Surging Santorum faces scrutiny as possible Iowa winner

Rick Santorum, enjoying a last-minute surge in the polls that has thrust him into contention to win Tuesday’s Iowa caucuses, experienced some of the gloves-off treatment other GOP front runners have seen during this topsy-turvy campaign.

Santorum was given a prime spot on NBC’s “Meet the Press” two days before the caucuses—but host David Gregory confronted him with a series of tough questions about his record on spending and his support in 2008 of Mitt Romney.

In the meantime, other campaigns were taking their shots on the Sunday talk shows. On CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, as an advocate of his father Ron’s presidential campaign, called Santorum a “fair-weather conservative.”

“I think he has a lot to overcome,” Paul said, contending that his father remains in the best position to win in Iowa.

“I think this is the best time to be surging to the top,” Rand Paul said.” “Ron Paul has surged probably as much as anyone in the last two or three weeks and has been the front runner or near being the front runner in Iowa. He’s closing the gap in New Hampshire. So I think he’s surging at precisely the right time.”

A new poll by the Des Moines Register, widely viewed here as the most reliable late indicator of the mood of caucus-goers, shows a late break of voters toward Santorum who are likely to see him as the new best hope for an alternative to Mitt Romney.

The poll showed Romney in close to a dead heat with Paul, with the two at 24% and 22%, and Santorum in third place at 15%. But the poll showed more support gravitating to Santorum in recent days, with Paul slipping.

On “Meet the Press,” Santorum, who served two terms in the Senate before losing a bid for reelection in 2006, was asked about his past use of earmarks, which has drawn criticism from rival Rick Perry. Perry has also slammed Santorum for backing the Medicare Part D prescription-drug program in 2003 that helped balloon the deficit during the Bush administration.

“Your role as a member of Congress is to appropriate money,” he said. “I don’t regret going out at the time and making sure the people of Pennsylvania I represented got resources.”

He was also asked by moderator David Gregory about his endorsement of Romney for president during the last election cycle. Santorum lauded Romney’s conservative credentials in a statement in February 2008, just days before Romney dropped out of the race.

Santorum said he made a “political judgment” that Romney was the best alternative at the time to John McCain, who went on to secure the nomination.

The candidate, a fierce opponent of abortion rights, has made a strong appeal to Iowa’s evangelical voters. Gregory asked him why in 2006, he seemingly said he would support laws that allowed for abortions in cases of rape or incest or when the life of the mother was at risk, but now says abortion isn’t acceptable in any circumstance.

“Today I would support laws that would provide for those exceptions, but I’m not for them,” Santorum said. “What I’ve said in the past is that I’ll support laws that move the ball forward. That doesn’t mean that’s my position and that’s where I’d like to go, but that’s exactly the direction we need to go in.”

Santorum has been a harsh critic of the administration’s policy toward Iran, saying that President Obama hasn’t done enough to foster democracy in that Persian Gulf nation and he said that as president, he wouldn’t hesitate to order an air strike to take out any installation that could produce a nuclear weapon. “That’s the plan,” he told Gregory.

Ron Paul’s refusal to take an aggressive posture toward Iran has drawn condemnation from Santorum and others in the GOP field such as Perry and Michele Bachmann.

On “Face the Nation,” Rand Paul argued Democrats and independents were supporting his father because of that position, and argued that would put Paul in the best position to win a general election among the Republican candidates. Voters, he said, don’t want “someone who is trigger-happy who could start a war at any moment.”

Watch Santorum on abortion:

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