Santorum has a long history of doing what is politically expedient for himself. Do you think for one minute that if it comes down to it he will reject being Romney's VP.
Oh anyone who thinks they can make Santorum smell like a perfumed rose ignores history at their own peril. All the Newt bashing about preventing that old gutter snipe Clinton from being thrown out of office, drink willingly kool-aid.
Frankly I’m starting to think we have a lot of Romney trolls who are doing all they can to destroy Santorum because all they’re doing is helping Romney.
JusrMyThoughts, most if not all of us know that Santorum has both voted and said things that most Freepers would consider problematic. So has Gingrich.
Blaming Santorum for being a Romney supporter four years ago simply doesn't make sense. He did that to try to stop John McCain because four years ago Mitt Romney was the conservative candidate who appeared to have the necessary money to “go the distance” and stop McCain. It turned out that Romney folded his tent early and went home when he decided that throwing good money after bad didn't make good business sense, and it was Huckabee who “went the distance” and kept campaigning on a shoestring budget until McCain finally won all the delegates he needed to sew up the nomination.
Based on what we've seen this year, it looks like Santorum learned an important lesson — shoestring campaigns can work because people who believe in what they're doing will work much harder than those who work mostly for money. Look at how much money Romney spent to win each vote compared to his opponents.
I wish Santorum had supported Huckabee four years ago, but he didn't, and if he had supported Huckabee four years ago, lots of other Freepers would be jumping all over him pointing out Huckabee’s problematic positions on criminal pardons and related issues. No candidate is perfect, and as far as I'm concerned, I'd rather look at Santorum’s support for Romney four years ago and say, “Hey, let's be glad the Republican Party is moving in a more conservative direction.”
What you're seeing now is some real anger by Santorum supporters pushing back against some pretty serious attacks we've seen for the last few weeks. People were not only saying that Santorum should drop out but also saying that Santorum has bad motives, and beyond that, making some serious attacks on Christian conservatives. Given your tagline, I believe you'll be sympathetic to my concerns about the behavior of a number of supporters of your candidate who were making open attacks on Christian conservatives. Gingrich wasn't talking that way, but some of his supporters sure were.
Now that Santorum has won four states and Gingrich has won only one state, it's pretty hard to say that if the conservative anti-Romney people should unite behind a single candidate, it should be Santorum who drops out.
For the record, I think it's too early for anyone except Ron Paul to drop out, and he's not going to do so. Gingrich and Santorum draw their supporters from different segments of the Republican Party — both need each others votes and both need to work together this fall to defeat President Obama. Romney's views are simply no longer part of the mainstream of the modern Republican Party, and I don't have a problem with saying we need to drive Romney and what he represents out of the party. If he joined the Democrats, he'd be a positive influence and might help drag their party back toward a reasonable liberal position instead of socialism and nut-case stuff that is far worse.
That's not saying I like everything Santorum has done.
In Santorum’s case, I think most if not all of his problematic votes were due to either 1) voting the way his Pennsylvania constituents wanted him to vote, which isn't a problem for me as long as he understands he's now running for national office, not for one state or congressional district, or 2) being faithful to Roman Catholic social teaching on issues where the Roman Catholic Church is not on the same page as the modern American conservative movement. This is not the time to run around bashing my Roman Catholic friends, but I'm a Calvinist who believes in what is sometimes known as the “Protestant work ethic,” and my support for Rick Santorum doesn't minimize the fact that I have very serious problems with his church, which is also the church of Newt Gingrich.
If we're going to select a conservative this year to run against Barack Obama, it's going to have to be either Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum. I know Santorum takes his faith seriously, and I can't stand up and applaud when he says good things about abortion while not recognizing that his views on certain other issues may also be consistent with the teachings of the church. I'd rather vote for a Catholic who believes what his church teaches — i.e., Gingrich or Santorum — than any other option we have left this year.
If we want a candidate whose church advocates aggressive in-your-face capitalism combined with a strong and even legalistic emphasis on family values, that candidate is running this year, and he's the wrong guy for lots of other reasons. I'll take either Gingrich or Santorum over a Mormon this year, while recognizing that four years ago lots of my fellow conservatives were backing Romney because they wanted to stop McCain.
39 posted on Wednesday, February 08, 2012 10:27:17 PM by napscoordinator: “If Santorum could just lose the sweater vest for a leather flight jacket, then he’s got my vote. lol. Whatever it takes “p” whatever it takes. Have a good one.”
I wore a sweater vest to visit the polls on election day to check how many people had voted, and wore it to the courthouse when the votes were being tallied. I'll probably wear a red sweater vest today to the county commission meeting. Nobody accused me of electioneering, fortunately, since I've worn sweater vests for years.
