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The underestimation of Rick Santorum and how powerful a candidate and problem he could be for Barack Obama

By: RealQuiet (Diary)  |  February 12th, 2012 at 04:59 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

I have seen a strange spirit of fear and anxiety throughout this nomination fight.  Those fearing that whomever gets the nod, how the vaunted Obama machine will destroy our candidates.  Then there is the hand-wringing over potential head-to-head polling matchups of each of the candidates vs. Obama.  Worst of all, the nastiness and vitriol between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich has done much damage to to their public image and makes one wonder if either of these guys is really cut out to be president.  On one hand you have Mitt Romney whom but all has the nomination shown up after Florida only to remind conservatives that he (with the willing consent of the establishment) really intends to pull the GOP leftward if he is the president.   Then you have Gingrich who after some sterling debate performances in South Carolina, reveals his very thin skin when he is attacked like he had in Iowa and he did again in Florida.   If Gingrich reacts to being attacked like he has been from Romney, just imagine his caterwauling when he gets hit by Obama.  Lo and behold, the door of opportunity has been opened to Rick Santorum who has handled himself in a dignified way, even in the face of some very cruel attacks from the media regarding his stillborn child.  When confronted about his support for earmarks that my man Rick Perry hit him with, he simply said “I’m not perfect.”  Should we give this guy a chance and unite around him?

I have my reservations about Santorum and many here have cited his past positions on votes and positions that he has taken during his time in Congress.  Big government conservatism has proven to be costly to our nation.  Keep in mind that the Tea Party movement didn’t get started until the Democrats started their push to get Obamacare signed into law.  Before then, our nation was mostly asleep to the financial peril that had been wrought by our leaders in Washington for quite some time before that.  Rick Santorum was in office when this was going on.  So long as the economy was good, things would be okay.  Then we woke up from our slumber staring at a government and legislation that would plunge our country into a financial abyss.

The one thing that I do know about Santorum is that he is a good man who takes a stand for things he believes in whether you agree with him or not.  Also, there is something truly American about how his presidential campaign has been.  Shoestring budget, little organization, dogged perseverance, tireless and grinding campaigning on the ground, hardly a presence on the airwaves but never giving up and keeping at it.  Given that his win in Iowa and his recent tri-state sweep in Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado has turned some heads, people are paying attention to him.  And Mitt Romney is praying Newt Gingrich, the man whom his super PACs and campaign have been ruthlessly attacking him, stays in the race.

Santorum’s idea of going with a 0% corporate tax rate for manufacturing companies to jump start the Rust Belt is going to definitely perk some ears in Michigan and Ohio once voters there look at him which they are probably already doing.  But there is an awful omen for Mitt Romney starting to percolate.  The South is starting to look hard at Santorum too.  Santorum is up in Tennessee with the latest polling there.  Reason stands that if Santorum is up in Tennsessee, he probably is up in Ohio as well.  It will be interesting to see what polling is taking place in other Super Tuesday states in the South.  If Santorum wins Michigan (which PPP states that he has indeed pulled ahead) and pulls off a Super Tuesday sweep save Vermont and Massachusetts, he will be the nominee.  The South figured to be Gingrich territory but with Gingrich cratering everywhere in the polls, if it comes down between Romney and Santorum and Santorum takes the Midwest and the South, game over.

When I think about the challenge that Rick Santorum could pose to Barack Obama, I see a lot of advantages.  Beside all of Barack Obama’s presidential baggage that Santorum would no doubt remind voters of, Obama wouldn’t be able to go with the 1% tax the rich narrative that his campaign would love to hit Romney with, he would be hammered in regards to Obamacare and wouldn’t have Romneycare to save him, the recent debacle that Obama tried to pull with the HHS forcing churches to provide birth control as part of health coverage takes the social issue platform off the table, Obama’s weak foreign policy, I could go on and on.  Bottom line, the light of scrutiny would fall on Obama’s time in office and the shape our country economically is in.  Imperfect as Santorum is on a few things, he would be very difficult to attack in a general election.  Conservatives would no doubt be behind him, but his crossover appeal to blue collar union social conservative Democrats (the Reagan Democrats) could pose a very real problem for the Obama campaign.  There is a huge segment of this voting faction that doesn’t succumb to union strong arm thuggery. I speak as someone who has some friends and family in this faction.  The Obama campaign has to be worried about independents that he has been polling around 35% approval for a year now but if their union support is fractured, Obama is candidate for a landslide defeat.

Santorum-Rubio would be an awfully tough ticket.  So why are we afraid of Santorum getting the nod again?

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  • bobguzzardi

    Rick “Elmer Gantry” Santorum is a Pro Life Democrat who cannot win his erstwhile home state Pennsylvania and there are good reasons for that.

    Rick Santorum’s 21 Negatives http://thelibertyblog.org/tag/rick-santorum/

    • 4loveofus

      You hold this dismissive view in spite of the fact that Santorum lost his bid for reelection for, mind you, a third term in the US Senate, in a deep blue state, to the pro-life Democrat son of Pennsylvania’s most popular retired politician, after 2 years of possibly the worst overall Republican mid-term since Reconstruction, and having carried water for and been and dragged down by a flailing President and sex-scandals in his own party.

      You also choose to ignore the fact that Santorum has captured more states than any other candidate to date, even though he has had, by far, the least amount of money to work with of the 4 remaining candidates.

      This leads me to attribute your comment to one of 3 possibilities:

      1. You are concluding that even though Santorum is demonstrably more conservative than Romney (a self described Kennedy collaborator and RomneyCare creator, cap and trade and TARP supporter), he is not, as the late great William F. Buckley would describe, “the most conservative candidate who can win.”

      2. You are the political commentating equivalent of Rip Van Winkle – asleep during the 19 debates, oblivious to Romney’s ineffective message, “severe” conservative illiteracy and pathetic establishment dependent campaign.

      3. Your nostalgia for the Ford, Dole and McCain campaigns is too powerful to consider a candidate chosen from the grass-roots who will actually govern as Conservative, not just promise to in order to trick the base into giving him the nomination.

      We’re both on the same side. We want Obama gone.

      Santorum is the better candidate to face-off against Obama, beat him, and then , (and this is important), govern.

      • mikelindell2

        Santorum is a big spending, big government, nanny-statist and represents a time when Republicans spent like Democrats. His tax plan has government pick winners and losers and will lead to massive fraud. He will be annihilated in a general election. It would be Obama’s dream come true- economy off the table as he will work effectively to paint Santorum as the theocrat who wants to ban your condoms and divorces. Newt is best choice-most conservative record and plan.

        • mm2327

          During Rick Santorum’s terms of office in the house and senate, he was among the rare few who received an A grade as a fiscal conservative. It’s a lie that Santorum was a big government, ‘nanny statist’. The facts are, Santorum did vote on a few things, that he only did vote for, because there were extenuating circumstances, not for the big spending, but because urgent things were attached. Santorum is the one who wroted and pushed through welfare reform, that wasn’t Newt Gingrich. It was Rick Santorum who exposed fraud and corruption in congress. At the same time, he kept getting elected in a pretty blueish district. He got the GOP base, but also attracted those Reagan democrats.

          Rick Santorum has an incredible plan, the Made in America Plan, read the details on his site, it will restore economic independence to the US, and our sovereignty as well. He’ll cut the tax rates, and restore sanity to our nation once again.

          The big nanny statists are Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. Romney’s the worst, I lived in MA during his period as governor, he lies claiming he was a “conservative” but Romney raised taxes and “fees” as he called them. Romney left Massachusetts in serious debt and his Romneycare has not only put a burden on the taxpayers of the US (the entire nation’s been paying for Romneycare all these years) but it’s strained the costs of private healthinsurance in the state. Romney appointed Kevin “Fistgate” Jennings to an education board, and gave that commission a quarter million dollars to start the sexualization of children. Romney has lied his way through each campaign, he looted the taxpayers of Massachusetts to line his cronies pockets. In the private sector, Romney supported TARP and took billions in taxpayer bailouts.

          Gingrich is bad enough, but better than Romney, but still, Gingrich voted for NAFTA and GATT, Gingrich cozied up to the Clinton administration and supported Hillary Clinton’s individual mandate. He supported cap and trade, and so many other bad laws.

          • mikelindell2

            My friend, where do I start with your “facts?” First of all, Hillary Clinton never advocated for a mandate. The mandate was adopted by most conservative then to COUNTER Hillary’s proposed health care plan, I thought that was common knowledge. NAFTA? Since when are conservatives opposed to free trade? I’m glad Rick Santorum says his economic plan will restore America, but the facts are that he picks and chooses which industries he wants to give special benefits to. Zeroing out corporate taxes on manufacturing not only is government picking winners and losers, it will lead to massive fraud as the National Review put it. Every business will try to call themselves manufacturers of some sort. It will create a huge new stream of lobbyists, lobbyists like Rick Santorum. And Newt Gingrich got Welfare reform through, how is that not understood? He was speaker, he had to negotiate with Clinton. He had the foresight to pass the bill three times until he finally cornered Clinton to sign it. Are you not aware that Santorum was just a senator, not senate majority leader, and certainly not speaker? Just to let you know, he lost his last election by a record 18 points, even after running to the center trying to impress liberals. He has said that Christians are wrong for saying contraception use is okay, and that contraception is not okay, it’s wrong, and states have the right to ban it. Santorum is also in the past said that he is not a Reagan conservative, and he has been relentlessly pro-Big Labor and pro-earmark. If you want to learn more:
            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWQC62LSsWM&context=C32b08a4ADOEgsToPDskITcSv-qX7rydzTAeKoVo4s

          • mikelindell2

            He left office with an A, and was ranked #1 from them the year he became speaker. Santorum left office with a B from them. Also, the American Conservative Union, which is the true ranking for conservatives, gives Gingrich highest marks.

          • radicalrighty

            If so, you will get it in both elbows. We get it. You are for Newt. You dislike the rest of the field.

            Oh and you like Newt . . .

          • mikelindell2

            for caring about the future of the country.

          • Scope

            at least a dozen times to ask Santorum to get out of the race, as though EE has a hot line directly to Santo, or that he even wants to. I believe he even made that request after he was rising in polling and gaining state wins.

      • bobguzzardi

        I was involved in first Toomey campaign in 2004 and have had experience with Rick Santorum and his principled support for Democrat Arlen Specter.

        His support and campaigning went far beyond what could be expected as formal support for an incumbent. Santorum’s support for Arlen Specter undercut all his claims to principle.

        Rick Santorum’s performance in office was the reason the Rs had a bad year in 2006.

        Rick Santorum’s rhetoric, like Barack Obama’s, does not match the reality.

        Rick Santorum’s rise can be attributed to weakness of the other candidates.

        • mm2327

          You know that’s not true. Santorum and others have stated that Santorum endorsed Spector, because the party had made a deal with Spector that he’d be endorsed, if he committed to behaving himself and voting with the GOP, which he did. Which is why we have Roberts and Alito on the Supreme Court. There was no sure way of knowing Toomey would win, and the GOP had to be sure that conservatives were placed on the bench, and not the leftists that would have rushed even faster the leftist erosion of the US constitution. You need to look beyond your anger as a Toomey supporter or you’ll help Obama steal another term. You need to love your country, more than your bias.

          • WillWong

            Irrespective of whether Arlen remained in the senate or not. The Republican had more than a simple majority and the senate judiciary committee would still be stacked in favor of the GOP!

            What you cannot argue is that Arlen was the 60th vote for Obamacare!

    • http://alt2p.org Brookhaven

      Because he was polling below 30% in the polls. He would have gotten creamed. So, instead of running for reelection, he ran away.

      It’s fair to point out that Santorum lost a reelection bid for his senate seat, but only if you also point out that Romney was an even bigger reelection loser.

      • mm2327

        He had exposed himself as a political opportunist. He sought the governorship, as a stepping stone to a senate seat, but he was such a vile PoS, he repulsed the electorate. Romney thinks we’re stupid, he thought he could snow us. If he were to be the nominee, here is what would happen. Romney would fold like a cheap suit before Obama. Obama wants him as nominee, because Romney completely negates the gop complaints against Obama. Romney is architect of the basis of Obamacare, Romney supports TARP, Romney is a big tax and spender, Romney supports cap and trade, and climate change, Romney has no loyalty to the US, Romney believes in selling the US out from under the people, to foreign interests, for his personal profit.

        What a GOP that puts Romney forward as their choice achieves is the death of the Republican party, because Romney is Obama. There will be no 2016, it will be too late for the United States. We can’t survive another Obama term.

        Our only choice is a principled candidate, and that is Rick Santorum, he has no scandals, he wrote and passed welfare reform, he exposed corruption in congress. He’s a good and decent man. He can mop the floor with Obama, which is why Obama is terrified at the prospect of facing Santorum.

    • benko

      ..

    • John6078

      He has blown himself up this weekend. Romney is quiet today. No need to comment when your opponent is imploding by his own words.

  • jimmyneutron

    in the sense that he has convinced me that he really understands our problems and how deep and systematic they are and that he has any type of plan for combatting them.

    I think what happened for Rick, based upon what I saw last Tuesday and what I hear from other people is that he is getting a lot of support because he is such a nice guy, a Christian guy who is really, really pro life and he calls himself a conservative. Speaking as one who is a very prolife Christian, I am happy he believes that way. However, that is not nearly enough to calm my fears. Bush was a strong, pro life Christian and he was a disaster as a president and he led directly to what we have now..

    I like Newt in that he at least has two things I have not seen from Rick (or Mitt). Newt says many things that indicate he understands just how systematic our problems really are at this time. He also has very specific, line items detailing what he will do once in office to reverse what the statists have done over the last 8 years. Repealing, Ocare, Dodd-Frank, Sarbanes-Oxley, regulations by the score, reducing spending to at a minimum 2008 levels, etc. Those are all good things. He has also indicated he will attempt to implement a flat tax (granted as an alternative to the current tax) and he will repeal and/or reduce other onerous taxes such as captial gains, death, etc. He speaks of federalism – of beginning the long overdue process of sending power back to the states. These are all wonderful things to hear and I love to hear the DETAILS. No more generalities or feel good promises.

    This is one of the reasons I want Newt to stay in the race – the man TALKS specifics! Hopefully this forces the conversation to become more specific and even more conservative. Lets face it folks, we have not been given the ‘perfect’ conservative candidate this election cycle (perhaps a blessing in disguise as I discuss in a second). We need the remaining candidates to push each other further to the right, to admit that there are serious, fundamental problems in our country that require serious solutions. However, the solutions are not radical changes that the statists would implement, they are constitutional changes of which our founders would approve. I encourage all conservatives to challenge the candidates wherever they are, whenever you hear a promise or idea that is nothing more than a generality. Challenge them to be specific – how are you going to perform that promise, what are you going to do and when are you going to do that???

    Now, why do I consider this slate of candidates to be a blessing in disguise? Because this is OUR test. No matter who we elect I fear that they all will have a tendency to leave conservatism and wander into the land of statism. They have all shown, at one time or another, that they prefer the intoxicating brew of big government when they encounter a problem. We have to stay involved and stay aware of what is going on in our government after the election. We have to force the new president and congress to ‘Hold Fast’. We as the conservative base need to ensure that our elected representatives begin immediately to implement the conservatie policies, programs and ideas on which they were elected or we need to make their lives miserable. Even if it involves millions of us heading to DC in June of 2013 because ‘they’ still dont’ seem to have gotten the message or they seem to be returning to their preferred statist stupor, that is what we do.

    If we can not stay involved and aware, then perhaps we really don’t deserve self government afterall. Perhaps, we are proving Jefferson wrong in that perhaps the vast majority of us are born with saddles on our backs while there are those born booted and spurred, ready to ride us legitimately, by the grace of God.

    • David123

      http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/rick-santorum-and-welfare-reform-fact-checker-biography/2012/01/12/gIQAmmUTtP_blog.html

      He also supported the Bush tax cuts.

      Rick Santorum is strongly opposed to Obamacare, and he is much more credible than Romney when he criticizes it. Repealing Obamacare is a giant step in the fiscal conservative direction, and is most likely to occur with Rick Santorum as president.

    • ronlsb

      I only have one quick comment concerning your degradation of Bush. He nominated two of the best new Supreme Court judges we’ve gotten in a long, long, time. In case you didn’t realize it, those guys have more long term impact on where this nation is going in the future than a 1,000 pieces of legislation/executive decisions made by any politician. Give him some credit for that at least before you throw out your carpetbombing attacks on Bush.

      • http://theheartlander.wordpress.com/ heartlander

        Totally agree with you, ronlsb! Way too many people seem to have forgotten: Presidents are for 4 years; Supreme Court justices are for LIFE! The Islamist-appeasing, radically pro-abortion Kagan and the racialist, pro-abortion Sotomayor are going to be on the Court for, foreseeably, 30 to 40 more years! Meanwhile, Scalia and Thomas may be retiring within the next decade. We need more like Alito and Roberts, and Santorum is likley to appoint such.

        By the way, it also should be pointed out that it was only because Rick Santorum was willing to fall on his sword for the long-term good of the country that we have Justice Alito in the first place. The reason Santorum supported Specter rather than Toomey in the 2006 Senate primary — a choice that has gotten Rick so much grief from people with short memories — is that Specter, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, which had been blocking Bush’s nominations, promised that if he were re-elected, he would start letting Bush’s nominees out of committee. People can criticize Rick all they want, but had he not done this, Alito never would have made it out of committee, much less on to the Court itself.

        http://archive.lisagraas.com/2011/10/12/the-truth-regarding-santorums-endorsement-of-arlen-specter/

        • Locke

          nt

          • http://thetroglodyte.com thetrog

            nt

          • JSobieski

            and not many R’s in the Senate was as squishy as the squish from Pennsylvania who ended up returning to his democrat roots

  • http://www.nighttwister.com NightTwister

    I don’t really see how Santorum is much different from Obama. Sure, he’d pick different winners and losers, but his plans do the same thing. We know about his big spending past, so he’ll be no help to the deficits. And as to social issues, he’d just be forcing a different social agenda (while spending our tax money).

    What we need is someone that will undo the damage Obama has done on fiscal and social issues without doing the same thing a different way. Santorum isn’t that candidate.

    • Xasteius

      Santorum believes on God.

      The only person (currently) in this race that I trust to reduce the size of government is Gingrich.

      • lastgopinillinois

        Thats why I have to stand with Xasteius and Jimmy Neutron.

        I want to shrink the size of govt, decrease spending and have major tax reform.

        Santorum wont do any of these things.

        While I would have preferred the Perry tax plan, at least Newt is offering to fight for a reform that would offer a Perry-like tax plan optionally, And Gingrich has plans to fix a lot of other things I am in support of.

        If a miracle occurs, and we could get enough Tea Party movement members added to congress along with a conservative in the WH, we could effectively make the establishment RINO’s irrellevant, and get some REAL reforms implemented. If Santorum gets in, you can forget all that.

        Yet , todays Sunday morning TV pundits, are still all talking about ELECTABILITY. I dont give a hoot who says who is electable. Let WE the People decide who is electable at the ballot box based on the candidates platforms.

    • trickamsterdam

      The dude doesn’t see how Obama is much different than Obama, RedState! Other than of course he’d “pick different winners and losers” (i.e., he’s completely different).

      Well, RedState…raise your hands if you care:

      http://www.gifsforum.com/images/image/nobody%20cares/grand/raise_your_hand_if_you_care.jpg

      But then again there’s also this:

      “What we need is someone that will undo the damage Obama has done on fiscal and social issues without doing the same thing a different way. Santorum isn?t that candidate.” – NightTwister

      Right, and MItt “I honestly still don’t get why mandates are bad on the State level, they’re constitutional” Romney is?

      But, then again, you’re also an implacable foe of a brokered convention…and I believe one of the reasons you gave once was “we’d end up w/ Mitt Romney”. No we wouldn’t, but it’s interesting you’d argue against it in that ridiculous way, when you clearly have no problem w/ Romney.

      You are an unoriginal thinker, at best…at worst you’re something far worse.

      Nor do you have any real plan, since you are supporting a candidate for his electability, who is unelectable (if Romney has a worse approval rating w/ Republicans than Obama does w/ the US population in general, how could he possibly win?).

      Also you said:

      “He?s lied about the positions of other candidates, which calls his character into question.” – NightTwister

      You thought you were attacking Santorum there. Actually, you just put the final screw in Romney’s coffin.

      Thanks much. ;)

      • http://www.nighttwister.com NightTwister

        If you think I have no problem with Romney, I want what you’re smoking.

        The rest of your comment is incoherent rambling.

        • trickamsterdam

          “No problem” equals most of us realize that it’s probably (but not definitely) coming down to Santorum v Romney and you have no problem saying this…

          “I’ll take Romney over Santorum.”.

          http://www.redstate.com/erick/2012/02/10/the-frontrunner/#comment-170675

          “I don’t really see how Santorum is much different than Obama” is a direct quote too, and not taken out of context.

          You: “The rest of your comment in incoherent rambling”.

          Me: If your philosophy allows you to actually believe the three things I quoted (all at the same time) you are the one that’s incoherent. And I don’t just mean making message board comments.

          I mean you don’t make any sense.

          PS – Say what you want in response…unless it’s totally insane, I’ll let this drop so it doesn’t become something ridiculous.

          • http://www.nighttwister.com NightTwister

            That’s a fact.

            So if someone chooses a candidate different than you it makes no sense?

            The comparison between Obama and Santorum is about picking winners and using government to further their social agenda. Obviously they would do it differently, but they would both do it and it’s wrong to do so.

            You need to learn to read things in context and not put your own meanings to them.

          • thosjefferson

            I love the way Rick Sanctimonium ran as a liberal to beat Casey:

            http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/when-rick-santorum-touted-his-liberal-record?tw_p=twt

            He was so phony he lost by 16 points, but at least he gave it a try. Then he followed it up with a career as a DC insider, making millions as a Newt Jr. selling influence. He supported Romney 4 years ago, but got in this campaign to bolster his credibility (and salary) as a Fox commentator and to make Newt-like money in DC, then was surprised with the collapse of Perry, Bachmann and Cain.

            The best thing I can say about him is he’s far better than EmperorNewt

        • Jochanan

          It’s really this simple. Americans are used to having two choices at elections. You may not always win giving them the choice, but you always lose if you offer them two non-conservatives.

          People knew the difference between Bush and Gore and Bush and Kerry. And they definitely knew the difference between Carter and Reagan. I don’t think people really knew what Bob Dole was about other than he was from Kansas.

          But why should anyone vote for Romney, when we have a guy in there who will do mostly the same things already? You may disagree with that statement, but it will be just behind the front of many independents’ minds when they vote.

          And even if I dismissed that, the whole “Mitt is electable” theory has been proved incorrect by his failure to win elections.

          • acat

            the fiscal records of Romney and Santorum.

            Tell me either one is “conservative”.

            It does not work.

            Mew

    • 4loveofus

      …and even if this were the only difference, which it isn’t, he’d be far better than an Obama 2nd term:

      HIS COURT APPOINTMENTS.

      3 SCOTUS justices will be 80 years old by 2016, 2 of which are Reagan appointees and a third is very close to the same age. That means 3 of the 4 oldest justices are empathetic to the Originalist viewpoint concerning the Constitution.

      Newt is toast, so do you trust Romney to stand strong on insisting Originalist nominees, or do you think he’ll let the idiot ex-governor and Bush 41 Chief of Staff John Sununu select another Souter? Sununu is pushing Romney hard, and he’s going to want some type of payback.

      That’s just one issue of many where Santorum is clearly superior to Romney, but it’s a pretty important one, wouldn’t you say?

    • http://www.plumbbobblog.com Plumb_Bob

      In the first place, even if Santorum kept every Obama policy in place (which is not a possibility,) he would have an honest Attorney General and honest distribution of government expenditures. That, alone, is worth voting for.

      In the second place, Santorum’s ACU in the Senate was 84. Obama’s was 8. They are not the same.

      You may be disappointed with some of Santorum’s votes, but there is no reason to suppose that he would continue the Obama administration’s war against fossil fuels. Santorum would lift the EPA regs that are hamstringing coal, and he would lift the offshore drilling ban. He would sign the Keystone XL pipeline deal. He would stop the ridiculous “green energy” waste.

      Santorum would recognize our allies, and would institute sound policies resisting Islamic terrorism.

      Santorum would repeal ObamaCare.

      Stop me when you’ve heard enough. I could go on with clear differences all day.

      Even Romney is not the same as Obama, but Santorum is far to the right of Romney.

    • http://travismonitor.blogspot.com Freedoms Truth

      “I don?t really see how Santorum is much different from Obama. ”

      Other than Bush tax cuts, welfare reform vs expand entitlements, Obamacare vs health savings accounts for healthcare, prolife vs proinfanticide, lower taxes on corporations vs higher, cut/cap spending vs $25 trillion in debt in 10 years, leftwing vs conservative SCOTUS appointees, killing DOMA vs standing up for federal law, standing up to Iran vs fiddling about it, balance the budget vs $1 trillion deficits, drilll here and now vs anti-drilling moroatoriums and killing pipelines, stopping overzealous EPA and other regs vs more and more of CO2 and other energy-sector killing regs, stopping solyndra and boondoggles vs spending more and more…

      It’s lame ignorant and wrong to say Santorum wont be a dramatic change on welfare policy, energy policy, lowering spending and taxes vs Obama, healthcare, and foreign/military policy.

      oh yes, they do agree on one thing – the color of the White House can stay White.

      Let’s be clear. Every Republican would be a dramatic change from the ultra-far-left Obama who has spent more than any president in our history and pursues far left agenda items … BUT … Santorum is more conservative in all areas than Romney and Newt, so the differences are most stark there.

    • Locke

      Or badmouth their iniatives?

  • znjs

    Expect a long line of gay solders to come out to attack him at every event he shows up at. Then expect a lot of attacks on his views on contraception (and they won’t be talking about controversial issues like the morning after pill, they’ll be talking condoms and other generally accepted forms). His support for SOPA will unite a lot of people against him. And then they’ll connect him to Bush and many of Bush’s worst decisions.

    I think Santorum would spell disaster for this election, and doom for the GOP in the future – a lot of his views on gays would keep young people from ever even considering voting Republican for a very long time.

    • rpopp23

      And how many of them would ever consider voting for a Republican anyway?

      • demsaresatanic

        if they want homosexual marriages and so on they are already Dems, you can’t lose what you never had.

        • znjs

          46% of Republican-leaning independents are supportive of same-sex marriage
          http://www.people-press.org/2011/03/03/section-3-attitudes-toward-social-issues/

          According to Gallup 69% of Moderate/Liberal Republicans supported the repeal of DADT, as well as 39 of Conservative Republicans
          http://www.gallup.com/poll/145130/support-repealing-dont-ask-dont-tell.aspx

          If you think we can just throw those votes away and win, well then we disagree.

          • naharu89x7

            Really?

            So what if Liberals who believe in “Gay Rights” don’t like Santorum and his (correct) views on Gay Marriage and Homosexuality, let them vote for Obama.

            I am sorry but people such as Santorum, as well as myself and millions of other Americans are values voters. We oppose immorality and we vote based on our principles.

            The GOP should be the Conservative Party. That includes Socially Conservative. If that upsets RINOs, including I dare say some of the commentators on this very site, than so be it, go vote for Democrats who believe in filth such as that. If you don’t like Santorum because he is conservative where it matters, than I dare say you don’t belong voting GOP.

          • acat

            it’s questioning how you propose to get Santorum nominated, let alone elected. Politics is about what’s possible, not about what you wish were true, and the fact is Santorum’s values-issue record is quite out of step with the mainstream in this country.

            You don’t have to like it, but you do have to tell me what you’re going to do about it. Assuming, of course, you want your opinion taken seriously, that is.

            Here, let me offer you some help. Head over to Unlikely Voter, click the button to reset the map to 2008, then see which States you think Santorum’s strong values platform can win.

            Seriously.

            See if you can find a believable combination of States that will give Rick Santorum the presidency based on his lousy record on unions, his abominable fiscal record, and his strident values record.

            I’ll wait.

            Mew

          • naharu89x7

            That is the truth of the matter. Even the most liberal poll, and I don’t believe most polls to be credible, count half of likely voters, or even half of citizens as socially conservative.

            Bush ran in 2000 and 2004 on a Socially conservative platform, and it was largely values voters that got Bush reelected.

            So I don’t know how you can claim Santorum’s views are out of the mainstream when half(and likely more than half) of Americans agree with him.

          • acat

            and tell me they’re the same.

            Show me where Santorum’s led the #2 State in the union. Show me how he’s done successful Hispanic outreach. Show me his fiscal cred – not what he says, show me strong fiscal *votes*.

            You can’t .. because Santorum is all hat and no cattle.

            Go ahead and show me just how you think Santorum, with no executive experience and a history of voting for tax increases, flips Florida, Virginia, Indiana, Ohio, and Colorado. I’ll grant you he’s probably able to flip North Carolina.

            Urban and – more importantly – suburban voters are not looking for a religious-right leader, they want someone who can get us back to work… and Santorum cannot believably claim that title.

            Mew

          • Jochanan

            Even if we can’t show you Santorum’s “cattle” what we can show you is Romney saying that RomneyCare should be federalized, that he was a member of the Democrat party, and that he can’t seem to win many elections.

          • acat

            and Gingrich has over double the delegates Santorum has.

