the leaders of the Senate - the number-three leader - who had the responsibility of trying to put together the conservative agenda, and almost at every turn on domestic policy, John McCain was not only against us, but leading the charge on the other side."
The same thing could be said, of course, about Specter. But that didn't worry Santorum. Here is how Steve Moore, then of the Club for Growth, put it in an article on National Review Online: "Santorum is actively working to undermine Pat Toomey's candidacy. He has discouraged donors from contributing to Toomey. He has cut TV ads for Specter that portray the senior liberal senator as a friend of the taxpayer. He has staff people in Pennsylvania actively campaigning against Toomey."
More interesting, perhaps, is Santorum's own history with McCain. While he has little use for McCain today, the same was not true back in 2006, when Santorum was campaigning for reelection. The Pennsylvania conservative asked McCain to visit Pennsylvania on his behalf and used footage from the event on his campaign website.
According to an article from the Philadelphia Inquirer, when Santorum listed "key events" of his campaign in 2005, the name of George W. Bush was nowhere to be found. What was? According to the Inquirer:
"First on the list? An endorsement from Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.). Click over to the multimedia section, and you'll find video footage of McCain at a Santorum fund-raiser. Might popularity have something to do with it? McCain's approval ratings tip the mid-60s. Bush hovers in the high 30s."
