Santorum blames the media for trying to “pigeon hole” him as the religious candidate. Monday on MSNBC when show hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski asked Santorum about past comments he’s made on contraception, Santorum got sassy and said, “This is you guys playing sort of gotcha politics.”

Rick’s wife Karen said later on CNN, “It makes me really sad that the media tries to do that to him. To make him look like something that he’s not.”

But as the New York Times notes today in a piece about his political consistency, Rick has always had more to say about family, faith and cultural values. Missing from his writings: the economy.

Over the last decade, Mr. Santorum has been a prolific writer of op-ed articles, letters to the editor and guest columns in some of the country’s largest and most influential newspapers. All the while he displayed many of the traits that define him as a presidential candidate today: a deep and unwavering Catholic faith, a suspicion of secularism and a conviction that the country was on a path toward cultural ruin.

Santorum wrote opinion pieces on evolution, proliferation of secularism in America and Mormonism back in 2008 when Mitt Romney first ran for president. Only in a vague sense did he write about the economy and it was more about the science of global warming and government regulation of pet stores than job creation.