Santorum Sends a Message in Illinois

Rick Santorum’s Illinois campaign is powered by a simple theme: Send Them A Message.

Santorum’s pitch to grassroots conservatives to stand with him for conservative principles and ‘stick it to the Man’ in the establishment GOP seems to be working. In some polls, Santorum is even with moderate Mitt Romney, despite the former Massachusetts Governor’s 10 to 1 or better spending advantage.

Part of the reason Santorum’s ‘send them a message’ pitch is working is that the Illinois Republican Party had been steadily losing ground until the anti-establishment Tea Party landslide of 2010.

But the establishment GOP has no intention of letting go of the reins of power without a fight. Just as they have done for decades, the Illinois establishment Republican Party has rejected the principled conservative message and thrown its support to moderate former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, instead of Rick Santorum.

Wedded to the notoriously corrupt statehouse patronage system, the establishment barons of the Illinois Republican Party don’t seem to understand that what powered the Tea Party candidates to victory in 2010 was, not only a rejection of Obamacare and Obamanomics, but a rejection of their own failed business-as-usual, Democratic-light policies.

In Illinois, voters vote to select the presidential candidate and his delegate slate. Romney may be playing right into Santorum’s hands, and against the 2010 tide, by packing his delegate slate with the same establishment Republican members of the Illinois General Assembly, mayors, and local Party poobahs whom grassroots conservative voters associate with the establishment GOP” years of corruption and failure.

In 2010, the Tea Party and grassroots movement conservative voters sent a message that business-as-usual establishment Republicans are just as big a threat to freedom as are liberal Democrats. In Illinois, grassroots movement conservative and Tea Party voters can send that same message by turning out to vote for Rick Santorum in the Republican presidential primary election.”

Richard A. Viguerie pioneered political direct mail and has been called “one of the creators of the modern conservative movement” (The Nation) and one of the “conservatives of the century” (Washington Times). He is the author of Conservatives Betrayed: How George W. Bush and Other Big Government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause.