Rand Paul and Rick Santorum were perhaps the two Republican candidates most dedicated to ideas. Now that they’ve dropped out of the race, their erstwhile competitors — mostly running on personality, charisma, demagoguery, or having the right friends or enemies — would do well to take up some of Paul’s and Santorum’s arguments and ideas.

Santorum entered the race this year as the working man’s candidate. He argued that his strong second-place finish in 2012, and his two Senate wins in Pennsylvania came “not just because I stood for something. It’s because I stood for someone — the American worker.”