Posted on 01/14/2012 3:31:10 PM PST by TBBT
COLUMBIA, S.C. -- With the South Carolina Republican presidential primary a week away, former Sen. Rick Santorum on Saturday received the endorsement of 150 influential Christian conservative leaders who are hoping to prevent former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney from becoming the GOP nominee.
The group, suspicious that Romney's commitment to social conservative causes such as ending legalized abortion is weak, met at a ranch outside of Houston, Texas, in hopes of rallying around one candidate rather than split their votes among three - Santorum, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Gov. Rick Perry.
The endorsement came as the Republican presidential field converged on scenic Charleston, S.C., for a televised town hall meeting for undecided voters hosted by Rep. Tim Scott, R-S.C., and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, said in a telephone news conference after the meeting that the conservatives had begun their deliberations with "not a lot of hope that we could reach consensus around one candidate."
But in the end "there emerged a strong consensus around Rick Santorum," Perkins said, after three rounds of balloting.
Santorum, a staunch anti-abortion social conservative, was considered a long-shot candidate before surprising many by losing to Romney in Iowa caucuses Jan. 3 by only eight votes.
Support fluctuated between Santorum and Gingrich, Perkins said, before more than two-thirds voted for the former Pennsylvania senator. In the end, Santorum received 85 votes out of 114 - a smaller total because Perkins said some participants had left to catch flights.
(Excerpt) Read more at miamiherald.com ...
I guess Reagan never made a bad decision.
So, Conservatives will again be told to unite behind a RINO (something we have been doing since 1988) because they won't use any common sense and unite behind a single candidate who isn't perfect on a particular issue.
yup, just like the line of progressive/lib/commies are always ideologically convinced [or just greedy] that the system has always failed because it wasnt done right, so too does the biggov 'R' label trmple me with their fixes for everything in my life...
whether i need it, or want it or not...
gov 24/7 is the problemm noot...
1) Newt is no Reagan, not close
2) Reagan was 30 years ago, its too common to here to trash Reagan to build up a flawed candidate
3) Newt still hasn't told us what he thinks his mistake was. Clinton for sure thinks his mistake was getting caught and for all we know that is the way Newt feels,
common sense eh ???
i will not play this statist game again...
a particular issue ??? of which one does ole greengrinch actually have my best interest ???
this ABMR and ABBB bs has already grown old this cycle...
swallow yer fear and prepare for bambam part II, cause there aint a turd in the punchbowl thatll float him out between the crap sandwiches weve been given again...and also a good chance that if any of these POSs *could* beat a $Billion DNC propaganda machine, theyd prolly rule to the left of it anyways...
for my own good, because they know best and all...
BTW, you should prolly rethink yer handle, or at least describe what declaration you are actually *for*...
Memory refresh: someone brought to Newt's attention that Doug Hoffman, who ran on the Conservative Party ticket for NY-23 U.S. House open seat in November 2009 special election as a Tea Party candidate, didn't live in the district and if he won, he would be challenged and disqualified and the seat would go to a Democrat. Newt, who didn't know Dede Scozzafava from Adam, except that she was nominated by NY GOP, "endorsed" a Republican candidate to keep the seat and prevent handing the seat over to Democrats.
Why is that considered a problem? BTW, the postscript to this that nobody talks about, is that in 2010 Doug Hoffman ran again for the same seat, NY-23, in Republican primary and lost, so he decided to run as a Conservative Party candidate again, qualified for the ballot and then withdrew from the race. He received almost 10,000 votes in that election, while Democrat Bill Owen who beat him in special election in 2009 beat Republican candidate by less than 4,000 votes. Hoffman was a "spoiler."
There were no good choices, only two bad ones (due to NY GOP and Conservative Party/Doug Hoffman not doing their homework), so how much sense does it make to criticize Newt for making a "bad" choice, trying to keep the seat in (R) column?
Re ad with Pelosi and destroying Kerry and his arguments for energy scarcity and more government control, regulations and taxes due to "climate change" in the debate, it's an old Sun Tzu's strategy and tactic, today known better as Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. It's much more effective and easier - in public policy issue or politics - to co-opt and destroy the reason, the motive, the end goal of the proponents and the proposal, instead of arguing with the "science" / scientists / methodology etc.. Democrats have been doing if for a long time.