            Mew

          • Jochanan

            Last I checked, Gingrich was dropping like a stone, both nationally and in state polls.

            Don’t get me wrong–I prefer Newt to Santorum. But I prefer both to RomneyCare.

          • acat

            Santorum is going up at Gingrich’s expense in part because, outside of PA, nobody’d really looked at Santorum’s record.

            I don’t see Santorum’s pro-union pro-nanny-state big-government record as being appealing.

            Mew

          • http://travismonitor.blogspot.com Freedoms Truth

            he wrote welfare reform, supported lower spending, balanced budget, opposed TARP, supported the cut/cap/balance.
            His record with ACU was solid 85% lifetime, and the dings he got were for going along with the Bush policies that 80% of Congressional Republicans went along with.

            social liberals dont like Santorum being so out front in his pro-life and pro-traditional marriage positions, that’s why he gets attacked.
            If he was LESS conservative, he’d be praised by those same people as an awesome ‘fiscal conservative’.
            Santorum out-fiscal conservatives many of the so-called ‘fiscal conservatives’.

          • acat

            Santorum has a very pro-union record.

            Santorum did NOT write welfare reform, it started in the House. Santorum worked in the Senate to pass it.

            Santorum “opposed TARP” from the comfort of his living room, as a private citizen, and not very effectively… his major criticism at the time appears to have been that it didn’t give away enough government money. (Leon Wolf has had a thing or two to say on the topic, you might want to go read his diaries…)

            ACU records are meaningless, show me the Santorum/… bill that cuts government spending. You can’t .. because he never *voted* against spending.

            As for values issues, the problem isn’t that Santorum holds strongly to them, the problem is that they don’t turn *general* elections.

            Voters who care about abortion and traditional marriage got behind McCain, they got behind Bush 2.0, they got behind Dole and Bush 1.0 … not because they agreed 100%, but because they’re smart enough to understand that the Dem is worse.

            Your assertion – and it’s an assertion with zero facts in evidence – that somehow Santorum can turn this on its’ head is problematic.

            Mew

          • http://www.nighttwister.com NightTwister

            Believe me, if only social conservatives were left in the Republican Party, you’d win Wyoming and Oklahoma every 4 years and nothing else.

          • naharu89x7

            Depending on the skill of the nominee.

            Are you forgetting about the bible belt? The midwest? Texas? All the citizens in other states who believe conservatively?

            Why do you think many Americans don’t vote? It is because they see both parties are extensions of the same thing. You have Progressives in both parties. With the democrats, it has completely taken over, with the Republicans, a big part of the party is controlled by similar people, aka the “establishment”.

            Your attitude that people with no principle, who call themselves Republicans but don’t believe in what it stands for is very tragic and sad.

            I think you need to look in the mirror and ask yourself..where do you stand? Because something which does not stand for anything, stands on nothing, and will fall.

          • acat

            Over at Unlikely Voter.

            Click the “Reset to empty” button, then click on every State you call the “bible belt”.

            In short, your perception is way out of line with reality.

            Mew

          • http://www.nighttwister.com NightTwister

            You single-issue values voters turned me off a long time ago. You discard the good in favor of the perfect that never comes.

            Sure, I’m a social conservative, but I’m also a fiscal conservative, and a military conservative. I don’t turn on a single issue.

            As for nominee skills, we don’t have a candidate left with those.

            As for Americans that don’t vote? They get the government they deserve.

            The Establishment™? Those are the people that vote.

            Politics requires a coalition of people with different principles. Just because they don’t have yours doesn’t mean they don’t have any. And yeah, I know there are some that have none at all, but not as many as you think.

            If God could use Nebuchadnezzar or Pharaoh, he could use Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich.

          • http://www.plumbbobblog.com Plumb_Bob

            … He could use Obama.

            But that doesn’t mean I would vote for him.

          • WillWong

            Newt come closest to Nebuchednezzer, both in terms of achievements and grandiosity. Let’s vote for Newt! No kidding!

          • http://www.nighttwister.com NightTwister

            And the way it’s looking, He’ll use him for another four years.

          • http://travismonitor.blogspot.com Freedoms Truth

            “Sure, I?m a social conservative, but I?m also a fiscal conservative, and a military conservative. I don?t turn on a single issue.”

            So is Santorum.
            Seriously, stop getting your knickers in a twist over his all-of-the-above conservatism, and help him get elected.

          • http://www.nighttwister.com NightTwister

            I wasn’t talking about Santorum, I was talking about the person making the comment.

            You candibots really need to buy a clue. There’s nothing fiscally conservative about Santorum other than his new found rhetoric. His voting record says otherwise. I’ll give you milcon, but there is that troublesome flip-flopping on the abortion that doesn’t really distinguish him from Mitt Romney.

            You gotta win the nomination before you can get to the election part. I’m not supporting Dan Santorum, so no, I won’t be helping him get nominated.

          • JSobieski

            but I don’t see much.

            Lets just be honest with ourselves—the critical issues of 2012 are not where Santorum focused his energies in his political career.

          • http://travismonitor.blogspot.com Freedoms Truth

            He’s got the strongest stand on spending save for ‘lets cut $1 trillion’ Ron Paul – funny thing, I havent seen Ron Paul actually propose that in a bill.

          • JSobieski

            Cut, cap, and balance doesn’t actually involve a cut.

            Santorum on CCB is like Romney on Ryan Medicare Reform—a fig leaf that is not actively sold by the candidat, but rather is used to destract from the fact that the candidate isn’t really focused on the #1 issue of the day.

            Heck, Huckabee actually tried to sell the FAIR tax in 2008 even if it too resulted from a fig leaf strategery.

          • Bill S

            because Independents think there’s GLOBAL WARMING!

            http://www.people-press.org/2011/12/01/modest-rise-in-number-saying-there-is-solid-evidence-of-global-warming/?src=prc-headline

            Where do you propose we stop catering to the whims of non-conservative thought? Or do your grave concerns about independents just stop at social issues?

          • acat

            They both supported “green” variants…

            Mew

          • Bill S

            They already had the (meaningless) MO primary, and I’m not going to the caucuses. Frankly, I think they all suck. I can tell you that my least favorite of the three is Romney, but I do concede that he probably has the highest probability of beating Kitten.

          • demsaresatanic

            look up “Bradley effect” and think again.

          • http://travismonitor.blogspot.com Freedoms Truth

            Hey, while were at it, lets cave on immigration to get hispanics votes.
            Lets cave on handouts to get the dependent vote.
            Lets cave on taxes on the 1% so the Dems dont call us ‘for the rich’… oh, whats left? oh yeah, cave on abortion, give money to planned parenthood too. Heck, just do every cotton-pickin’ bad thing the Democrats want. then they wont call us names!

            Let’s be clear, on the social issues, Santorum is the strongest:
            - Gingrich is going be pegged as a family values hypocrite. It’s why he cant carry the issue
            - Romney? A flipflopper – the left knows he can be squeezed on this, to line up and not stop the left like in Mass.
            - Santorum? He will be pegged all evil and nasty names and the divisive social issues will be brought up. But the left Always does that to folks they are most afraid of.

            SO WHAT.

            We as conservatives hold to principles not because they have majority poll support, but because they are RIGHT. And it is right to defend traditional marriage (and also popular as 40+ state referendum results attest).

            If you think we should throw away our base, diss them and disregard their support to chase after a few anti-conservative indie voters … well, the McCain campaign is still looking for volunteers. lol.

    • http://www.nighttwister.com NightTwister

      Or inability. Here’s why. Nobody likes a whiner.

    • 4loveofus

      So you would just capitulate and accept the Log Cabin Republican agenda into the 2012 Republican Platform so you can pilfer a handful of votes from Obama while giving away 5 times as many Catholics and Evangelicals, especially in light of Obama’s latest attack on the 1st Amendment?

      Sounds like a losing strategy to me.

      • naharu89x7

        Any elements of the Republican voters who are liberal or even moderate represent a minority in the Republican Party. The Evangelicals and other values voters are the base of the party.

        Mr. znjs cites some choice examples of polls that show 46% of Republican-leaning independents support Gay Marriage. Even if such a poll is to be believed, and I personally don’t trust such polls, 46% is a minority. He also claims liberal republicans support gay rights, well duh. Such groups are part of the problem with the party. You have progressives in both parties, the last thing we need is to bow to the wishes of progressives in either party.

        People can cite all the polls they want, but time after time it is found that the majority of the population of this country comes against gay marriage and other liberal causes time and time again.

        I’m voting for values, if Santorum is the nominee, let him undo the social engineering of Obama with equal and opposite ideas and decisions. This country is doomed unless such a thing is done.

        • acat

          And the vaunted Values Voters are so disorganized they backed five candidates in the Ames straw poll – while the establishment backed Romney.

          And the Moral Majority backed a half dozen candidates in Iowa and South Carolina – while the establishment backed Romney.

          Good grief.

          Mew

          • naharu89x7

            In the primaries. In fact, if you added all the non-romney voters together they come out 3 to 1 against Mitt Romney. It is clear a majority do not want Mitt Romney.

            It is also clear to me that “The establishment” has benefited by having more than one conservative in the race, thus dividing the vote. But that will soon change, if it hasn’t already.

            What I don’t understand is how someone who claims to be a conservative choose the status quote over principal? Do you honestly believe Romney, who walks to the same beat as Dole and Mccain before him, will be any more successful than they were?

            The truth is that only someone who is different from Obama, a Conservative, will be able to defeat him. Choosing Romney is the same as giving Obama another term, whether or not he wins or loses. Where it matters they are the same.

          • acat

            At this point, I’m hoping for either a Gingrich comeback or a brokered convention.

            The alternatives are just that bad.

            Again, go look at the map and tell me how Santorum can win. You’ve been posting wishful thinking so far, I want to know how you specifically believe he can reach pocketbook voters in suburbia.

            Mew

          • naharu89x7

            I’m just distressed by some of the negative comments some have made. I apologize if I came on strong to you.

            Talking about Newt, I think it is really bewildering to me that people are talking of jumping ship so soon. Newt has been the only Conservative in the race with the comeback “Lazarus effect”. He has been down three times now and got back up again.

            Not only that but Newt has the most ideas for fixing things, and he believes in the space program, which is something important to me.

            I have family that was solidly Newt up until afew weeks ago, now they have jumped ship(prematurely I believe) to Santorum. I almost feel like this is American Idol or something.

          • WillWong

            We have our work cut out for us. We need to share Newt’s best messages, videos, etc on FaceBook, Twitter, and our email accounts to all our friends, coworkers, families, etc. We also need to help raise funds for him. Among all my friends, most of them are for Newt and I am from Southern California…so there is Hope! Calling on all Newt supporters to buckle down. Calling on all undecideds to ponder for a second the size and depth of this hole we are currently in and what kind of effort will be needed to get us out of the hole. Think about Newt’s, Santorum’s, and Romney’s career achievements and ask yourself that if you are to find a person who can do the job of getting us out of that hole, who would it be? I will bet that if you are 100% objective, you will pick Newt!

            This is not about tearing others down to build Newt up! Their record is all there! Do not for a second doubt that Newt was one of the strongest supporter of Reagan! Do not for a second question his conservative record in the House! Let their individual records speak for themselves!

          • naharu89x7

            He has raised his campaign from the ashes twice now, and I’m sure he can pull another Lazarus before things are over.

            I think all Newt needs to do is find a way of fixing his one weakness, his susceptibility to negative ads.

          • jdw4america

            We need someone who can stand up to “his benevolent graciousness,” Barack the First AND his mighty minions, the MSM. We need a fighter because it’s a war, and we don’t have the luxury of losing this battle. We need the guy who’s going to get in the trenches and give no quarter. We need the guy who’s going to get hit hard over and over again and still keep fighting. I don’t see either RS or MR doing any of that. They seem so willing to keep things a “gentleman’s agreement” with the Ds if not with each other.

            Barring a miraculous entry by a Marco Rubio conservative, we need Newt. I don’t want to need him – I don’t even like him. But I don’t see how we win if we don’t clearly, firmly and unequivocally stand as conservatives. That’s not Mittens, period. It’s not Santorum on shrinking government or fiscal sanity. Newt’s a blowhard, and an egotist, no question, but his record trumps theirs.

            We don’t want to say to our children and our grandchildren:

            “Once upon a time, there was a great nation where we live now. Generations of people from all over the world used to come here. They risked their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to get here. Some never made it. Some who did, never saw their families again. They came because they believed that here was where they would be free. Free. You can’t imagine now what that means, but trust me, it was a gift from God. It feels almost like a dream now. Ah well, nothing lasts forever.”

          • JSobieski

            I just hope he can be more disciplined with his next run.

        • demsaresatanic

          Repub voters aren’t half as squishy on social issues as those bogus polls. As I pointed out above, the actual votes don’t follow those phoney polls, they are simply propaganda polls.

    • http://www.plumbbobblog.com Plumb_Bob

      The anti-religious bigots are going to go berserk against Santorum, true enough. But they’re bigots, and they’ll embarrass the Democratic party.

      Which Republican candidate has a less socially conservative position on gays? Gingrich? Don’t be ridiculous. Romney, the Mormon? I think not.

      So what you’re saying is, the Republicans are going to lose, lose, lose because of their stance on gay marriage.

      Bunk.

  • J. Leg

    1) His views on libertarians: Rick Santorum has said he hates the “radical individualism” of libertarianism and will do anything to keep it out of the conservative movement. Ron Paul voters and some tea party folks are going to be hard pressed to hear that. They’ll probably support likely libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, a popular two term former New Mexico governor over a one term senator who lost his re-election bid by 18 points. Libertarians have to become part of our coalition or we start losing elections.

    2) His “big government conservatism”. It’s not just his past views, Santorum thinks the progressive income tax system is “just fine” and said he is “proud” of his earmarks. No bueno. I also haven’t heard any compelling reforms from him regarding Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. People like him because of his social views…

    3) His social views are extreme and way out of the mainstream. People thought Stephanopolus was nuts for asking about contraception, but if you look at what Santorum said as late as last year, you will see why. He believes states should be able to ban contraception and that he thinks contraception is bad because it leads to people doing “immoral” things sexually. See this is where I think Santorum takes it too far: unless someone is being harmed, it’s none of the government’s business what I do in the privacy of my own bedroom. Santorum’s rhetoric on gays is also way over the top. Comparing gays to pedophiles and people who have sex with animals is WAY out of line, and it will turn off a lot of people. But it’s not just what Santorum says, but how he says it. As social conservatives, it’s good to have an ounce of humility or two when talking about these issues because they’re difficult issues for people. Santorum drips with sanctimony, he might as well be saying “how the hell do you not believe what I believe, are you stupid?” that will turn off a lot of voters.

