Southern sweep: Rick Santorum takes Mississippi and Alabama

Los Angeles Times ^ | 03/13/2012 | Michael A. Memoli

[Hildy]

I can’t stand him.

[CharlesWayneCT]

When Santorum won his 3-state victory, the Newt folks started on the “Now he’ll be vetted”, and “nobody can stand up to Romney’s money” — which was their message of why Newt failed in Florida.

Then Santorum almost took Michigan, losing by a few thousand votes thrown to Gingrich.

And we were told that NOW he would be vetted, and he was dropping like a rock, and would be an afterthought.

Then he won multiple states on Super Tuesday, and lost Ohio again only by a small number of Gingrich votes, and lost Alaska only by a few hundred Gingrich caucus votes.

And we were told “Now Santorum will be vetted”.

Then he won in Kansas, and we were told “But now he’ll be vetted, Newt will sweep the south”.

Now Santorum has won (pending any recount in Mississippi, I guess), and we are being told again that Newt is rising, and Santorum will be vetted.

Apparently, either Santorum is doing a much better job of handling the Romney attack machine than Newt did in Florida, or nobody is ever going to vet Santorum.

[SaraJohnson]

Santorum can do it IF he can remember his Pittsburgh roots and take his foot out of his mouth.

---

You are right but that is a big if. He’s not all that smart on the spot and liberals will scalp him with his help.

[Darren McCarty]

That's my view of Romney from seeing him in action in his birth state over a six year period. Santorum for me was the lesser of four evils.

Personally, I'd actually like to see a brokered convention. I may get ripped for this, but I'd vote for Mitch Daniels in a minute. Pawlenty probably would have clinched the nomination if he stayed in. Those two are the winners and the actual "electable ones" .

[Hildy]

This entire process was too long...we need to change so much in this Country.

[darrellmaurina]

39 posted on Wednesday, March 14, 2012 12:03:43 AM by Darren McCarty “Which Michigan accent? To me, Mitt sounds like a East Coast Prep School accent. He probably picked it up at Cranbrook. That would hurt him down South too (My longtime girlfriend's a Southern Belle from Shreveport via Atlanta suburbs so while I'm not an expect, know a little about how Midwesterners are viewed down there). For some reason, I picked up the lesser known south MI country accent commonly heard outside of Adrian, Jackson, and Hillsdale. I didn't realize it until I did some work there and realized they talked like me. Grandpa's from Jackson, and dad worked the auto factories, so I picked a little of that up.”

Interesting question!

I went to college with several Cranbook and Detroit County Day School people so I understand the attempt of some of their graduates to sound refined and cultured in their clipped quasi-Yankee speech. Maybe that will help the graduates if they get into Harvard or Yale but I can't imagine it helping Romney in the South.

I grew up in Grand Rapids and lived most of my life until the last dozen years in either Holland, Grand Rapids, or the rural area west of Kalamazoo, which means basically the “Hollandse colonie” of the Dutch. Other than learning how to mangle some Dutch pronunciations -- try saying Christelijke Gereformeerden five times fast with proper guttural vocalizations -- I don't think that ethnic proximity had any effect on my speech.

However, my parents both came from families that had spent several generations in northern Michigan since shortly after the Civil War. My mother was from Traverse City and my father was a Yooper (Michigan's Upper Peninsula for the Southerners reading this thread who have no idea what we're talking about.) My father's family moved to Flint during WW2 to work in the war defense plants and later my father traveled all over the Southern US during his time in the military; my mother's family moved to the Battle Creek-Kalamazoo area but she spent most summers with family in Traverse City.

Where this becomes relevant is that because my parents grew up before the age of television, they spoke with a pronounced accent that isn't heard today in Michigan, and the only thing I've heard much like it is the rural farm accent of people from Bob Dole's generation in the upper Midwest. I grew up with the nasal twang of a West Michigander which was once shared all along the Lakeshore; the standard joke was that due to bad weather we always had our noses stuffed up and couldn't talk right.

I don't know that this has anything to do with the subject at hand, but you asked, so I hope at least one person was interested!

[dirtboy]

Now, the Santorum trolls will flock in

The biggest troll I see on this thread is you, with your claim that Santorum is unvetted.

How about you make the case for Newt instead of posting bald-faced lies about the other conservative in the race?

[John D]

Rick Santorum is and always has been a strong family values Conservative

He may be a strong social conservative, but he is no fiscal conservative. He is a big spending big union supporting liberal.
At this point in time we need a fiscal conservative like Newt.

[Gaffer]

While Newt may still press on, the news isn’t good for him, particularly in the way of donations he can expect in future. Georgia and SC wins aren’t enough to pull in the big bucks - AIR TIME.

He will still garner delegates in the coming contests, but he’ll have to fight tooth and nail for them — from Santorum.

I voted for him here in the Georgia Primary, but I suspect that will have been the last time I see his name on a ballot. The best thing we can hope for now is a convention that is fractured, split and undecided. Perhaps there, if it gets to that, he can get one big last spotlight and a chance to plead his case before the delegates. It had better be one hell of a speech.

