Rick Santorum Was Prototypical Establishment Senator and Washington Insider

It's Rick Santorum's turn to face the media's attack gauntlet, and he's certainly got a deep trove a material for his attackers.

I defended Santorum on gay marriage earlier, but that story's picking up steam as progressives never waste an opportunity to attack conservatives for alleged "bigotry". See New York Times, "Spotlight Shines on Santorum, Rough Edges and All." Plus lots more at Memeorandum. And there's even more progressive attacks on Rick Santorum's alleged attacks on black welfare dependency, seen here at the MSNBC clip:

All of that's a given.

More interesting from the GOP side is this report at Los Angeles Times, which shows Santorum clearly not an exemplary tea party-style candidate, "Rick Santorum's political evolution sparks scrutiny":

 Rick Santorum first came to Congress from western Pennsylvania in 1990 after waging a grass-roots campaign against an opponent he labeled a Washington insider for buying a house in a fancy suburb of the capital.

But during four years in the House and 12 in the Senate, Santorum became an insider himself. He brought home earmarks that his competitors are now criticizing. He helped lead Republican outreach to K Street lobbyists. And despite his campaign promises, Santorum established his family's home in an affluent Washington suburb while charging his children's school tuition to Pennsylvania taxpayers.

The shift from conservative insurgent to a man considered a cunning Capitol player dogged Santorum in his 2006 Senate race, in which his Democratic challenger, Bob Casey, branded him beholden to Washington interests. Santorum lost his seat in a double-digit rout.

Since leaving the Senate, Santorum has quietly built a comfortable life, following a path that has become well-worn for former members of Congress. He doubled his net worth with lucrative contracts with Fox News and Washington lobbying and consulting firms.

Now his squeaker second-place finish behind GOP presidential front-runner Mitt Romney in the Iowa caucuses has brought renewed scrutiny to the former senator's record. Santorum's campaign did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Santorum started his political career with an upset, unseating seven-term Democrat Doug Walgren by a 2-point margin. Santorum relentlessly criticized Walgren for living in "the wealthiest area of Virginia," hundreds of miles away from the eastern suburbs of Pittsburgh that he represented. Walgren said in an interview this week that the residency issue was "the key" to the election.

"He made a lot of absolute promises that he would never live in Washington, that his residence has always been in Pittsburgh," Walgren said.

But four years later, when he was elected to the Senate, Santorum and his family settled into a home in Herndon, Va., and then moved to a larger house, purchased for $643,000 in affluent Leesburg.

"He found out that [keeping his family in Pittsburgh] was not something that he wanted to do," Walgren said. "He accused me of doing something that he said was wrong and then just went right ahead and did it himself."

Santorum has told Pennsylvania reporters that his pledge not to live in Washington applied to his service in the House. "The Senate is a very different place," he said, according to the York (Pa.) Daily Record.

On Capitol Hill, Santorum at first took an anti-establishment tack, joining other GOP freshmen to expose the fact that more than 350 representatives, Democrats and Republicans alike, had written thousands of overdrafts on the now-defunct House bank.

As his tenure went on, Santorum went from needling the establishment to becoming the establishment, ascending the ranks to be the third-highest Republican in the Senate. From that position, he worked on legislative successes, including passage of a massive welfare reform bill during the Clinton presidency.

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It's not the prettiest picture.