Former Republican presidential candidate and ex-US Sen. Rick Santorum points to his target during a 2016 campaign stop at Impact Shooting Range in Boone, Iowa.
AP Photo/Chris Carlson
Rick Santorum is a face of a conservative movement to call a constitutional convention.
Audio recordings obtained by Insider show how the ex-senator pitches a convention to lawmakers.
“One more state, and then you take this grenade and you pull the pin,” he told a crowd of GOP lawmakers.
Former Sen. Rick Santorum wants Republican state lawmakers to throw “a grenade” at Washington, DC, and “pull the pin” with a first-of-its-kind constitutional convention.
Audio of Santorum’s appearances at the American Legislative Exchange Council’s December 2021 policy summit obtained by the left-leaning watchdog group the Center for Media and Democracy and shared with Insider reveal how he sells a convention to state lawmakers.
“One more state, and then you take this grenade and you pull the pin,” he told a crowd of assembled lawmakers. “You’ve got a live piece of ammo in your hands. 34 states if ever Republican legislator votes for this, we have a Constitutional convention.”
Santorum, a Republican who represented Pennsylvania, made his mark with his socially conservative views and early embrace of culture wars. After two unsuccessful presidential runs in 2012 and 2016 and a stint as a pundit before getting fired from his CNN gig in early 2021, Santorum is now one of the most prominent faces and advocates of a conservative movement to rewrite the Constitution.
Santorum is a senior adviser to Convention of States, a group led by ex-Tea Party activist and Parler CEO Mark Meckler. So far, 19 GOP-dominated states have passed the group’s call for a convention to limit Congress’ spending power, rein in the scope of the federal government, and impose term limits on federal officials.
“Even under the Trump administration, with the growing spending and deficits and everything, it’s got a lot of people concerned that we’re risking the Republic here if we don’t get some constraint on what’s going on in Washington,” Santorum told Insider during a brief July 2022 interview at the US Capitol.
Behind closed doors at the ALEC summit, Santorum urged the GOP lawmakers in the room to embrace the long game. Santorum, speaking the day after the US Supreme Court heard arguments in the case that led to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, described it as the result of “25 years of blocking and tackling by the pro-life movement.”
“That’s a big load on all of your shoulders, because now that grenade is in your hands, but how did it happen? Because people didn’t give up,” he said. “Every institution was against us. You were ridiculed and vilified. I know I was one of those warriors out there taking the arrows in the front and the back. But we kept fighting. Why? Because we knew it was important.”
Santorum argued for the moral necessity of a convention in soaring historical terms, invoking the founders’ vision of federalism.
“This is the opportunity the founders gave you, state legislators, they gave you the power to fix this country. With all due respect, how dare you not try? How dare you in the face of what’s going on in this country?” he said.
Santorum added: “We’ve got to get this done. Not 10 years from now. Now.”
Former US Sen. Rick Santorum, then a Republican presidential candidate, speaks during the Fox Business Network Republican presidential debate in North Charleston, South Carolina, on January 14, 2016.
AP Photo/Chuck Burton, File
In a separate closed-door workshop, Santorum, Meckler, and legal scholar Rob Natelson pitched their convention movement and fielded questions from state lawmakers, audio of which was also obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy and shared with Insider.
Santorum said a convention would rein in “the Deep State,” and assured the assembled lawmakers that the GOP’s interests would dominate a one-state-one-vote for the same reasons that rural, conservative areas have an outsize influence in the Electoral College and the Pennsylvania legislature.
“We have a hard time winning presidential elections, as you know, in Pennsylvania, yet we dominate the state legislature and Congress. Why? … All [of Democrats’] votes are concentrated in a very small group of people,” Santorum explained to the lawmakers.
“This is why, in a country that’s deeply divided, you can say, ‘How can we, how can we achieve what Rob [Natelson] said we can achieve?’ which is approaching a supermajority in the states,” Santorum said. “Why? Because their population is concentrated and ours isn’t. And we have the opportunity, as a result of that, to have a supermajority, even though … we may not even be in an absolute majority when it comes to the people who agree with us. But because of the way the concentration of votes has changed in this country, we can actually accomplish things.”