Santorum calls for economic opportunity to reverse family breakdown

ANAMOSA - In a showroom crowded by shiny new Republican models, Rick Santorum feels like an old Suburban.

'Everyone wants to drive the new car,” the former Pennsylvania senator said at a town-hall meeting in Anamosa, but sometimes experience is more valuable than new car smell.

Santorum has plenty of miles on him. In 2012, he ran a low-budget campaign, traveling to all 99 counties, which paid off in the end when he squeaked past the favored Mitt Romney. Unfortunately for Santorum's campaign, Romney was declared the winner on caucus night, and Santorum's victory wasn't announced until weeks later when the Republican Party of Iowa completed its certification of caucus ballots.

'I trusted you four years ago to make the right decision,” Santorum said. 'I just wish you had made it a little sooner.”

Four years ago, Santorum, 57, said that election was the most important in the history of the nation.

'It was and look at what's going on,” he said to about 30 people at McOtto's Family Restaurant. 'We're living with the consequences of losing the most important election of our lifetime.”

There's even more to be concerned about today, he said.

Four years ago, Santorum was a 'culture warrior” campaigning against social evils, especially what he saw as the breakdown of the family. He's still fighting many of those battles, but the emphasis is on seeing families do better economically. Wages have flatlined, and the economy has stalled, he said.

'People are lacking hope. They don't believe opportunity exists,” Santorum said.

That's part of what persuaded Rep. Walt Roger, R-Cedar Falls, who supported Santorum four years ago, to join his campaign staff this time around. He believes Santorum will appeal to the middle class and blue-collar voters Republicans need to win in 2016.

'The Republican Party increasingly is the party of the working people,” Santorum said. 'It just hasn't figured that out.”

He's proposing to replace the tax code with a flat tax on all forms of income - wages and salaries, dividends, interest and corporate income.

'No matter how you take your income, it will be the same,” he said.

His plan will include a three-year phase-in of the tax as an incentive for manufacturers and a 5 percent to 8 percent repatriation tax on corporate income held overseas. Santorum believes that revenue would be invested in manufacturing in the United States, triggering a 'huge boom.”

Santorum spent more than an hour in Anamosa, answering questions on the Jade Helm military exercise, Common Core, leadership, the Supreme Court, immigration and Iran.

In coming to an agreement with the Iranians, Santorum, who was a Senate sponsor of many of the sanctions on Iran, said President Barack Obama 'has made Neville Chamberlain look like Winston Churchill.”

'There is no positive ramification from this treaty,” he said. 'You don't negotiate with terrorists.”

Santorum had a similar meeting in Tipton later Wednesday.