..... About a month after the commercial began airing, Gingrich's now defunct political action group, American Solutions for Winning the Future, began its own advertising campaign -- a pro- oil "Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less," mantra aimed at blocking legislation co-sponsored by Senators Joseph I. Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, and John Warner, a Virginia Republican, to combat climate change by curbing carbon emissions. ..... < snip > ..... "We rejected the initial script because it stated positions that we just didn't believe were true," said Tyler. "They wanted Newt to basically talk about global warming, which we would not do. At the time, 'climate change' was seen as a safe thing to say." ..... < snip >
For more background: Pelosi Fires Back at Gingrich - FR, posts #27, 29, 2012 January 09
Outstanding post. Hope you don’t mind if I steal from it when addressing anti-Newt people on here.
You should consider making this into a vanity.
It's in public fomain. Feel free. :-)
You should consider making this into a vanity.
Not vane and don't have a lot of time for fireworks. Feel free to "appropriate" any of my comments, info and links in other posts or vanity threads.
fomain = domain
It is also a bipartisan fleecing of taxpayers and consumers.
To progressives like Jesse Jackson it is a way to redistribute wealth because they were counting on mandated Green jobs in poor neighborhoods. They never mention the higher energy prices that would result.
I am with you on that as I have posted before. I have no doubt that these folks left in the race will sell us out in a heartbeat under pressure, Romney and Newt being the two less principled of the bunch. Paul is the only one of the group that would fight the statists against big government as Club for Growth has stated, and he is no option (no help) because he comes off as a nut-job and I seriously doubt he wants to be POTUS anyway.
I remember 2007 and the theme was “Don't worry, Fred Thompson will save us”. 2011 theme was “Don't worry Palin will save us”. Well you and I know that no-one will save us. Romney has the $$$ and the rest are not inspiring.
You can't have candidates as flawed as Romney and Newt representing the only alternative party to Democrats. It's a gift to Democrats.
The problem, which this election is clearly highlighting, is that there is a growing fissure between statists and small-governmentalists. And it’s found throughout the political spectrum, left and right. It’s becoming increasingly impossible for any candidate to attract both sides in any of the political parties.
On the right, social conservatives are more apt to support an ever more powerful, centralized government... for only that size government is capable of delivering what they want.
After all, how can you eliminate abortion unless you there is one law over all the land proclaiming it illegal... and how can you enforce it without monitoring every woman and doctor at all times, coupled with a large enough police force to arrest them before it happens?
And that costs money. A lot of money. Money that will come from higher taxes.
And on the left, you see this play out between the communists/socialists/fascists/race baiters/unions/environmentalists and the hippy drippy ‘my body is a temple and I can do what I want with it’ crowd.
To be sure, it’s fairly unbalanced between the two parties... with more small-governmentalists in the Republican party than Democrat party, and vice versa in the Democrat party. But there is enough of the opposite in each party to play spoiler. Which is why the Republicans have managed to screw the pooch in 2008... and will probably do it again in 2012.
The problem I have is that many of them want a ever more powerful, centralized FEDERAL government. They have joined the Democrats in believing that the Federal government should be the ultimate regulator of morality, while completely disagreeing with Democrats on what those moral rules should be. (Democrats moral rules examples : federal civil rights for gays, or Roe vs Wade federal right to abortion.)
They act as if the Democrats will never get power and won't use that expansion of federal powers for their own uses. Remember all that Tea party talk about ‘the constitution’ so popular in 2009 and 2010, But it was barely heard when GWB was president('he kept you safe' so forget the constitution ), and I expect it will completely disappear from Republicans if we get another RINO, err Republican POTUS.
How many Republican candidates talk about limiting federal power, limiting the meaning of interstate commerce in constitutional interpretations? Besides Paul, Bachmann did which is why I liked her. (The problem with Paul is he wants the opposite extreme.) The remaining ones that I can tell want a big powerful Republican government. Then there are the candidates 'proposed' constitutional amendments going no-where that drive me up the wall.
Why?
So I guess you aren’t going to be voting.
I stated a general principle, all men, even great ones, make mistakes.
Last year Newt was interviewed on a Christian show last year and was asked about his adultery and he explained that he said “I got so caught up in saving the country that I lost my moral compass.”
Mistake?
Then I saw him on FNC Your World and the sub-host called him out on his successful government shutdown in 1995 trying to get Clinton to accept budget cuts. Newt actually claimed that Clinton was the one to cave and accept the Republican budget.
Sorry but the truth is that after three weeks of shutdown voters were getting tired of it and then Newt made some comment to the press about getting a bad seat on AF1 and it was over. It was the joke of the country as SNL did a skit on it. Public opinion turned sharply against house Republicans and they sent Clinton the CR he was demanding all along. It was a humilating defeat as they paid government employees for all three weeks of the shutdown,.
Newt knows no ‘mistakes’. Newt knows no right or wrong. He is a very flawed individual with a huge ego.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.