    President Obama will hit Santorum hard for all of the above. He’ll ask voters why they should trust him if the people of PA obviously did not, he’ll run the 2006 campaign against Santorum all over again, telling people how we wouldn’t have gotten into this mess if it wasn’t for Bush and people like Santorum (even though Obama would be a HUGE hypocrite for that seeing how his spending is even more out of control. He would also hit Santorum hard for his extreme social views, calling him way out of the mainstream.

    Santorum will lose.

    • westcoastpatriette

      with all three areas of concern about Santorum and find his sanctimonious condescension troubling. I am a staunch social conservative but the way he expresses himself comes off like he is so convinced of his certitude on these matters that he would become tyrannical while trying to impose them on the country.

      Ditto on how he talks about libertarians. I actually heard him say that their interpretation of the Constitution is wrong and intends to “put a stop” to their influence in the Tea Party. He is so self-righteous that it really turns me off. Self-righteousness is an ugly form of pride that blinds one to their own weaknesses. I am afraid what he would do if place in a position of power and I do not like anyone who acts so arrogantly about anything. This is the number one reason he repels me as a candidate.

      • naharu89x7

        Santorum takes a moral stand against Libertarianism, and rightly so, as it is a morally bankrupt philosophy. The last thing this country needs is people like Ron Paul gaining more political influence. People like Ron Paul and Obama are two sides of the same coin, just different extremes.

        Only in America today is someone who takes a moral stand branded “self-righteous” or “intolerant”. God help this country, because it seriously needs it.

        People here should stand behind Santorum and his views, not be condemning or distancing themselves from them. I’d expect such comments if this was called “Bluestate”, not on a conservative site such as this.

        • westcoastpatriette

          And why are you bringing up Ron Paul in a discussion about Santorum’s self-righteous manner?

          You are conflating issues to discount the legitimate criticisms of Santorum. He may be “right” in his views but how he conveys those views and his ideas for how to address them as president are what is being discussed here. And I think there is room to agree that no one person has the answers for how to move forward to restore conservative principles to government. And that includes recognizing that libertarianism has some value and not all of the people in the Tea Party movement who like some aspects of libertarianism are Ron Paul nuts or supporters. And simply put, I do not want Santorum dictating to me that he thinks he has all the answers and anyone who may disagree with him is wrong. And that is how he comes off.

          • naharu89x7

            Obama has not just destroyed the economy, but has done great damage to the moral fabric of this country as well. Nearly everything Obama touches he corrupts or destroys.

            None of the GOP canaudates are perfect, your right Westcoast, but I think the best choice would be someone who could point by point undue the damage, fiscal or otherwise, that Obama has done.

            I consider Newt that person, based on what he has said in the campaign, but Santorum could be that man as well.

            That being said, I have noticed that anyone with conviction, anyone who stands on principle, is looked at as arrogant or self-righteous.

            I think people are looking at things from the left’s playbook if that is the way people see someone like Santorum. Conservativism can’t overcome Liberalism if we allow the left to define our views.

      • http://www.plumbbobblog.com Plumb_Bob

        “Sanctimonious condescension.”

        That’s bigot-speak for “a religious conviction with which I disagree.”

        Somehow opinions that don’t involve religious belief are never “sanctimonious.” Nobody’s being “sanctimonious,” for instance, when informing us that pedophiles never change (which is false) or that homosexuals are born that way (which is false).

        What a Santorum candidacy will do is let us know who the anti-religious bigots among us are.

        I, for one, am looking forward to that. Bigotry is bigotry, and should have no home in the Republican party.

        • westcoastpatriette

          if you are calling me a bigot because you think Santorum has religious convictions with which I disagree. Reading comprehension is your friend and may prevent you from making hasty, inaccurate accusations that amount to nothing but nonsense in relation to what I wrote.

    • naraht

      Sometimes I wonder whether opposition to Abortion is the only political position that they share.

    • naraht

      I can see Obama’s commercial now… 40 year old housewife driving though the streets in the worst area of town. Finds a scuzzy looking lowlife (white of course) who asks here what she wants to buy “Condoms for my husband and myself”. After buying a pack (for $50), the lowlife tells her to comeback tomorrow and he’ll be able to hook her up with a diaphragm…. (Deliberately picking barrier methods that are the least controversial rather than something more controversial like the IUD)

      • Dave_A

        1) Santorum’s statement was on the subject of Federalism & the Constitutional travesty of the Griswold & Roe decisions – things that have been GOP stand-bys for years…

        2) Even before griswald, the anti-BC laws were directed at singles, not married couples…

        What Santorum needs to do, is come out and explain federalism & the problem with a ‘Penumbra of the 14th’ to the people….

    • jamesm

      1) Libertarians will not vote for Obama

      2) Obama is biggest spender with a proven record.

      3) Obama’s social views are extreme left.

    • naharu89x7

      Santorum is right to compare homosexuality to pedaphile. Do you know that the vast majority of pedaphiles are homosexuals? What gay group has a great amount of power that pushes pedaphila in this country? Nambla.

      Why are some of you claiming to be socially conservative yet blast Santorum as “out of the mainstream”? If anything Santorum deserves a medal for taking a moral stand.

      If believing what Santorum does(which are the correct views by the way) is “outside of the mainstream”, than this country is doomed, following the same dark path as Europe.

      How sad would that me.

      • demsaresatanic

        are complaining about his social issues very much are they? From what I am reading it is the other things about Santorum’s record that is the problem, at least that’s my concern about him.

  • RealQuiet

    Of the three remaining candidates (I’m not counting Paul), Santorum has the most upside of any of them. Let Obama parade gay soldiers and go with vicious attacks on Santorum’s past. Liberals flat out hate Santorum. That should tell you something. That is going to happen with Romney and Gingrich as well. We should quit being so fixated on how Obama is going to attack us. What about how Santorum will attack Obama on Obamacare, Fast and Furious, Solyndra, his executive tyranny regarding recess appointments and declaring the Senate in session, his adding trillions to the national debt, etc.? Obama will fight hard to keep the scrutiny on Santorum and prevent people from looking at what Obama has done since he has been in office. He’s not a suit empty of convictions like Romney is, doesn’t have the personal baggage of Newt Gingrich which has shown from Florida onward is a bridge too far for GOP women, and I don’t have a problem with his plans regarding our country from what I have read in his statements during the campaign and on his website. If he presents his plans with some sunny side optimism, he would do fine. Preferably, I’d rather have had Mitch Daniels but when I look at the remaining three, Santorum is the least objectionable and the most upside.

    • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

      a candidate: I’m with Santorum all the way, and happy about it. More later…

      • littlehouse18

        I am excited once again, first time since Perry announced ( and then sadly faded). I’m volunteering for Santorum and hope he gets a real chance. However, he does need to take the criticisms expressed here to heart and make the effort to ease those concerns. These criticisms and much worse will be hurled at him from the left and he should demonstrate that he knows how to handle them effectively. If he can do that, and put out specific plans, he will be a strong nominee.

        I don’t get the ‘statist’ and ‘theocrat’ charges, I’ve not seen that sort of attitude in him.

        • littlehouse18

          ..

    • Xasteius

      1) Gingrich won the SC primary (note: not limited to just the GOP) by 2:1 among evangelicals compared to Santorum or Romney.

      2) Gingrich won the female vote in SC almost 2:1 over Santorum

      3) Obama will try to divert attention from his record no matter who the GOP nominee is.

      4) Personal life aside, Newt will fight to kill the establishment and the expansive government. Santorum will not do this, but merely use the government to promote his views (not that I disagree with his morals, but he does not believe in limited government).

      • snowshooze

        The Establishment hates him, they know he will be real tough on them.
        Obama doesn’t hate him… he’s terrified.
        The Media hates him too… except all the money they make denigrating him.
        Looks like they are going to plan B now and trying to ignore him to oblivion. It worked with Perry.
        But there’s a few out here that are calmly awaiting our opportunity to cast a ballot for him.

        • clowngirl

          and Newt’s record in primaries is – to this point – much better than Santorum’s.

          • WillWong

            Always felt very strongly that it will take a herculean effort to turn this ship around and the only person left with the strength, ideas, and vision to do so is Newton Leroy Gingrich. Everyone else is just managing the decay!

        • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

          Its not that he would be “tough” on them, its that he is a serial liar.

          • snowshooze

            I AM NOT thrilled at the prospect of what we have on our hands.
            We all knew this was going to be a wild ride, and everyone who mounted this bronc has been thrown… with good reasons.
            Santorum is in the saddle at the moment. Let’s see if he can make the whole 5 seconds.
            Serial liars are the norm it seems. Romney is right up there in that too.
            But so far as I see it, Newt has the best chance of straightening this mess out. He is bull-headed, egotistical and unfit for employment.
            He cares what people think.. but when push comes to shove… the gloves come off and he does what he want’s.
            I know this can be dangerous… but these are traits you find in a leader. ( I are one… sorta )
            I do not believe the other candidates have the guts to fight.
            Romney will simply go along, possibly re-name Obamacare…
            Santorum seems to be a real nice guy.. a bit of a puppy, I wouldn’t select him to back me in a barroom brawl… or Mitt either.
            But Newt has been shot at and missed, pooped at and hit… and in a barroom brawl I would probably have to fight him for my chance to get in.
            Either way.. don’t send a boy to do a man’s work.
            Newt was tough on them before. That’s why they threw him out.
            He was making too many waves.
            We need someone who is completely fearless..has a vision..
            and a bunch of other stuff. We can’t have it all.
            Newt is fearless, and has visions. That is getting closer than the other two.

      • RealQuiet

        And then Florida happened where Romney turned his Freddie Mac guns on Gingrich in Florida and I remember seeing TV interviews of women who would say “I just can’t get by his marital history, I can’t vote for someone like that”. I thought when Newt was starting to make his first surge in the polls that this issue alone could be a very big problem for him. Right now, Newt’s campaign is running on fumes from a fundraising standpoint according to some reports. Santorum has been having some huge daily numbers as of late on that side. Newt’s great at dishing out attacks and fiery rhetoric, but really gets thrown off balance when he gets attacked. His very thin skin indicates that he still has an ego problem. I am not counting Newt out as he has some more debate lifelines that have proven to be a boon for his candidacy. However, because there have already been so many debates, I would speculate that viewership will be tepid at best when they roll around in the next couple of weeks. If Santorum doesn’t react badly as Newt did to the attacks he is going to get from Romney and Gingrich, he stands a great chance at winning Michigan and Arizona with a great Super Tuesday to follow.

  • burke

    Romney can’t connect with people. Or, anyway, he can’t connect with the vast majority of Americans who haven’t had the privileged experience he has. Romney seems vaguely contemptuous of a good part of the base — and that’s the part of the base that’s not voting for him right now. They will not be excited in November if Romney is our nominee. And the base’s hating the incumbent is not enough. Just ask President Kerry.

    Why am I talking about Romney? Because I think the support for Santorum is fueled by anti-Romney sentiment more than pro-Santorum sentiment. People are turning to Santorum because they think he has something Romney doesn’t. Here’s what it is: Santorum has the potential to get the base affirmatively excited about him. The base is never going to be excited about Romney. But I’ll have to see more from Santorum before I say I like his chances. He hasn’t really been scrutinized by the media much, and he hasn’t proven that he can win in a non-retail politics context.

    The reason that I will not be thrilled if Santorum gets the nod is that I am not confident he knows how to govern like a fiscal conservative or has any real interest in doing so. I don’t think he has a handle on policy specifics like Newt or Romney. Finally, I don’t think he has a fiscal conservative’s instincts. I agree with NightTwister above; he’d use the tools of federal government to seek different aims from Obama, but what many of us want is for the federal government to do LESS. Unlike Romney, who is something of a weather vane and could probably restrain his liberal proclivities, I don’t think that Santorum could contain his statist tendencies as president.

    I also don’t think that Santorum’s the most effective communicator. A lot of the controversy about Santorum’s social views comes from the way he has communicated them (like his infamous Man on Dog comment). He’s not someone who’s able to sell his brand of social conservatism to people who aren’t already in full agreement to with him. Perry, for example, communicated his social conservatism much more effectively. That (along with Santorum’s spectacular loss in his last election) makes me a little less confident in Santorum’s ability to sell himself to the electorate, both as a candidate and, if he makes it there, as president.

    • burke

      I’d amend to say that Santorum is such a bad communicator that he comes off poorly on social views even to some who do agree with him on most things.

  • annie54

    and hear his message at one of his rallies, they’re sold. All that you stated is right on. He is beginning this week with Washington, Idaho and North Dakota and will charge on due to his stamina and energy, which far surpasses the other candidates.

    I hope he doesn’t resort to defense when Mitt attacks because that’s what Mitt wants. Rick has to stay on message and ignore Romney’s dirty business tactics.

    • http://www.nighttwister.com NightTwister

      Especially when it contradicts what he’s actually done?

      • annie54

        and it reveals itself.

        I CANNOT vote for Romney. Newt is lacking in discipline, energy and stamina. Paul’s foreign policy is ummmmmmmm whatever. If Chris Christie were running, we would already be sick of his New Jooersy attitude and demeanor, not to mention his bulk. Mitch Daniels can be a little dry and the citizenry would never like the fact that he is even shorter than Putin and his wife is taller, with a past. Jeb Bush is another Bush. Jendel talks and talks and talks. Ryan is too young, although he has a significant place in our Administration.

        Who’s next? Palin?

        • http://www.nighttwister.com NightTwister

          There’s no reason to believe he could actually run something successfully, because he’s never done it.

          He has a history of voting for bills that increased spending, not decreased it. He has a history of wanting to pick winners and losers, on both fiscal and social issues, and using my tax dollars to accomplish it.

          He appears to want to focus on social issues which is not the right focus for this election. I don’t want those issues ignored, but focusing on them won’t win in November.

          He’s lied about the positions of other candidates, which calls his character into question.

          Passion alone isn’t going to do it. Ron Paul has passion for the future of America, but I wouldn’t want him anywhere near the White House.

          Christie, Daniels, Bush, Jindal & Ryan aren’t running. They’ve been very clear they aren’t interested. Everyone pinning their hopes on any one of these will be disappointed.

          We’re down to Newt, Mitt & Rick. Of those, only one has actual conservative accomplishments as an elected official, and that’s Newt. I don’t expect he’ll be in the race after Super Tuesday though. It’s going to come down to Mitt or Rick. I don’t see either one of them beating Obama in November.

          • rpopp23

            Do we want the kind of experience that Mitt showed in Mass? Romneycare, limited growth, big government?

            Do we want the kind of experience that Newt showed with the house? Ethics issues, fired by his own colleagues?

            With Rick Perry this would be a reasonable argument against Santorum – but I don’t see how this is an argument for either Newt or Mitt.