65 posted on Thursday, February 09, 2012 2:54:31 AM by American Constitutionalist: “Why the such hatred of Rick Santroum ? .. it surely can't be the vest, that preoccupation of some people here on FR about Rick's vest is so trivial and immature.... Why the such hatred of Rick ? is it because he is Pro-life ? Anti-Gay marriage ? .. what else could explain the such rabid response to Rick Santroum ?”
AC, I grew up in a political family in Michigan, back in the days before the rise of the Christian conservative movement. I remember when the Romney family members had to be careful to downplay their Mormonism, not because it would offend evangelicals, but because **ANY** expression of serious religious commitment was viewed as weakness (at best) or nut-case “drink the kool-aid” cultishness.
I saw the incredible hatred directed toward the new “unwashed” evangelical voters who flooded into the Republican Party as “Reagan Democrats.” Personal, bitter, vindictive hatred, often for no reason at all. I was converted myself to evangelical Christianity during the middle of that, and to put it mildly, that didn't make me popular with the Republican establishment.
For much of the next decade I focused on church politics and got a reputation as a street fighter who applied the tactics of secular politics and communications strategies to the “hidebound” good-old-boy networks of a denomination that was rapidly veering into liberalism. I lost, the conservative movement in that denomination lost, and tens of thousands of church members walked out.
What I learned was that good-old-boy networks rely on personal friendships and sometimes dirty secrets to survive. People who are ideologically committed to their beliefs and won't back down are threats to good-old-boy networks.
The secular parts of the “Tea Party” movement threaten the Republican establishment in ways very much like Ronald Reagan did. Add in the issue of personal morality emphasized by conservative Christians, and I can't blame old-guard people for being angry not only that their cushy deals are being threatened but also that their personal conduct is being criticized.
70 posted on Thursday, February 09, 2012 3:38:44 AM by sargon: “While I can overlook some of the issues with Santorum, of the ones you cite, the one which is most disturbing is his absurd opposition to “right to work”. I just don't get it, and I would appreciate it if some Santorum supporter could calmly explain such an apparent anti-conservative aberration... I am going to give Rick a closer look, but his apparent submission to union interests is a gigantic red flag to me at the moment... But I'll keep watching and give him some fair consideration...”
Sargon, you raise a valid issue.
I've written this on two other threads and I'm combining them here:
Both Gingrich and Santorum have a long history of appealing to “populist” insurgent groups which were mad at the political establishments in their states. In Pennsylvania, that meant dissatisfied Democrats willing to vote Republican who were often ethnic blue-collar “Reagan Democrats,” and in Pennsylvania that often meant union workers. In Georgia, that meant dissatisfied rural whites as well as upwardly mobile suburban white voters.
Put another way: Santorum is from a northern old-economy industrial state. Gingrich, despite being a northerner, moved to the South just as the Republican Party was beginning to gain ground. Economic progress in Pennsylvania depended for a very long time on keeping the unions happy and preventing them from calling destructive strikes. Economic progress in Georgia depended on attracting companies that were looking to move to lower-cost Southern states without a history of strong unions.
If Gingrich had stayed in the North or if Santorum had moved South, I'm not sure either of them, if they wanted to effectively represent their own local constituents, would have had voting histories radically different from the other candidate.
Of course, both men are now running for president where they need to represent the entire nation, not just a single state or congressional district. It's a valid question whether Santorum can think nationally; Gingrich has probably already shown he can do so.
My read is both men understand the importance of doing what's best for the nation, not merely their own local state, but it's not fair to blame either man for faithfully representing the people who put them into office.
Another factor: I am not a huge fan of unions, but in an environment where “Cap and Trade” and carbon taxes are threatening to destroy the coal industry, I am not necessarily unhappy with a candidate like Santorum who has a very long history of supporting coal miners.
At the same time that Newt Gingrich was getting his photograph with Nancy Pelosi on the couch to call attention to global warming, Santorum was saying that we need to support America's coal miners, at least in part because he's from an old-economy state in which coal has been a major industry. Newt admitted he's wrong, and I respect that, but if we're going to criticize Santorum for cozying up to unionized coal miners, let's not forget that coal miners and other unionized workers sometimes vote Republican, and if they're going to vote Republican, Santorum is a better candidate to get those “Reagan Democrat” votes.
Reagan Democrats are less important today than they were three decades ago, but they're still important in states like Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania — states that the eventual Republican nominee, whoever he is, needs to win to win the presidency.