“In far too many families with young children, both parents are working, when, if they really took an honest look at the budget, they might find they don’t both need to.”
-- U.S. Senator Rick Santorum, in his 2005 book, It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good
The estates at Shenstone Farm sprawl over 500 acres of steeply rolling, barren hillside, at the point where northern Virginia’s traffic-clogged suburbs finally surrender to the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. On an unseasonably warm January day, this former horse farm is shrouded in fog so dense that a visitor could imagine a band of gray-clad rebel soldiers emerging from these hilltops in the heart of Civil War country.
A Santorum neighbor told the Prospect that she occasionally sees the senator’s children outside mowing the lawn but doesn’t really know the family -- which is not surprising since she cares for two young kids while working full-time from her house. In the community where the Santorums chose to live, she said, “Not too many women stay at home.”
And so the political chameleon has changed colors yet again, casting himself as the Senate’s leading reformer. But with the November election fast approaching, Santorum is trailing Casey, his most likely Democratic opponent, by double digits in the polls. Florida pollster David Beattie has written that the 2006 election may turn on fiscally conservative, socially moderate voters with weaker partisan ties. Beattie calls them “Starbucks Republicans.” At least Santorum will know where to find them.
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