          • demsaresatanic

            any day, first balanced budget in a generation, welfare reform, fighting Clinton every inch of the way as no Speaker has done since. The “ethics issue” is a sham, the IRS investigation cleared him on that, he took the plea because weakling squish Repubs pushed him into it. Those same weaklings forced him out because they were afraid of the media rats which were trashing Newt.

            Btw, how do you like Santorum’s idea about having felons vote, I’m sure that will build the Repub vote base, this is the link:
            http://thelibertyblog.org/tag/rick-santorum/page/2/

          • http://908StraightSt.wordpress.com/ mbecker908

            as Santorum’s opinion – and vote – about unions and right to work.

          • http://www.nighttwister.com NightTwister

            Mitt’s executive experience is a mixture of good and bad. At least I know he can run something because he’s done it before.

            Newt balanced budgets, passed welfare reform, etc. That’s good experience. The ethics issues have already been shown to be a nothingburger, and he wasn’t fired, he survived the coups by the moderates in the House.

            Rick on the other hand….he’s got nuthin’.

          • rpopp23

            Mitt’s executive experience in politics is mostly bad from any hint of a conservative angle. He folds and/or cuts deals – yeah that is helpful. You could argue he has had success in business and I would agree – but often that doesn’t translate into gov’t success.

            As for Newt – I don’t know how you can say he survived the coups in the house. Do you think he didn’t want to be speaker in 1998? Yes, I know he didn’t run again. Because he knew he was going to lose. He had lost the support of those he was leading – not exactly an executive success story.

            And I never said this was a Santorum strength – my point was I don’t think Mitt or Newt win a lot of votes on this issue – neither one of them has either a long record nor one of particularly great success.

          • Martin Knight

            I’m not as big a fan of Mitt as I was in 2008, but I find it strange that all of the people screaming about how Mitt was indistinguishable from Lenin as Governor of MA have absolutely no idea of the political environment he had to operate in.

          • http://www.nighttwister.com NightTwister

            The attempted coups was a year earlier. He left after the election that lost the House. That’s what true leaders do. When they don’t get the job done, they step down. He didn’t hold the House. Real leaders have successes and failures. The good ones move on from their failures to more successes. Look at what he did while he was there and not just what happened at the end.

            As for Mitt, I don’t disagree with you, but still, he’s led something. He’s not what I wanted (my comments and diaries make that clear), but why in the world after seeing what happened during the last three years would we want another President that would have to learn on the job? Obama has had at least as many failures due to inexperience as he’s had by direct action.

            Support for Rick is simply desperation because people don’t like Mitt or Newt. I get that, but choosing someone worse isn’t really a good answer.

          • ffc99

            The Republicans didn’t lose control of the House in the ’98 election. However, they did have a historically bad result (losing half a dozen seats or so) for a party not holding the presidency in a midterm election. If you recall, after Newt stepped down we looked to be heading toward a Speaker Livingston, until all his dirty laundry was aired. We eventually ended up with Denny Hastert, a man who I had a lot of hope for, but who ultimately was something of a disappointment.

          • http://www.nighttwister.com NightTwister

            You’re right, it didn’t flip, but where they should’ve gained seats, they lost them.

            He was not voted out, and he was not “fired”.

          • WillWong

            you think he would be out of the race after Super Tuesday! Why?

          • http://www.nighttwister.com NightTwister

            I think I’ve been pretty objective throughout this race. I wanted Pawlenty, and after he dropped I mostly stayed on the sidelines objectively evaluating the candidates. I finally came to the conclusion that, although there’s many things I don’t like about Newt, he was the only one that would be able to stand up to the media scrutiny and successfully sell the conservative message.

            Unfortunately, with all the negative ads starting in Iowa, people have decided to only look at his negatives and dismissed him. Once he lost in Florida and people started to coalesce behind Santorum as the “Not Romney” it was over for him.

            I doubt he wins a single state on Super Tuesday, and if I’m right, he’ll drop out. His money has dried up and I don’t see how he could continue beyond that. Without a win, no more money would be coming in for him.

          • 4loveofus

            …Lincoln didn’t either.

        • Xasteius

          I would rather vote for Romney knowing full what he is and what he has done.

          • http://www.gmsplace.com/ civil truth

            I won’t dispute the statist charge, as at best Rick is a recent convert to more restrained government. And I have many problems with his past political actions, most notably his supporting Specter over Toomey in 2004.

            But theocrat? Iran is a theocracy, where clerics interpreting holy writ have the final say over the laws of the land and their enforcement.

            Rick certainly advocates policies in keeping with his Catholic faith- just as we all advocate policies in keeping with our theological and/or philosophical and/or moral convictions.

            But I’m not aware where Rick has expressed a desire to toss out the Constitution and replace it with Mosaic Law or its kin. Nor expressed a desire to overturn representative government freely elected by the people and replace it with self-appointing religious clerics.

          • Xasteius

            or whatever he believes in.

            I don’t disagree with his faith, but he will just use the government for his own ends, which is not limited government (i.e. Christian rather than liberal). Let 38 states ban gay marriage or define marriage as one man and one woman or abortion (better yet, get a flat tax in with child credits, charitable giving, and mortgage deduction and eliminate the financial ‘excuses’ that the gay rights activists use) and then make a constitutional amendment instead of a ‘top-down’ approach that varies with administration policy. Ban all federal grants/ contracts to organizations providing social services and let them be funded by those who support their aims (e.g. the Catholic hospitals).

          • http://www.gmsplace.com/ civil truth

            …and Santorum, like Brownback, seems too enamored of using the coercive power of government to effect his beliefs. Which is one reason why he’s ranked near the bottom of my candidate list.

            Your comment list is good.

            But theocrat is a scare word that the left uses to impugn opponents rather than make a meaningful assertion, which is why I have a high standard for the use of that word.

            Besides, there’s no way the U.S. populace will countenance anything approaching a Christian theocracy. (Heck, there aren’t enough qualified clerics to even come close to administering one even if they could agree on the law code.)

            Rather, we’re seeing the rise of a secular “theocracy” that is intolerantly excluding all independent viewpoints from the public square. That’s the zeitgiest of the day, which means that Rick at best will have a huge challenge in November even if he someone manages to win the nomination.

          • Xasteius

            Goldberg’s ‘liberal fascism’ seems it would fit, but most people will draw the wrong picture and think of Nazism.

          • http://boldcolor.blogspot.com/ Paula

            Xasteius said, “Let 38 states ban gay marriage or define marriage as one man and one woman or abortion (better yet, get a flat tax in with child credits, charitable giving, and mortgage deduction and eliminate the financial ?excuses? that the gay rights activists use) and then make a constitutional amendment instead of a ?top-down? approach that varies with administration policy. Ban all federal grants/ contracts to organizations providing social services and let them be funded by those who support their aims (e.g. the Catholic hospitals).

            I’m not aware there’s a candidate running that would do all these things. Santorum’s policies on gay marriage and abortion are pretty much the same as Romney and Gingrich (with a few minor differences). What exactly has Santorum said he would do that bothers you?

          • Xasteius

            I don’t trust Santorum to cut the size of government; he’ll just use it for his own ends. I may agree with his morals, but we need someone to cut back government. Newt may have his problems, but he’s the only one I trust to scale back government.

          • Xasteius

            Santorum by his own admission has declared himself as such or that he wants to be (http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/01/rick-santorum-we-always-need-a-jesus-candidate/); didn’t we have another guy in 2008 who thought he was the Second Coming?

        • aesthete

          is based on imaging, rather than substance. A candidate gets your dander up, therefore you support him. A candidate is dry, lacking in stamina, has an “attitude”, or “talks and talks and talks”, and you don’t support him.

          No wonder our country is going to hell in a handbasket, when people vote based on such superficial characteristics.

    • Xasteius

      no text

      • annie54

        n/t

    • http://boldcolor.blogspot.com/ Paula

      He’s a 20-year-old college student and was undecided between Newt and Santorum until he heard him speak at CPAC. He was sold by that speech and went right over to his table to sign up to volunteer for his campaign.

  • annie54

    all of the specifics & credentials we don’t want discussed. Dems can and they have. Republicans just don’t do things like that. We take the good with the bad and let it all hang out. Please, don’t let our honesty destroy our chances of Winning the Future. WTF.

    • annie54

      one of Rick Santorum’s rallies. I did. I ventured there out of curiosity due to the lack of a candidate to vote for who showed genuine passion for our nation. I fully expected to come home checking off another candidate.

      His passion brought tears to my eyes and as I looked around the packed out-conference center, I saw more tears.

      It’s not like we have a catalog in front of us from which to pick our ideal candidate.

      Check his event schedule on www.ricksantorum.com

      We’re running short on time.

      • mikeymike143

        and that is something that the ”intellectuals” at redstate do not understand.

        • Kyle-MI

          Too many people crying so much that their tears flooded out their brains. If you think Santorum can out cry Obama then you are are going to have a lot more tears coming this November (and not the happy kind).

        • JSobieski

          One can feel emotional about reason, but in the public policy sphere—reason is king . . . and emotion is the servant.

          • jamesm

            nt

      • http://www.nighttwister.com NightTwister

        Especially someone as vacuous as Santorum.

      • WillWong

        Repeatedly during one of the debate, that cemented in my mind a person of questionable character. A person of noble character is someone who gives credit where credit is due. Here was Santorum who served under Speaker Gingrich during the 1994 Republican Revolution which swept the House under republican control for the first time in 40 years and he (Santorum) wouldn’t even have the courtesy of addressing him as Speaker. And he stood idly by while Romney and his super PACs spend millions on false negative ads against Newt!

        • littlehouse18

          Just to clarify, Santorum won his Senate seat in 1994, so he didn’t really serve under Gingrich as Speaker, though RS was a Congressman during 1994.

  • beeman56

    Your forgetting 1 major problem this country has to face, that is spending $2T annually, every one but 1 dances around it. Our Military budget is way to big, currently almost $1T. Didn’t Santorum say he will stop Iran’s Nuclear ambition. With a suicidal dictator in Iran, we will have no choice but go after Iran.

    Santorum is a neo conservative, one that will use any means to get the results wanted. I am shocked that Christians vote for some one that use war that kills 100 of thousands and think it great.

    Why does Iran hate us? Why did they storm the US embassy in Tehran? Why do they fear us now? You must go back to 1950 when Iran and USA relationship was more than great. Iran looked up to the USA like a big brother, wanted to be just like us.

    In 1951 they elected a new Prime Minister, he wanted the people to get a fair share of the oil wells that the British owned. He asked the British to give them 35% the same the Saudis were getting.

    In 1953 the British came to Eisenhower for help on the situation, because the Iranians trusted us at that time. So instead of trying to broker a deal the CIA was sent to Iran, they hired 5000 thugs to riot in Tehran. After a few months the Prime Minister steps down and the Shah takes his place.

    Shah rules Iran with iron fist murders thousands until the Revolution. In 1979 the hostages could have come home within weeks. The Iranians offered to send 50% home immediately and the rest after the USA apologises for what they did in 1953. President Carter says no hostage stay in captivity for over a year.

    At the present Iran has a great fear of this country they think they need Nucs for deterrence not offence, this is a lie from the elites that profit from war. Our own CIA and military even admit every thing that Iran has done was blow back for 1953.

    In 1954 a new government took over in Guatemala tried to take over an American fruit company. The CIA comes to the rescue again dictator installed death followed. But who cares Americans got their cheap fruit. The Iraqi’s hate us for giving them Saddam also a CIA operative.

    This has happened all over the world, so Santorum like Bush mouths Christianity, but voter beware. More war is in your future. If you like Santorum make sure your children volunteer for military service.

    Please do your own research find the real truth the media is lying to you.

    • littlehouse18

      I do, and they say things were much better under the Shah than in the horrible conditions that followed. Why else would they flee their homeland? Some of these folks suffered terrible brutality and barely escaped with their lives.

      Your apologetics for the truly evil regime now in Iran which terrorizes its own people doesn’t sit well with me. I wonder if you are a young person who hasn’t witnessed what happened in 1979. I remember it all too well, and I’ve also done plenty of research.

      I don’t really care what happened 60 years ago at this point, not when I see Armageddon types ready to lob off nukes as soon as they are able. If Rick says he’ll stop Iran’s nuclear ambition, that a strong selling point to me!

      • beeman56

        To say I like the current government in Iran misses the whole point. The Iranians are worse off now than ever I agree, but there Revolution lead them to this current situation. The revolution, and 1979 hostage crisis, were blow back from 1953. The CIA and military all agree on the Iranian blow back.

        To say you don’t care what happened 60 years ago makes me believe you have done no research. I spent 6 months checking out every reason I hated Ron Paul. His integrity, and consistently honest positions won me over.

        I am 62 and did watch the Iranian revolution, hostage crisis, and failure of our military trying to rescue them.

        Watch video by John Perkins, an ex CIA hit man. This video has nothing to do with Paul.

        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AynGBMUgdmg&feature=fvwrel

      • Dave_A

        Hence his sucking up to Iran.

  • demsaresatanic

    a Santorum supporter and ran onto something which I think will surprise Santorum people. Santorum not only claims that he never supported a mandate, when he did; he supported felons voting, which is something I had not heard about before. The link is here:
    http://thelibertyblog.org/tag/rick-santorum/page/2/

    I would still take Santorum over Romney because I believe Santorum is a sincere social conservative, but on other things he’s not that good, and losing by 18 points in his last election doesn’t help much.

    • http://908StraightSt.wordpress.com/ mbecker908

      So why dont you detail just what a “President Santorum” can do on social issues that any other candidate can’t or won’t.

      • demsaresatanic

        would be as good there is no point in trying to convince you otherwise. The only thing Romney is sincere about is trying to sound conservative.

        • http://908StraightSt.wordpress.com/ mbecker908

          on social issues do you?

          Reinstate some EOs that limit abortion and abortion funding. Defund Planned Parenthood? The House Budget Committee knows how to do that.

          Defend marriage? Nothing Presidential there.

          Nominate SCOTUS Justices? I don’t have a whole lot of confidence in Romney, I have none in Santorum.

          I don’t like Romney. Santorum is a cheap, empty rayon sweater.

          • demsaresatanic

            of the presidency on social issues, for example, Obama vs Catholic Church.

    • thosjefferson

      has cast a variety of anti-conservative votes, which he justifies as his duty because he represented a liberal state. As if PENN is more liberal than MASS.

      Has everyone watched his famous ad:

      http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/when-rick-santorum-touted-his-liberal-record?tw_p=twt

    • http://www.plumbbobblog.com Plumb_Bob

      Santorum lost his last election because he was running in a heavily Catholic, largely Democratic state against a pro-life Catholic Democrat. He had previously won the election because of his pro-life bona fides. The Democrats chose his opponent wisely, and took away his core issue. In Pennsylvania in a good economy, if all else is equal the Democrat wins on the strength of the inner city vote in Pittsburgh and Philly, which is largely controlled by the big city machines.

