You can’t say Rick Santorum didn’t see it coming:

In his new book, “It Takes a Family,” Sen. Santorum, R-Pa., says that “all politicians know that when you engage in any traditional values issue . . . adjectives like intolerant, rigid, far-right, mean-spirited, extreme, hard-line and zealous will routinely be used to describe you.”

Hmm, how about: “whacked out,” “nut-case” and “weird”? These are just a few of the latest attack adjectives flying from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in Rick’s general direction. Pundits have added “sanctimonious,” “on drugs,” “hypocrite,” “idiot,” “stupid,” and even (a first for me in a family newspaper) “douche bag.”

The rigidly predictable response to Rick’s latest defense of the family among the village elders he critiques has been a stunning and vituperative series of attacks, in which (yes) some fair-minded folks quote and criticize what the good senator actually wrote, but more “summarize” it in ways that wildly distort his views. Bob Casey Jr., the Democrat who hopes to unseat Rick in the 2006 election cycle, falsely accused Sen. Santorum of calling working mothers “selfish and bad budgeters,” and said Santorum was “out of touch” with economic realities.

But this over-the-top attack by Democrats and their sympathizers might backfire.

Much of the fire in the family debate has centered on Rick Santorum’s call for parents to cut back on work, if possible, to spend more time with their kids. But as writer Danielle Crittenden told a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter: “(Rick Santorum) is not saying anything different from what most American women themselves would say or express. Do we think children are better off with a parent at home? Of course we do.”

Indeed, most working moms think working less sounds pretty good, according to a recent nationally representative survey of mothers by Greenberg, Quinlan, Rosner Research Inc. reported in the same paper. Only 10 percent of working mothers say they would prefer to work full time; 30 percent would prefer to be home full time, and 59 percent want part-time work.

Both working and stay-at-home moms also agree with Rick’s other point: Moms at home raising kids don’t get enough respect. Sixty-two percent of at-home mothers and 55 percent of working mothers agree that society values working mothers more than mothers who stay at home.

I don’t always agree with Rick, and even when I do, I don’t always agree with how he says a thing or two, or three. But one thing I do know: In these days when politicians’ pronouncements are mostly the focus-grouped bland hoping to (mis)lead the voting blind, Rick Santorum dares to try to say something that actually matters. (This is known in Washington as a “gaffe.”)

It took a guy like Rick Santorum to help make welfare reform a reality. In the national debate over partial-birth abortion, it took Rick Santorum to break through Democrats’ embarrassing and nonresponsive obfuscations to point out what partial-birth abortion really means.

At the same time, you’ll often find Rick Santorum teaming up with unlikely allies, such as New York’s second-most-famous liberal senator, Chuck Schumer, to promote innovative ideas like the new “kids accounts” that would provide every child born in America after Dec. 31, 2006, with a $500 contribution to a new tax-free savings account.

Teddy Roosevelt was speaking to a group of French village elders at the Sorbonne when he issued his most famous speech: “It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.”

Criticizing is easy. “The credit belongs,” continued Roosevelt, “to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs . . . but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause.”

Like him or hate him, that’s Rick Santorum.