Santorum Lets Others Do His Dirty Work

The current dustup in the Santorum/Casey campaign is just a sneak peek of things to come, but it is illustrative of how Santorum's public persona as the angelic "person of faith" doesn't jibe with the reality of inside-the-beltway politics.

At issue are TV commercials which are running throughout PA under the auspices of a group called Americans for Job Security. AJS is constituted as a 501(c) not-for-profit organization, which allows it to hide its contributors, unlike a 527, which would have to reveal who's paying the bills. While it would be clear to a 5th grader that AJS's communications are indeed "intended to effect the outcome of elections" (thus making it, as a 501(c), in violation of IRS regs) the group has, so far, been able to skirt the law on this count.

What this amounts to is that Santorum is taking money and running ads paid for by...who knows? He and his staff can demure all they want, and claim this is out of their control, but the the bottom line is Rick is being supported by a shadowy group that refuses to come clean about who funds it...and what sort of quid pro quo is involved. Rest assured, however, that Rick knows where the money is flowing from!

A side issue in all this is the use of the same stock footage in the AJS commercial and a web-only ad running on Santorum's site. The question this raises is whether AJS had communication with Santorum's media frim, Brabender Cox, in violation of campaign laws. I would suggest that the Casey team get their counsel on the phone with the FEC and Getty Images or Corbis (or whomever was involved) and find out who ordered what when, and what the terms of the licensing was.

The bottom line in all of this is that Santorum, even in these early days of this campaign, is relying on others to do his wet work for him and is hiding behind a Chinese puzzle box of campaign law loopholes. Not the sort of thing the people in the "T" should expect from such an upstanding citizen, is it?