      Obama has already given the Republicans the Catholic vote. Santorum will win Pennsylvania easily, and he’s also win the south and the midwest.

      And by the way:

      Notice that the Democrats had no objection to running a less-than-pure candidate by their reckoning. They knew that a pro-life Democrat would vote the party line in the Senate. Take a lesson.

  • acat

    Reason stands that if Santorum is up in Tennsessee, he probably is up in Ohio as well.

    When reached for a quote, Reason said “WTF!”.

    Tennessee and Ohio are *significantly* different in every significant way; culture, economics, demographics, history … Ohio has far more in common with Michigan than Tennessee.

    You could have made the case that Santorum’s tax plan, so interesting to Michiganers, would also appeal to Ohioans .. and likely it will… but .. Tennessee? Nah.

    I’d further point out that the “hat trick” Santorum pulled off is really a nothingburger – no delegates, didn’t shift Rick out of last place, and doesn’t mean a thing *except* that he can claim it. Clearly, Maine and CPAC both took a look, shrugged, and went with Willard.

    (not that I’m *happy* about that decision .. but I can understand it)

    Mew

    • sulmak

      for the same reason you mentioned for the hat trick. No delegates awarded in Maine, and no delegates at all from CPAC.

      Maine does the same thing as Iowa, Colorado, and Minnesota in their caucus, they all just pick delegates for in state conventions. By that argument most caucuses are nothingburgers.

      • acat

        Because I sure don’t see it.

        He achieved *nothing* with his hat trick that hadn’t been achieved by most of the other anti-Romneys at one point or another.

        Gingrich has more delegates than Santorum, and yet somehow winning these three nothingburger States, on severely low percentage turn-out *matters*.

        Not buying it any more than I’m buying Santorum’s a serious contender.

        Mew

        • trickamsterdam

          The excitement is by those of us who can’t stand Romney, and the reason is because of what the defeats say about Romney, not because of what they say about Santorum.

          Romney’s positive/negative numbers have dropped over 30 points in the last month or two. It’s not because of the ads Newt ran about him, it’s because of the ads he ran. Running (literally no exaggeration) 99.99 percent negative ads in FL is a stunning statement of Romney’s intellectual (and in my opinion moral) bankruptcy.

          In the past maybe it would’ve what happened in that State would have stayed in that State, but in the age of the Internet, everyone saw it.

          If a Daniels or a Ryan or Rubio were to suddenly enter the race, I suspect a lot of Santorum’s voters would go to there…so it’s not about Santorum..

          But it’s going to take more than a couple of bad debates or a “vaccine moment” to get people off Santorum…simply because the voters have no where else to go now (and that includes back to Romney).

          To realize what desperate straits Romney is really in, consider that Romneys approval rating with Republicans is worse than Obama’s with all voters (Rs, Ds, independents).

          If those numbers stay the same it’s literally impossible for Romney to beat Obama. So now even the half of Republicans that Romney doesn’t make puke are thinking to themselves “is he electable?”.

          Since he has no other rational for his candidacy, you can see how he’s in quite a pickle. Couldn’t happen to a nicer robot.

          I can’t wait for the day when he announces he’s pulling out of the race. Maybe we’ll finally see some emotion from him other than empty rage and contempt.

          That’ll be the end of Romney and one of the more bizarre creatures to ever crawl across the national political stage…then he’ll be gone like he was never even here. 25 years from now few people besides those of us on this site will even remember there was a person called “MItt Romney”.

          That’ll be his “legacy”. And nothing of value was lost.

          • acat

            but I don’t see a “hat trick” of nothing-burgers as all that exciting.

            If it had moved the delegate count, maybe.
            If it had cost Willard a super-PAC, maybe.

            As it is .. nah.

            Mew

          • bobguzzardi

            Here are my 21 reasons: posted at The Liberty Blog www.thelibertyblog.org in southeastern Pennsylvania.

            Rick Santorum?s 21 Negatives: http://thelibertyblog.org/tag/rick-santorum

            Rick ?Elmer Gantry? Santorum is a Pro Life Big Government Earmarking Union DIABLO, Democrat In All But Label, who cannot win his erstwhile home state Pennsylvania and there are good reasons for that.

            Rick Santorum is a GWBush Big Government Republican. Rick Santorum would pick different winners and losers than the Obama Administration but he accepts the Big Government as inevitable. His big spending record tells us that Rick Santorum will not be good on debt or deficit.

            Rick Santorum has never had a private sector job of any kind and has not business experience of any kind. Rick Santorum is a product of US Congress.

            Rick Santorum would pick different winners and losers than the Obama Administration but he accepts the Big Government as inevitable. His big spending record tells us that Rick Santorum will not be good on debt or deficit.

            Rick Santorum has never had a private sector job of any kind and has not business experience of any kind. Rick Santorum is a product of US Congress.

          • http://beaglescout.wordpress.com;http://news.unifiedpatriots.com/ Beaglescout

            you sure have perfected repeating yourself. Try using new words, or rearranging the words you have already used.

          • acat

            (not that I’ve ever used it)

            Mew

          • Melody Warbington (rwm52)

            civil truth’s question which has been asked at least twice now here.

            Where is any evidence of Senator Santorum resembling the fictional, hypocritical, womanizing Elmer Gantry?

          • trickamsterdam

            (I paraphrased your words)

            You make a very good point, that on paper, the defeats didn’t cost him much…but my point is that Santorum is a different Not-Romney, not because of Santorum, but because of Romney himself.

            Before Romney went negative in December both his and Newt’s positive/negative ratings were in the 60s. Now they’re both in the mid-low 40s w/ similar negatives.

            So that’s how Romney took out that Not-Romney…but it cost him his own popularity as well.

            When you think about the others (i.e. Cain, Bachmann, Perry) Romney was still popular w/ Rs then, so it was easy for people to go back to him, or keep him as their back-up pick.

            In some ways this may have even affected people not getting in the race at all (e.g. Ryan, Christie). A Romney w/ that bread and organization who also has an approval rating in the 60s is a lot more imposing than this one.

            If Romney had an positive/negative approval rating of 44/43 in Sept of last year, I bet someone else would have gotten in the race…and people would not have left Perry so easily.

            I can’t even imagine what the rational is for leaving Santorum to go back to Romney is though? Maybe some feel that Romney is better, OK, fair enough…but let’s say you’ve decided to go to Santorum (like me)…what is Romney going to tell me to get me back?

            He’s more electable? With those positive negative numbers? He’s not. He’s more conservative? His exec experience? I’ve already dismissed those two claims, and so has everyone else that went to Santorum..

            Interesting thing. In that L. Wolf diary “Negotiating w/ Terrorists” the poster DeVere said that Wolf’s hyperbole (using the world “terrorist”) might be a sign of desperation among Rpmney supporters, and that Romney might seem “inevitable” until the day that his campaign suddenly collapsed.

            I didn’t agree w/ that at the time. I thought the take-down of Romney might be possible, but that it would be an epic struggle w/ Romney probably entering a brokered convention w/ the most delegates and then being stopped by the other three combined (plus the Establishment who realized Romney was damaged goods).

            Now, ironically I think Romney drops out before the convention (ironic because that’s what all the others have precisely promised not to do). And a later Wolf Diary talked about how even he realizes Romney isn’t as electable as he had thought.

            Like I said, since Romney has no rational for his candidacy other than electability, people thinking he can’t win is almost as damaging to his candidacy as the sex scandal was to a social conservative like Herman Cain.

            So unless something basically happens to change the dynamics of this race in a very basic way, I have to say: I think Romney’s basically screwed.

            PS – You’ve got to admit that was a hell of a take-down of Romney by me, lol, in my original post. I remembered the general point of what I’d typed, but not the specifics. I like the part where I said 25 years from now no one but political junkies like us will even remember there had even been a person called “MItt Romney”.

            It’s self-serving, but I have to admit…when I re-read it lulz were had! :)

          • acat

            Tree looks great one day, next day it’s on the ground, obviously rotted most of the way through.

            This is what the “enthusiasm” metrics are supposed to address, by the way – how “rotten” a politicians’ support is, and how quickly it could all collapse….

            I don’t have enthusiasm numbers for Romney, but .. they’ve got to be getting worse. He needed to score some points at CPAC, and all he did was phone it in.

            Mew

    • Creedo

      Ron Paul won CPAC twice. Why should anyone care that the moneyed establishment guy was able to put together enough votes to take that one? I love the idea of CPAC, but the last four years its been used as a conference for non-conservatives to spend a bunch of money convincing us all that they’re “severe” conservatives.

      • acat

        In neither case were delegates awarded, and in both cases it wasn’t decided by a statistically useful sample.

        Mew

    • RealQuiet

      The main core of Ohio GOP voters is southern Ohio. Regionally I take Southern Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee and lump them into one. That’s where I’m coming from. Now northern Ohio is a different story :)

      • acat

        And I do appreciate that you’ve explained it.

        However…I’m under the impression it’s the urbanized northern half of Ohio where elections are won and lost… with the higher population density, they seem to have an advantage.

        Same thing is true in Illinois – you can drive from Indiana to Iowa without much change in scenery – but the population density in Cook County and the Collar Counties dwarfs the votes from the corn fields.

        That’s why I question the validity of flipping Ohio based on Tennessee… but, as I said earlier .. you could probably justify it on flipping Michigan…

        Mew

  • retrocon87

    most of the posts and comments here don’t seem to have changed much over the last week or two… most seem to predominantly be something along the lines of either “oh my god, all of our candidates are so bad, we are all so screwed” or “I know candidate x is bad and probably won’t be able to beat obama, but i still think he’s better than the others, and here’s why…”

    None of this is a strategy to win. If we do not start thinking about the following, we are shooting ourselves in the foot, we will probably lose, and it will be no one’s fault but our own:

    1) If any of the three candidates (excluding the crackpot) wind up becoming the nominee, what is the most effective way to generate enthusiasm for them against Obama?? (in other words, instead of just writing about how we hate these people, try to find the positives in them and strategize about how we can help them if they are the nominee. Considering that we are probably the most unenthusiastic of anyone about some of these guys, at least we know why exactly and we can think about how to most effectively counter it amongst the general electorate. If the idea of this disgusts you, just think about 4 more years of Obama. I view it as our patriotic duty to do this).
    2) If we determine that #1 is impossible, then instead of just whining about it, begin thinking in earnest about how exactly to bring about a brokered convention so that someone else more palatable to us can become the nominee. This will be an extremely messy process and it will need to be determined well in advance who exactly we would like the new candidate to be and how exactly to bring it about strategically at the convention. Hypothetically the situation here would be that after the first round of voting at the convention, no one gets a clear majority. There needs to be a strategy in place of who the new candidate would be and how we change the minds of most of the delegates to support the new guy (which won’t be easy).

    Considering that this is all pretty uncharted territory we need to start putting together some semblance of an intelligent road map of what exactly we’re looking to be done, and how. That means specific candidates that we want to jump in, how we’re going to convince them to do it, and how we will convince delegates to change from their committed candidate after the first round to our guy.

    We may be in a rut right now but we are all intelligent people and there is still more than enough time if we get our acts together to be able to figure out how to win this damn thing. We did it in 2010 we can do it in 2012.

  • joeyjojoshabadoo79

    Time to start grooming Marco Rubio now for 2016. We can only pray he doesnt bleep the bed like other heir apparents have in the last couple years. If we dont make a dent in the hispanic vote, we will be perrenial underdogs. Just a fact.

    • http://beaglescout.wordpress.com;http://news.unifiedpatriots.com/ Beaglescout

      People need to stop bringing Rubio up in presidential discussions. He is not running and believes he is unqualified to be president because of the natural born citizen requirement. Let’s settle for what Rubio can be.. the finest conservative Senate leader we’ve ever had… and make sure that he takes Mitch McConnell’s job asap.

      • Darin_H

        He was, after all, born in Miami. I don’t think anyone has disputed that. His parents left Cuba in the 1950s, and he was born in 1971. His parents didn’t become citizens until 1975, but that doesn’t matter – Marco was a citizen before his parents were.

      • littlehouse18

        Where have you gotten your information?

        I know there are various interpretations, but I think if you are born here, you are a NBC, unless your parents are here illegally.

        • Darin_H

          aka “anchor baby”

          Agree or not, it is what it is, and I don’t see it changing anytime soon.

          • Dave_A

            Feet Dry…

            Anyone who reaches US soil is granted legal status as a political refugee from the Castro regime.

          • littlehouse18

            What I meant is I disagree with allowing natural-born citizenship to ‘anchor babies’.

      • Scope

        for the Presidency or Vice Presidency has never been addressed by the courts. They have ruled on citizenship status of individuals, but have never been asked to rule on eligibility requirements for the highest offices, that I am aware of. Rubio may have gotten some legal opinions concerning his status, if he in fact did make those statements.

        There is something about Cuba being under American protection at the time of his parents births in Cuba. There is also the question whether they fled Cuba under the Castro regime, hoping to return to their homeland one day. I would have to think that his parents gave up on their wishes to ever return to Cuba, if they ever did, when they applied for US citizenship, and were granted that citizenship a few years after Marco was born in Miami Fla. Don’t know if or how the wet foot, dry foot doctrine may apply.

      • JSobieski

        Rubio was born in Miami. Being a natural born citizen does not mean that your patents were citizens when you were born.

        I have yet to hear a plausible rationale for classifying Rubio as anything other than a NBC.

  • joeyjojoshabadoo79

    myah!

  • clowngirl

    in a lot of ways.

    Up until now he’s had a rather sheltered experience (compared to Gingrich or Perry) seeing as he just dealt Romney a major blow and he’ll be competing seriously for Michigan, that’s likely to change. ( Assuming Romney hasn’t wised up and realized he can’t win just by running an almost entirely negative campaign)

    Also, his success up until now has been only in caucuses, has come right after Newt just weathered a massively vicious smear campaign, and — in the most recent caucus wins – involved winning states nobody else seriously competed for (except maybe Ron Paul)

    Rick still needs to prove he can hold up under pressure and under the glare of increased scrutiny and start winning primaries in states that are hotly contested.

    Maybe he will, maybe he won’t.

    And come to think of it, there’s a third possibility. It’s possible Santorum will fail to outshine a (freshly surging) Newt (I’m not saying Newt is surging now — just speculating that as focus shifts to Santorum and Romney and the media get off his back a bit, and maybe point out some faults with Santorum it’s not at all unlikely that Newt will – once again – regain his footing)

    Anyway, it’s possible that after he’s vetted and such, Santorum will fail to dominate — but still damage Romney — maybe winning a couple states on Super Tuesday that Newt’s not strongly competing for that otherwise would’ve gone to Willard.

    In other words there’s 4 basic possibilities:

    Santorum will increasingly gain momentum and win the nomination ( I remain skeptical)

    Santorum will get vetted, fair badly in the upcoming primaries (as he has in primaries so far) lose momentum and fall back to single digits

    Santorum will be a spoiler for Romney.