Lastly, at this point, I feel like the denizens of South Park in the School Mascot Naming episode with respect to the mascot choices.

[SeekAndFind]

RE: But the fact is that Hawaii has only about 20 delegates, while Mississippi has about 40, and Alabama about 50.

1) BTW, Romney also won American Samoa ( as if anybody cares )

2) If you add up the delegates Romney added in Alabama and Mississippi to the ones he won in Hawaii and Samoa, that’s still a huge chunk he collected last night.

The only chance Santorum has of reaching Romney’s tally is for Gingrich to quit and pledge his delegates to Rick, but that ain’t gonna happen, so the best we anti-Romney types can hope for now is he MISSES the 1,144 delegates to officially win the nomination.

[SeekAndFind]

RE: He may be a strong social conservative, but he is no fiscal conservative. He is a big spending big union supporting liberal.

_________________________

An overall look at Santorum’s record in his 16 years in Washington disproves the above statement. You don’t look at one or two votes and then IGNORE the overall thrust of his other fiscal votes.

SEE HERE:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/was-santorum-senate-spendthrift_629850.html

TITLE : Was Santorum a Senate Spendthrift?

EXCERPT:

_______________________

The National Taxpayers Union (NTU) has been rating members of Congress for 20 years. NTU is an independent, non-partisan organization that — per its mission statement — “mobilizes elected officials and the general public on behalf of tax relief and reform, lower and less wasteful spending, individual liberty, and free enterprise.” Steve Forbes serves on its board of directors.

For each session of Congress, NTU scores each member on an A-to-F scale. NTU weights members’ votes based on those votes’ perceived effect on both the immediate and future size of the federal budget. Those who get A’s are among “the strongest supporters of responsible tax and spending policies”; they receive NTU’s “Taxpayers’ Friend Award.” B’s are “good” scores, C’s are “minimally acceptable” scores, D’s are “poor” scores, and F’s earn their recipients membership in the “Big Spender” category. There is no grade inflation whatsoever, as we shall see.

NTU’s scoring paints a radically different picture of Santorum’s 12-year tenure in the Senate (1995 through 2006) than one would glean from the rhetoric of the Romney campaign. Fifty senators served throughout Santorum’s two terms: 25 Republicans, 24 Democrats, and 1 Republican/Independent. On a 4-point scale (awarding 4 for an A, 3.3 for a B+, 3 for a B, 2.7 for a B-, etc.), those 50 senators’ collective grade point average (GPA) across the 12 years was 1.69 — which amounts to a C-. Meanwhile, Santorum’s GPA was 3.66 — or an A-. Santorum’s GPA placed him in the top 10 percent of senators, as he ranked 5th out of 50.

Across the 12 years in question, only 6 of the 50 senators got A’s in more than half the years. Santorum was one of them. He was also one of only 7 senators who never got less than a B. (Jim Talent served only during Santorum’s final four years, but he always got less than a B, earning a B- every year and a GPA of 2.7.) Moreover, while much of the Republican party lost its fiscal footing after George W. Bush took office — although it would be erroneous to say that the Republicans were nearly as profligate as the Democrats — Santorum was the only senator who got A’s in every year of Bush’s first term. None of the other 49 senators could match Santorum’s 4.0 GPA over that span.

This much alone would paint an impressive portrait of fiscal conservatism on Santorum’s part. Yet it doesn’t even take into account a crucial point: Santorum was representing Pennsylvania.

CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE REST

[csmusaret]

Grits are like a politician; they taste like whatever you add to them. Just as politicians adjust their comments to suit the audience, so do grits assume the taste of whatever ingredient gets added.

[nightmarewhileawake]

obama and his minions are celebrating ... they play dirty.
we should audit Alabama and Mississippi’s results.
will donald step in like he promised if there’s no “suitable” candidate?? This is a mess — axelrod & company are happy and
smirking.

[achilles2000]

Why? I’m sure Mittens thinks such food is beneath him.

[Jim from C-Town]

SO? Santorum is certainly more fiscally conservative than Obama on his most frugal day. He also is far less government centric than Romney. He may be a little more fiscally conservative than Newt, yet Newt has spoken up for government mandates on Insurance coverage, cap and trade scams and other less than conservative ideas.

Newt would be great against Obama in a fair fight, it isn't going to be a fair fight. Obama will link up with the Republican DC insiders to trash Gingrich and rehash the mid nineties attacks as well as new ttacks.

The most they say about Santorum is that he is a by the book Catholic. A certainly more p[palatable position than being a Bishop in a religion viewed as a strange cult by a vast percentage of the electorate.

[John D]

You don’t look at one or two votes and then IGNORE the overall thrust of his other fiscal votes.

Like his vote against the Right to Work Act. He voted to keep Americans from working unless they joined a union. Why would any fiscal conservative vote to keep Americans form working without joining a union? A true fiscal conservative wouldn't.