The frantic pace of the presidential primary calendar doesn’t allow for long victory laps. “Game on,” a triumphant Rick Santorum declared Tuesday night in Iowa, but by that time the expectations game in New Hampshire was already whirring. Thewow gold nation’s first primary contest is tricky terrain for Santorum. Paced by a strong caucus showing, he is vying to stake a claim as the social-conservative standard-bearer in South Carolina – a thorny assignment in a week when he’s likely to run headlong into the Romney buzzsaw. The spin from Santorum’s aides is that his views wow gold dovetail nicely with New Hampshire’s flinty, fiscally conservative, heavily Catholic electorate.
But the Granite State is not Iowa. Santorum’s strident social conservatism held a special resonance with the Hawkeye State’s heavily evangelical caucus-goers. New Hampshire is different, as Santorum found when students at a college convention in Concord booed him off the stage after a heated exchange.Held in a capacious hotel ballroom, the event’s freewheeling format was unusual for the tightly choreographed dance of presidential politics. Santorum was preceded at the lectern by a Reform Party presidential hopeful named Robert wow gold Greene, who was admonished by a member of the crowd for swearing. A few young Ron Paul supporters taunted Santorum as he took the stage. The candidate looked loose and relaxed, having ditched the sweater vest for a casual blue button-down, and his speech about American exceptionalism – whatever you make of his views – was a useful reminder that one of the reasons Santorum emerged from the Tea Party wow gold bracket in Iowa was his depth and eloquence.
By agreeing to take questions, Santorum knew he was inviting a confrontation with college students over his staunch opposition to gay marriage and abortion. His stance on marriage equality came up right off the bat. To his credit, Santorum didn’t dodge the issue. Instead he sparred with a series of hostile questioners in a lengthy, quasi-Socratic dialogue. Santorum said his view was that heterosexual marriage “is something society should wow gold value and should give privileged status over a group of people who want to have a relationship together.” By turns inquisitive and imperious, he tried to consider students’ arguments and then knock them down. He suggested those who wanted to change laws prohibiting same-sex marriage faced the burden of showing why that was necessary.