    Santorum will be a spoiler for Gingrich (starting to see this as the most likely outcome — though I’m biased because of also considering this the best case scenario)

    Side note: it seems like Santorum’s getting his second or third “first look” — it does seem to be so with some people as Santorum is demonstrating a higher ceiling than ever before — but his numbers yo-yo’d before, so it would seem that a certain chunk of his current support must now be on their “second look”

    That would seem to suggest that a certain chunk of voters went from being undecided or preferring somebody besides Santorum , to preferring Santorum, to preferring Gingrich, back to preferring Santorum.

    On the surface, it would seem that a lot of this new support would be soft that people maybe drifted to Rick by default or because he has momentum at the moment.

    But, as somebody who’s views on the various candidates have changed only gradually, and who hasn’t actually switched candidates at any point in the race– I’m may not be the best person to understand this phenomena or judge what it means.

  • kowalski

    I think only one thing is clear at this point: whoever ultimately wins the nomination, everyone else on this side of the Big Ditch (and that’s going to be a lot of people) are going to have to put aside their bitterness and contempt for the other candidates. Without a great deal of forgiveness and common spiritedness and a sense of ultimately doing better for the country than doing worse, they’re not going to be able to do it because they’ve been feeding each other horror stories for a year.

    And then their candidates and their SuperPACs have reinforced those horror stories.

    I think the race on our side at this point is a badly poisoned, overflowing with seething animosity. If the Democrats can muster even a modicum of unity in the general, it’s all over for whoever we nominate, unless a major change of heart and generosity of spirit occurs on our side.

    I have to say that even though I’m no longer supporting Romney, it’s amusing to read statements like: “He seems to harbor some vague contempt for the base.” The “base” has shown open, active, repeated and fulsome contempt for HIM. It has been anything but “vague” on a lot of their parts. If you were a candidate running for President and you listened to the kind of active, fulsome comtempt issuing from a major part of your own party’s electorate, you might respond with some vague contempt and wariness yourself.

    I’ll also say that during this upcoming Presidency, I don’t expect any of these people to act in a way that is entirely consistent with their pasts. I think all of the negative advertisers are making people place far too much belief in that. I think they’re all going to be driven by events in a very dangerous and unprecedented time, and that past behaviors and actions and statements are an awfully flimsy predictor of the behavior of any of these guys, including Santorum. In other words I almost completely discount all of the negative advertising. I have to give Santorum credit for running a little bit of a cleaner campaign than the others. I think he’s starting to get sucked into the Angry Pool, though, and the closer it gets to Zero Hour the more mendacious he’s going to get. It looks like a disease nobody can avoid catching this time around.
    But

    • kowalski

      “I think the race on our side at this point is a badly poisoned well…”

      • kowalski

        That *** CASINO MAGNATES *** have exerted so much influence thusfar in this race on our side. First it was Sheldon Adelson giving $11 million dollars to Newt Gingrich and then Donald Trump endorsing Romney, almost a kind of Mutually Assured Casino Magnate Destruction warfare.

        Is that who the Republican Party is now? The Casino Mogul party? It says a lot about our country that these are the guys who are able to exert so much influence. Doesn’t it make anyone else want to take a shower?

        • kowalski

          We know our country has big problems manufacturing anything anymore without huge government subsidies … and then a lot of those companies go broke to the tune of a half a billion dollars. We won’t build pipelines. We have a very hard time getting new nuclear plants approved. We seem to be concentrating all our money and energy on enterprises that are going to employ very small fractions of the population while the other sectors like Healthcare slowly bankrupt us…you ain’t building no new houses in America right now…the labor market has a record number of people who have just plain gone off the grid…

          What’s left besides Casinos and Social Networking and Porn? The Google Android Phones? I half expect Wicked Pictures to donate $1M to Rick Santorum’s campaign any day now, without a hint of irony. The question is whether or not he’ll take it.

        • kowalski

          “Build another casino.” But what does a casino really *do* in terms of wealth?

          It transfers wealth. Apart from the temporary blip of jobs it creates in the constuction of the casino and then the restaurants and shops (if there are any) casinos exist to take their customers money (with mathematical certainty!) and it to the casino owners and to the State, or the Tribes running the casino. It isn’t as though you play Blackjack or the slot machines as an investment. How does a casino create wealth for its customers, who are mathematically guaranteed to *lose* at every gaming opportunity?

          It’s just entertainment, where you are guaranteed to lose money, and probably faster than you would with other forms of entertainment. And it seems to be one of the handful of growth industries that everyone wants a piece of the action from. Very bizarre to me.

  • tnguy

    …except to God. I see nothing but disaster with the current president, and sadly, with both of the surviving republican candidates.

    If Gingrich is out, our choices are 2 big gov’t republicans. And yet “Red State Policy” is that you have to support republican in the general. Really? We’re going to support Santorum merely because of the (R)? We’re to ignore him supporting Bush’s prescription drug program and its tens of trillion$ in new unfunded liabilities? We’re going to ignore the laundry list of failures EE posted a few weeks ago in his Santorum Big Government conservative post? And one could fill a library with the volumes of Romney’s failures.

    I simply do not understand this. The “he’s not as bad as the other guy argument” makes no sense to me. EE is all but admitting that with his brokered convention hope. Stopping Obama is fairly irrelevant if it requires the installation of a pro-life version of Obama. And that might be hyperbole, but looking at each candidates love of government solutions, it’s not as hyperbolic as some will pretend.

    I’d like for someone to truly explain the rationale for this policy. And legitimately explain how supporting moderate republicans in the presidential race isn’t terrible for the country and the party, long-term. Because all I’ve seen so far in rebuttal is that Obama is terrible. Nothing that would truly support the notion that either of them are advocates of limited gov’t. I don’t understand why we’d whore ourselves out in such a manner.

    For the record, I do not think Santorum is a bad guy. But I do think he’s a guy who thinks first of big-gov’t solutions, and IMO, that’s the last thing we need right now.

    • thosjefferson

      Here’s a fun perspective on Santorum:

      http://emperornewt.org/rick-sanctimonium/

  • thosjefferson

    we have two big government, millionaire DC lobbyists, one long-term Congressman/physician, and one wealthy businessman who made his money the way conservatives supposedly support: in the private sector.

    But since Gingrich is, in his words, a “grandiose” megalomaniac, we ought to count him twice. We have the South Carolina Gingrich who is going to be the nominee, and the Iowa, NH, Florida, Nevada, Minn., Colo., Mo., and Maine Gingrich whom no one ever wants to hear from again.

    • beeman56

      Newt made the biggest mistake in this race, in that he was starting to think Paul was right in auditing the FED. Ever since the Florida debate when he said it, it has been all out media slander to destroy him and get him out. It is even rumoured he has lost his Billionaire backers.

      I think it was Romney’s PAC that that went after newt in Florida with all the negative ads. The billionaires are gunning for him as well as Ron Paul. He will face the same media blackout as Paul from now on. Without the grass root donations that Paul has, not much chance Newt will get much farther than Arizona.

  • lizzie

    the main issue in 2012 if Santorum is the GOP nominee.

    instead of jobs, debt, repeal PPACA, etcetera.

    Every time Santorum is speaking about the economy, or even foreign relations, I start thinking “finally, he is not talking about abortion”, and then he starts interjecting abortion into whatever else he was talking about.

    It worked for the Dems in New York 2010, when the #1 issue should have been how Medicaid is bankrupting NYS. Instead, the only subject was “protecting women’s reproductive rights”, and the Dems swept EVERY statewide contest.

    The DNC has been planning to use NY2010 anyway, with women running in many Senate contests. Santorum is a gift on a rust-belt platter.

    With Romney, he will lose on any theme. Zero enthusiasm.

    Gingrich is spending February raising money.

    Just do not delude yourselves into thinking that voters like me, who already decided to NOT vote on “social issues” since 2006, will vote for Santorum.
    He is too extreme, and I also have to admit I do not want to look at his family for four years. His wife has a permanent frown-face.

    see you in April :)

    • joeydavis

      That strategy wins in New York, not North Carolina.
      It wins in Connecticut, not Iowa.
      It wins in Massachusetts, not Wisconsin.
      It wins in California, not Indiana.

      Are you noticing a trend here? In diehard blue states reproductive rights are a winner. In purple states the evangelicals are very very powerful.

      • acat

        play with the electoral college and see whether it’s possible for Obama to win by winning the northeast and rust belt….

        Tip – Since it takes 5 Indianas to equal 1 California, you should perhaps have mentioned Texas above…. except that you also need to assume NY goes Dem .. and you need to explain how Florida will go.

        Mew

      • deVere

        Review the results of pro-life referendums in South Dakota and Mississippi that went down to defeat. Santorum’s extreme positon on that issue may well make him unelectable.

        • GOP Politix

          One thing we need to remember is that the Dems ALWAYS pick candidates with ‘extreme’ positions. It would be worth a try if we, the GOP, did it for once.

          Hey, it was a winning strategy with BO…

    • pdawk

      No one in the primary is going to bring up some of the stuff he has said about social issues that are so far out of the mainstream that he would turn an election about economic issues into a referendum on Santorum’s very far right social beliefs.

      Whether people want to admit it or not, some of the stuff Santorum has said over the years is going to be absolutely inflammatory to independents and especially independent women. Comparing homosexuality and bestiality is not going to fly especially well with independents. I don’t think his stance on rights to privacy are considered mainstream. I also think the fact that he voted for every major spending bill while he was in the senate is going to be a very clear contrast with Obama. While I agree with many of his abortion policies, his rhetoric on the issue has been so inflammatory that it would kill him in the general.

      • nepanyrush

        You state that Santorum has “far right social beliefs” but he holds rather mainstream Catholic beliefs. I have run into a lot of people who denounce Catholics as “extreme, far right cultists” but did not expect it here. Santorum was not seen as far right in Pennsylvania, where he won in Democratic congressional districts against incumbents (including in a 3:1 democrat to republican district) and twice state-wide. He won because he could attract Catholics and Democrats and independents. He lost because he ran against a “proflife” Casey, who brought back the Catholics with his false rhetoric that he (Casey) was prolife.

        Also, Santorum was not comparing homosexuality and bestiality, but rather warming about opening the Pandora’s box where approval of gay marriage could lead to approval of many forms of relationships: marrying three women, or two women and a man, or two men and a women, or mothers and sons marrying, or even marriage between a man and an animal. If you think the later comment is ridiculous, please note that such marriages are already performed in India when it is judged that the individual is not suitable for marriage with a human being. Really, once you open up gay marriage, why should not multiple partners be in a marriage. Canada already has people advocating opening up marriage to polygamy.

        One reason the Republicans lost against Obama last time is the refusal to even bridge social issues. If they want to bring it up against Santorum, it will be a plus, not a minus. Obama is the one with extreme views, not the Catholics.

        • acat

          Some of the social conservatives on Red State like to claim “all evangelicals” or “all catholics”, but .. statistically? Nope.

          The claim is much more commonly made by values-voters moral-majority types who completely ignore history – not polling, but ballot-box results – while insisting that “their candidate is the most right” .. and they’re routinely shocked and discouraged when their candidate proves out their feet of clay.

          Some catholics are far right. Some are hard leftists, go look up father Michael Pfleger.

          As for marriage, please remind me again when government got the right to dictate to the church who could and couldn’t participate in their sacrament. That’s the argument your rationale depends upon, y’see .. and it seems quite silly from my side of the fence.

          Some religions do support polygamy. Some support marriages of limited agreed-upon duration. Some support child brides. Government should, in my opinion, set some reasonable standards and boundaries – minimum ages, limits on consanguinity – but otherwise, shouldn’t it be up to the various religions to steer by their own lights?

          Mew

          • naharu89x7

            Is to enforce morality, standards of behavior, and maintain the integrity of a society. It is only in recent years where people have made the (false) argument that law and morality and different animals. In reality, law is nothing more than written morality.

            You state that the government should not dictate who marries whom, well I say to you that societies which lack a firm and solid family unit(“traditional family) soon fall.

            It is clear to me Acat that you are a Libertarian, not a Conservative. I detect a hint of moral relativism in your last post as well.

            Your ideals of “keep the government out of people’s lives” is tantamount to anarchy. For many years in the US it was seen as acceptable and perfectly within constitutional boundaries for the government, state or local, to enforce morality.

            It is only relatively recently that things have changed, and as a result the social fabric of this country has come undone and continues to collapse.

            Freedom is nothing without responsibility, without the latter you will lose the former, because if society and morality collapse, in the ensuing chaos a tyrant will take over.

          • aesthete

            “It is only in recent years where people have made the (false) argument that law and morality and different animals. In reality, law is nothing more than written morality.”

            People have been making this observation for centuries — *Christians* have been making this observation for centuries! Only a fool would look at our legal landscape and suggest that it is equivalent to morality.

            Law and morality are two somewhat overlapping sets, but they are far from equivalent.

          • naharu89x7

            Nobody would deny that Hammurabi’s Code or the Ten Commandments, two of the first written law codes in history were written morality.

            Likewise, all laws passed by our government today in some manner reflect the morals(or more commonly immorals) of the ones writing it. Even if the person’s moral compass is seriously off, the laws reflect the views of the lawmaker.

            Take for example the recent NDAA act passed by congress. This was written, and passed by those who believe in a police state, or a tyrannical government.

            Or take Roe Vs. Wade as another example, the court believed in legalized abortion, so they ruled as such. That does not make their decision right, but all legal decisions are made with someone’s beliefs in mind, even if said beliefs are wrong.

            The government is supposed to enforce morality, and it does, but the views of government are reflective of the culture they are a part of, so when the culture is off, so to will the government rule increasingly incorrectly.

            Remember what John Adams said, that the government of the United States was meant for a moral and religious people. Without the correct morals the government will increasingly cease to function as it should.

      • lizzie

        in last night’s episode of The Daily Show: “The Vagina Ideologues”.

        That was Vanderplaat’s Faith and Family Forum on Nov 19, 2011, and was only livestreamed at the time; C-Span cancelled their live coverage.
        I had watched it on the livestream, and found it very interesting that Jon Stewart had the footage available to show Santorum at his most “extreme” on contraception.

        ok, it was also interesting that the footage used had Santorum speaking, but the camera was trained on Rick Perry listening (fortunately with an inscrutable game face).

        Santorum wants to overturn Roe v Wade.
        Does that also mean he wants to overturn the precedent, 1965 Griswold v CT, that 1) established the “right to privacy”, and 2) overturned, in 1965, the last of the 1873- Comstock Laws that had made contraception illegal in almost every state?

