Santorum to pitch social conservative platform in New Hampshire

By Shira Schoenberg, Globe Correspondent

Rick Santorum will bring his socially conservative principles to New Hampshire this week.

Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator, will visit New Hampshire on Monday and Tuesday as part of his “Faith, Family and Freedom Tour.” But whether his tour will resonate in a state where the Republican Party has traditionally been more socially moderate remains to be seen.

Santorum will hold a town hall meeting Monday night at the Church of Christ in Rochester, N.H. He will spend Tuesday morning shaking hands at the polls during municipal elections, then hold a noon town hall meeting in Raymond followed by a meeting with supporters at his campaign headquarters in Bedford.

Santorum laid out the socially conservative principles of his “Faith, Family and Freedom Tour” at his first tour stop in Iowa on Friday. He calls for: banning federal funding of embryonic stem cell research or any family planning or medical group that performs abortions; repealing a mandate that health insurance plans cover contraceptives; defending the Defense of Marriage Act in court and forbidding military chaplains from performing same-sex marriages on military bases.

Santorum would call on Congress to abolish the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has drawn criticism for its liberal rulings; to reinstate the ban on military service by openly gay men and women; to allow prayer at school functions; and to pass a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman.

Santorum also supports a “personhood” amendment to the Constitution, which would state that life begins at fertilization and would result in banning abortion, banning certain kinds of birth control, and potentially making in vitro fertilization more difficult.

In past trips to New Hampshire, a fiscally conservative but socially moderate state, Santorum has tried to focus more on the economy than on social issues. When a reporter in late May focused an interview on his social and religious views, Santorum stood by his positions but tried to downplay their importance to his campaign. “I don’t believe it’s a fair representation of what I, my body of work as a United States senator, to have an article in The Boston Globe that spends 90 percent of its time talking about this particular area when I spend 90 percent of my time working on other things,” Santorum said then.

But Santorum has failed to gain traction in New Hampshire, remaining at around 1 percent in the polls. Now, he is using his tour to argue that the economy is linked to social policy.

“The economy is inextricably linked to the moral fabric of this country,” Santorum said in a statement on Friday. “And we can’t have a real solution-based conversation about fixing the economic problems in this country without faith and family being a large part of that conversation.”

Shira Schoenberg can be reached at sschoenberg@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @shiraschoenberg.