This is what I think Rick Santorum represents, primarily a hope to return to better times such as we had many years ago in America.

Rick wants us to return to the faith of our fathers, and the family structure we had way back when.

But in addition to that, he wants us to return to a type of politics I call "Henry Jackson Democrat".  Now, Senator Santorum is not a Democrat, but he has some of the policies which were represented by Senator Henry Jackson of Washington State, who was my senator when I was a child, and was famous and powerful.
In brief (of course there is much more detail one could give) Jackson stood for strong defense, fiscal accountability of government, and cooperation with trade unions.
In those days, it was not a "bad word" to say "union".  Unions had been shown sometimes to be corrupt, very corrupt, but the hope was that not all of them were,
and that they were a mechanism to get income distributed somewhat fairly; no one hoped for total equality of income, any more than Mr. Santorum does.  It was just a hope to give working men and their families a satisfactory standard of living, and often it worked.  

In Seattle where I lived, Boeing was the big manufacturer, and worthwhile unions developed at Boeing, including the Boeing Employees Credit Union and the Boeing Engineer's Union SPEEA, of which my husband was an officer.  My husband was also active in Democratic politics, and he, like most of us, believed in Senator Jackson's policy of strong defense, fiscal accountability in government, and a fair shake for the working man.  We all thought this was a moral state of affairs.

Right now, Senator Santorum, who is running for President of the United States, along with three other candidates, is being attacked for having been "soft on unions" in the past.  Also he is attacked for supporting Medicare D, which gave added drug coverage to seniors.  He is shown to have sponsored bills which helped people in various ways, but did support not improperly regulated welfare programs which encouraged greater poverty and government dependence.
All the help which he proposed is now considered by some to be the basis for attack ads against him as having been not sufficiently conservative.

It is probably true, indeed, that he was not always a straight and narrow conservative like another candidate, Ron Paul, who wants to virtually eliminate taxes and cut all entitlement programs as fast as possible.  Rick Santorum wants there to be "some government", but not too much, and not too intrusive on private lives.

He is also attacked both subtly and straightforwardly for his Christian beliefs, and most Doves already know this.  But his beliefs have become a foil for President Obama's attacks on various Christian groups' rights to not pay for birth control of their employees.  This right is said to be part of the First Amendment rights.  Various blogs across the internet and various programs on the MSM attack Mr. Santorum because he is said to have promised to wage war against birth control.  What he actually said is that he himself does not use birth control, as a Catholic, but he would not usurp the rights of others to do so.
He has made this clear, but still the fear of the opposition is that he will try to take away "women's rights".  Pretty sorry state of affairs if that is the main thrust of
what women are supposed to want as their rights.  

It shows how much we have changed since the l950's when Henry Jackson was my senator.  We just assumed an intact family was the best way to go, the best way
to raise children.  We assumed, even, that many women would stay at home to care for children, and their husbands would work for the family's living, and the fact that the men needed sufficient income to support families was one of the main reason for fighting for just wages.  It all changed radically since then--notice HOW radically.

Rick Santorum may be said to be a Pied Piper for going back to the good old days.  We know on Doves that there may never again be any good old days, but it is
admirable, in my opinion, to see a leader fighting for what was good back then.  It wasn't ALL good, by any means.  But it was better.