        Now maybe some of you will remember why George Stephanapoulus pushed Romney into a MittFit on this? Santorum actually jumped into Romney’s time to try to have his say on Griswold v CT, but George S had already succeeded in provoking a MittFit, and laying some groundwork on building contraception as a general election issue.

        If the GOP can not persuade Santorum to clarify how his personal beliefs would or would not impact his presidential agenda, at least the GOP should make this whole issue be about why Obamacare delegates the specifics of what constitutes “preventive health care” to the Executive Branch. THAT was a point made by COS Jack Lew on some of his Sunday news show appearances, and a much bigger issue that could be used to remind people of why Obamacare needs repeal.

        I mean, how many people know that the very definition of mandated health insurance benefits is assigned to the Executive?????

        Is that even more intrusive than the individual mandate to buy health insurance?????

        While y’all are counting Electoral College votes, just a reminder that Gingrich can easily win New York in the general election. The only other candidate who could do that was Rick Perry. Just by giving the 50% of voters who sat home in 2008 a reason to vote. No other current candidate can win New York, where people still like thrice-married Giuliani, and currently post-divorce-living-in-sin Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Governor Andrew Cuomo.

        ok, for anyone wondering about Rick Perry’s re-boot (please take on Obama’s wrecking the US Postal Service next!):

        http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/power-players-abc-news/rick-perry-ll-back-023320988.html
        Five minutes with ABC’s Jonathan Karl at CPAC 02 11 2012

        linked from 02 14 2012 (just in case that news.yahoo URL has moved on):
        http://www.politico.com//blogs/burns-haberman/2012/02/perry-mitt-needs-to-repudiate-mass-law-114393.html

        In any event, I would refrain from investing in sweater vests :)

  • joeydavis

    Those for which abortion, contraception and gay rights will be a primary voting issue are either going to be diehard evangelicals (who stand with Santorum) or diehard liberals (who stand against Santorum). As a whole they’ll make up less than 5% of the electorate and they’ll be marginally proRepublican.

    The economy and jobs will continue to be theme #1 in the campaign. Santorum’s plan is not nearly as radical as the other Republicans 2 tier system 10% and 25% and 0% corporate rate for manufacturing firms. But it is not class warfare and it has the real possibility of creating new and returning old manufacturing jobs. It should be a big winner in rust belt states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. All those states have strong conservative bases with a lot of out of work union laborers.

    The #2 theme will be Obamacare. Obama will easily deflect any attack Mitt Romney can bring with a mirror or the childhood rubber and glue game. Santorum will be very effective with a counter plan about open markets and individually owned HSAs.

    That’s what the election will be about and Santorum will compete very very well in the battleground states. The blue states will be bluer, the red states will be redder, but those in the middle should be trending pink.

    • GOP Politix

      I think you’re right. States like New Mexico where voters care about values will be good for Santorum…I think he can win.

  • GOP Politix

    I’m not ‘all-out’ for any candidate now, but I am leaning toward Santorum. Who else is there?? Newt appears to be on the way out, Paul’s ties with the Occupy movement freak me out and Romney is basically (in my opinion) a Democrat with an ‘R’ following his name!!

    There’s really nobody else left, so it’s either go for Saintorum, or leave the entire GOP nomination process alone. With the Missouri caucus coming soon I think I’m going to choose the former.

  • dogfan

    RealQuiet,

    You say “Mitt Romney whom but all has the nomination shown up after Florida only to remind conservatives that he (with the willing consent of the establishment) really intends to pull the GOP leftward if he is the president.”

    What did he say or do to “remind” us of any such thing?

  • Flagstaff

    Heck, if we get Rubio we don’t need Santorum.

    • bonnman

      nt

  • http://www.timothy-bladel.com/ center77

    for the simple fact that Santorum is the last anti-Romney of the bunch, and that makes me question how much of his support is really just not Romney supporters finally understanding that Gingrich is not going to withstand the billion dollar onslaught that the Obama White House would throw at him.

    • WillWong

      If Gingrich with his legendary resilience can’t withstand, you think Santorum could? Dream on!

  • noogan

    Rick Santorum is a “career opportunist,” according to the Club for Growth. Santorum’s a big-government, union supporting, neo-con, theocrat and statist. Rallying behind Santorum is breathtaking stupidity. It will lead to a disaster in November 2012.

    ?Rick Santorum could be the George McGovern of his party?but it may take an electoral disaster to free the GOP from the ideas and forces that Rick Santorum represents.? — John Samples, Director of the Center for Representative Government at the Cato Institute and the author of The Struggle to Limit Government.

    Snatorum?s Voting Record: Not Conservative!

    http://www.americanfreedombybarbara.com/2012/01/santorum-big-government-candidate.html#.TxL7xZuksr4.twitter

    Here?s what Democrats will throw at Santorum:

    http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/attytood/The-Santorum-that-America-doesnt-know.html

    And here?s what conservatives say:

    Rick Santorum?s Negatives: 21 Facts About Rick Snatorum you should know.

    [Click "older entries" at bottom of page to start from the beginning]

    http://thelibertyblog.org/tag/rick-santorum/

  • evilbloggerlady

    Rick Santorum can potentially beat Obama. But a nanny state scold will not beat Obama. Rick Santorum has to decide what sort of Republican he is. Frankly a hostility to libertarians, tea party members, and Ron Paul supporters will probably hand the election to Barack Obama. We do not need or want that.

    Rick Santorum has to be the happy cheerful warrior for liberty and conservatism, not the Rick Santorum that lost his home state as an incumbent by 18 points in 2006.

  • Viet71

    First, he would fire up the Republican base, as he already has in the wake of his three primary victories.

    If he got the right coach on contraception and abortion, he could finesse these issues by merely pointing out he’s an observant Catholic. The American people would buy that.

    He’s much more genuine than Obama — another big, big plus.

    He also, as far as I know, doesn’t get any SuperPAC money. A big plus, given Obama’s recent decision to slurp from the trough.

    Americans, Right AND Left, are sick and tired of Obama, not exactly for all the same reasons and in the same terms, but with enough anger to jettison him if they’re given a real choice. But a choice that doesn’t scare them on what they regard as personal “bedroom” issues.

    It ain’t about religion, and it ain’t about guns.

    It’s also about giving Americans a choice on character and believability. The cabinet ministers, lawyers, ambassadors, advisers, bureaucrats, military, and technicians do the rest.

    • acat

      Head over to Unlikely Voter, reset the map to 2008, and explain how Santorum can flip enough electoral votes to win.

      I want to know what States you think he can take away from Obama.

      He needs to flip several – including (ideally) Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Virginia – that have large, urban and suburban areas … I’d like to understand how he wins them.

      I’ll assume that NC’s Gov. Perdue (D-idiot) is bad enough that we can assume it’ll flip back to the GOP.

      Mew

      • Viet71

        Step back from being an activist, if you are in fact one, and put yourself in the shoes of ordinary voters around you in Illinois.

        What is the most important thing those voters want in order to vote for a candidate for president? It’s to be able to place trust in the candidate.

        Obama has violated just about everyone’s trust on the right and left.

        I deeply dislike some things Santorum did as senator.

        But I think he’s vastly more trustworthy, even to voters who may not like him or his announced policies. And that’s what counts most to the voters you pass by every day. IMO

        • acat

          Never was true, never will be. Abe Lincoln applies – the Dems will fool some of the people all of the time.

          The trouble with Santorum is that he doesn’t cross over to independents well. I don’t think he’s particularly trustworthy; to me,he comes across as smarmy and arrogant, much as Huckabee came across as condescending and sleazy.

          Elections aren’t won by the True Believers, they’re won by drawing the independents… and I just don’t see them voting for Santorum.

          Mew

          • Viet71

            He’s a pol.

            And you’re right about independents, of course.

            The question, however, is not how you as an informed and perceptive observer see Santorum. It’s how Joe or Mary Schmo from Nowhere, Ohio might see him as a candidate in relation to Obama.

            Independents, IMO, would split between Obama and Santorum. FWIW, as a former Independent, I’d choose Santorum over Obama, even though I really don’t like some of the things Santorum’s done.

            The thing about presidents is that past performance (prior to becoming president) is not often a good predictor of presidential performance.

            JFK (yeah, he was flawed) evolved as president and became a better leader.
            Nixon turned out to be a liberal on social policy. Roosevelt, a rich-boy wimp, became a great wartime president. Who would have guessed?

            No ham sandwich, but it sounds good.

          • acat

            The DeVine one does better JFK analysis than I do ..

            I will point out that the idea of nobleness oblige, that those born with silver spoons have some amount of responsibility back to the common folk appears to cover both Roosevelt and JFK.

            I concur re. Nixon, I would really rather Reagan had won in ’68. (and I’ll note that there are some eerie parallels between ’68 and today)

            All that said, the question about Santorum is whether he can appeal to the center *despite* all the videotape of his past views which will certainly be used against him.

            As another former independent – and one on whom the “Republican” jacket fits quite poorly at times – I’m not seeing how he pulls this off, given the image that he’s previously permitted the media to create, the same image that helped him greatly in Iowa, I’ll note.

            Santorum is going to have to follow the Nixon Doctrine right down the line to win this one, and I’m not sure it’s still feasible.

            Mew

          • Viet71

            He came into office naive all the way around except as to women.

            He lost his naivete as to his national security apparatus in the Bay of Pigs mess and then in the Cuban Missile almost disaster.

            He lost his naivete as to civil rights when James Meredith tried to enroll in Ole Miss.

            From his papers and speeches, one can discern a rich boy, a playboy, but a really intelligent and perceptive boy, maturing in office.

            The great things about JFK: He did have principles, and he never sold out.

          • acat

            conservative-leaning Dems.

            Strong on defense, decent on fiscal issues …

            The modern-day Left has too little in common with JFK.

            Mew

  • http://www.neoavatara.com/blog neoavatara

    First, let me say, if Sen. Santorum is the nominee, I will proudly vote for him.

    But I think the OP is largely wrong in his analysis.

    Santorum would be just as easy to attack, and maybe more so, than the other candidates in the field. He supported virtually every Bush-era bill, and therefore, can be made culpable.

    His verbage on social issues need to improve dramatically if he wishes to face Obama. I generally agree with what he says, but he makes his share of stupid statements, that can be taken out of context.

    So let us see. Santorum really hasn’t been placed in the fire yet. Michigan is the real test.

    • http://pocketchangeproductions.net/ anotherindyfilmguy

      if they pick Sarah Palin for the V.P. nomination, pop some popcorn and watch the left’s collective heads explode as they fall over each other to attack her…

      • Viet71

        n/t

  • http://pocketchangeproductions.net/ anotherindyfilmguy

    Is that he’ll try to be Obama-lite – i.e. he’ll try to patch things up so it doesn’t all collapse right away while playing politics as usual etc and just slowing the slide into bankrupting the US. He’s the one the beltway insiders want for a reason and that reason, whatever it may be for each of them wanting him, likely doesn’t bode well for the outside the beltway folks. I just don’t rust them and by association have a hard time trusting Romney…

    Santorum may not be mr perfect candidate, but the none really are at the end of the day, totally perfect.

    I consider Santorum to be the less flawed, less unelectable, less beatable, less etc etc than Romney.
    /2c

    • radicalrighty

      http://www.breitbart.tv/flashback-santorum-passionately-defends-earmarks/

      Conservative my butt . . .

  • thosjefferson

    Santorum’s sure to get a boost from this:
    http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/15/1065052/-Announcing-Operation-Hilarity-Let-s-keep-the-GOP-clown-show-going-?detail=hide

    Santorum’s past is just starting to catch up with him:

    http://www.dailypaul.com/213706/time-to-take-down-santorums-disguise

    • carolina

      Can you believe how slimey dems behave? This fb campaign fraud is so typical of the disgusting progressives. The sad thing is that a lot of these creeps will actually do this.

  • jarrod21

    I keep hoping I’m going to wake up from this nightmare, and it’s going to be 2008 and Fred Thompson will have won the presidency and we could skip all this silliness.

    It’s driving me absolutely bonkers that we can’t find someone to nominate who can get over the ridiculously low bar of “better than Obama”, the worst president in my lifetime…and I was born during the Carter administration.

    Seriously? This is what we’re going with now?

    I’m flabbergasted that we could potentially nominate someone who believes things like this (which is perfectly valid, everyone is entitled to their own beliefs):

    “One of the things I will talk about that no president has talked about before is I think the dangers of contraception in this country, the whole sexual libertine idea ? Many in the Christian faith have said, ?Well, that?s okay ? contraception?s okay.?

    It?s not okay because it?s a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be. They?re supposed to be within marriage, for purposes that are, yes, conjugal ? but also procreative. That?s the perfect way that a sexual union should happen. We take any part of that out, we diminish the act. And if you can take one part out that?s not for purposes of procreation, that?s not one of the reasons, then you diminish this very special bond between men and women, so why can?t you take other parts of that out? And all of a sudden, it becomes deconstructed to the point where it?s simply pleasure. And that?s certainly a part of it?and it?s an important part of it, don?t get me wrong?but there?s a lot of things we do for pleasure, and this is special, and it needs to be seen as special.”

    …and then says things like this

    “Again, I know most presidents don?t talk about those things, and maybe people don?t want us to talk about those things, but I think it?s important that you are who you are. I?m not running for preacher. I?m not running for pastor, but these are important public policy issues.”

    http://bit.ly/wEUcf8

    These are not important public policy issues. These are not public policy issues at all. There’s no legitimate reason for the state to have a policy on contraception in any way, shape, or form. If a man and a woman, or, heck, let’s up the ante to a husband and wife…if I want to have sex with my wife without the danger of making a baby, it’s no business of Rick Santorum’s.

    I’m certainly glad we’ve got all the big stuff like the economy, terrorism, oil, and China squared away so that we’re ready to have a national conversation about whether or not the terrorists win when people hump without making babies. I was worried there for a second, but if Rick Santorum says it’s an important public policy issue, then I guess we’re golden!

    Oh, well. I’ll be dead in another fifty or sixty years, I imagine. That can’t be too long to wait to escape whatever Obama’s 2nd term will bring about.

    I blame Paul Ryan for deciding not to run.

  • mm2327

    I’d intended to post this link in my comment earlier, but forgot http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/was-santorum-senate-spendthrift_629850.html?page=1

    Santorum was NEVER a big government, nanny statist that is a lie told by the same Mitt Romney who was the Massachusetts governor who raised taxes in Massachusetts 7 times in one term. Left Massachusetts with a massive debt and the destructive burden of Romneycare.

  • mm2327

    http://ricksantorum.com/made-america.com

    Here is an article that reveals the National Taxpayer’s Union graded Santorum during his period in congress as an A, because he was a true fiscal conservative http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/was-santorum-senate-spendthrift_629850.html?page=1

    Those claiming Santorum is big government are liars, trying to push deranged RINO Romney. If you vote for Romney, you hand the election to Obama, the same way those who voted for McCain did.