David Brooks says Rick Santorum is a misunderstood saint who loves the poor. No, really. He even quotes Bono to prove his point.

Brooks is either dangerously naive about Santorum’s larger agenda, or all too happy to catapult the propaganda.

More recently, he has pushed through a stream of legislation to help the underprivileged, often with Democratic partners. With Dick Durbin and Joe Biden, Santorum has sponsored a series of laws to fight global AIDS and offer third world debt relief. With Chuck Schumer and Harold Ford, he’s pushed to offer savings accounts to children from low-income families. With John Kerry, he’s proposed homeownership tax credits. With Chris Dodd, he backed legislation authorizing $860 million for autism research. With Joe Lieberman he pushed legislation to reward savings by low-income families.

In addition, he’s issued a torrent of proposals, many of which have become law: efforts to fight tuberculosis; to provide assistance to orphans and vulnerable children in developing countries; to provide housing for people with AIDS; to increase funding for Social Services Block Grants and organizations like Healthy Start and the Children’s Aid Society; to finance community health centers; to combat genocide in Sudan.

I could fill this column, if not this entire page, with a list of ideas, proposals and laws Santorum has poured out over the past dozen years. It’s hard to think of another politician who has been so active and so productive on these issues.

Does Brooks really not understand that senators often support and even push legislation they have no intention of passing? Is he really dumb enough to confuse someone’s name on a piece of legislation with actual work on its behalf - you know, as in, actual expenditure of political capital?

Now odds are he’s supported some good legislation; most senators have. (The funny thing is, Brooks describes exactly the type of legislation soon-to-be Sen. Bob Casey Jr. is likely to back.) But just off the top of my head, I remember how enthusiastically he’s gone to bat for WalMart.

A little background: Attytood, the Web log of the Philadelphia Daily News, last week followed up on a John Baer column in the print edition of the newspaper that chronicled how, during the Terri Schiavo ordeal, Santorum spent time in Florida praying with Terri’s family; he also canceled a town meeting in Tampa on President Bush’s plans for Social Security reform “out of respect” for them.

But he had plenty of time for some “other meetings” — as in, fund-raisers for his 2006 campaign.

The total take was a cool $250,000, reported Baer. But that wasn’t even the best part.

The best part is that Santorum jetted around the state in a corporate jet owned by Wal-Mart. And that, the Daily News reported, is but the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the senator’s relationship with the mega-retailer.

“According to campaign records,” the blog notes, “Wal-Mart’s political action committee, which has become a major backer of the GOP in the last few years, gave $10,000 to Santorum’s campaign in late November.

“Lobbyists who work for the firms hired in recent years by Wal-Mart to represent its sweeping political interests — including Patton Boggs, Cassidy and Associates and Ernst & Young — have given at least $21,793 more, most of that to a Santorum-controlled political action committee called America’s Foundation.”

And what, the Daily News asked, does Wal-Mart get for its largesse? Plenty: For in addition to shilling for the “culture of life,” Santorum has been a major supporter of changes in minimum wage and overtime rules that would greatly benefit Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest low-wage employer; Santorum has backed limits on new lawsuits, a boon in that Wal-Mart is one of the most oft-sued companies in the nation.

Don’t forget the estate tax, or “death tax,” as conservatives like to call it. Santorum’s against it; so, you might imagine, is the world’s wealthiest family.

Finally, Santorum has been a big supporter of the Charitable Giving, or CARE, Act; “One of the proposal’s obscure provisions would allow a foundation to receive a gift from an ‘interested’ corporation in excess of $1 billion, if the foundation agrees to divest itself of the gift within 10 years and adopt a 12 percent all-grants payout rate while holding the stock,” reports the Daily News.

The National Council for Responsible Philanthropy opposes this, saying that it breaks down the wall between foundations and corporations, and that it is being pushed “apparently at the urging of the Walton (Wal-Mart) family.”

“Santorum may be Pennsylvania’s junior senator,” concludes the Daily News, “but when it comes to representing the interests of Wal-Mart, he’s the top dog.”

Way to help the poor, Little Ricky. You know, the ones who have to apply for Medicaid while they work at WalMart?

Brooks is either a moron or a shill. I wonder which?
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