Ramesh Ponnuru on Santorums Social Security speech today:

1. The senator wants personal accounts–and he’s against any bill that doesn’t have them. “I will not vote for it, and it will not get out of the United States Senate.”

2. On the Democratic line that there’s no major problem: “Even among seniors, it’s not working.”

3. In response to a question about falling poll numbers for personal accounts, Santorum says that the president has not been making the case for them over the last two weeks–although he says that is starting to change. We knew the other side would be “armed and dangerous.”

4. He thinks the argument has to be about “retirement security,” not about the program’s “solvency” or “trust fund,” which is “green-eyeshade talk.”

5. Democrats are happy to talk about raising the payroll-tax cap because “that’s a safe field for them.” That’s all they’re talking about.

6. Santorum did not seem to find the idea of raising the payroll-tax cap and lowering the rate appealing. Since the two policies would counteract each other in terms of revenue, he didn’t see the point. [But wouldn't the question be whether the combination won some Democratic votes?--RP]

7. Greenspan was “tremendously helpful.”

8. Santorum is “happy to campaign on this in 2006″ if it comes to that–even in the second-most senior-heavy state in the country.

I know that there has been much criticism of Santorum on this blog, but I think we need to throw in our lot behind him.

Should a conservative have voted for Casey if he ran against Specter? Of course. But with Santorum, it’s a whole ‘nother elephant. What we need is not merely pro-life votes, but pro-life leadership. We need pro-life Dems to beat other pro-choicers regardless of party. Santorum is the third most powerful Republican senator, and we need a leader to push through Bush’s judges. So few are willing to lead on the pro-life cause because the blue-blood donors are embarrassed by social conservatives.

I realize that Specter’s Chairmanship is what’s causing us the greatest trouble right now, but we can’t deep-six Santorum for what happened in the past. Let’s give him the chance to push through pro-life justices. If he fails, then we can dump him, and for all I care the rest of the Republican party.

We truly stand on the brink of history right now. Given the past Democratic Congress’s Nixon had 1 out of 4 of his supreme court appointments oppose Roe v. Wade. Reagan got 1 out of 3. Bush Sr. 1 out of 2.

This is it guys. We have to go all out. We need Dubya to go 3 for 3 against Roe v. Wade. We can quibble all we want about the minimum wage, but we need to remember what truly matters. 3,000 Americans were killed by terrorism on 9/11. Today, 3,000 Americans were killed by abortion. We have to ask ourselves who has a better ability to combat this in the next four years: Casey or Santorum?