Weigel

Rick Santorum at the Supreme Court

Rick Santorum spent Monday morning in the city where he worked for 16 years, a city that won’t award him any delegates. His campaign failed to make the Washington, D.C. ballot, which means that the district’s 16 delegates will go to Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, or Jon Huntsman. (He’s still on the ballot!) If Romney wins, he’ll net three times as many RNC avatars as Santorum did when he won Louisiana. But D.C. was where the fate of the Affordable Care Act was being decided. Santorum had to stop by.
photo (26) Santorum spent just as much time in his SUV, waiting for a clear path, as he spent talking to the mob: Eight minutes. “There is one candidate in this race who can actually make the contrast that is necessary between the Republican position, the conservative position, and one that is overwhelmingly supported by the American public, and one that Barack Obama believes in,” he said. “That’s Rick Santorum.” He said this as a cluster of protesters, most of them from the Methodist church, yelled slogans like “ACA is here to stay!” and a cluster of Tea Partiers (vastly outnumbered today) bullhorned their own slogans. The short speech was part of what Santorum spokesman called “a campaign within the campaign,” a new focus on Romney’s health care record in Massachusetts. The speech would bracket a new series of videos, filmed in Massachusetts, asking those voters whether they liked the health care law. (The answer won’t surprise you.)