Peggy Noonan: We Need His Kind

An excerpt from Peggy Noonan's excellent new article "We Need His Kind: In Praise of Rick Santorum." To read the entire article, visit the Opinion Journal Online.

And so he has spoken for, and stood for, the rights of the unborn, the needs of the poor, welfare reform when it was controversial, tax law to help the family; against forcing the nation to accept a redefining of marriage it does not desire, for religious freedom here and abroad, for the helpless in Africa and elsewhere. It is all, in its way, so personal. And so national. He has breached the gap with private action: He not only talks about reform of federal law toward the disadvantaged, he hires people in trouble and trains them in his offices.

Santorum issues are hot issues, and raise passions pro and con.

His style has been to face what his colleagues hope to finesse. His opponent, reading the lay of the land, has decided the best way to win is to disappear. He does not like to debate. Mr. Santorum has taken to carrying an empty chair and merrily addressing it.

Mr. Santorum has been at odds with the modernist impulse, or liberalism, or whatever it now and fairly should be called. Most of his own impulses--protect the unprotected, help the helpless, respect the common man--have not been conservative in the way conservative is roughly understood, or portrayed, in the national imagination. If this were the JFK era, his politics would not be called "right wing" but "progressive." He is, at heart, a Catholic social reformer. Bobby Kennedy would have loved him.

This week I caught up with Mr. Santorum by phone as his van drove east along the Pennsylvania Turnpike toward Philadelphia.

He sounded joyful. He said this campaign was "the hardest and most wonderful ordeal I've ever been through." He said he's been taken aback by all the prayers, by all the people who've come from so far to help him. "I've never had that before. I've never had it. I met a guy from Seattle, and a guy from Waco, Texas--they came in for a week just to help me. We have 14 kids coming in from Great Britain!" He said, "Wonderful things are happening."

He sounded startled. And moved. And hopeful. Which is a funny way for a guy down 10 points to feel.

He told me something is happening. And I hope he's right. Because the U.S. Senate is both an institution and a collection of human beings, and it needs his kind.