Rick, OTOH, did not do as well. He was under attack and they scored some hits on him, diminishing what he presents as a solid, dependable, and unchanging devotion to certain conservative principles.
His vote for planned parenthood funding and the reasons he gave were not good, IMHO. Abortion is a signature issue for him (and should be for us all) and putting him in a position where he had to explain the "politics" of why he voted for that funding because he had to in order to get other things passed punctuated exactly what is wrong in Washington and he was a part of it.
Same thing on the bail outs. He rode Romney hard on being for Wall Street Bail Outs while not being for the Car Industry bailouts and how inconsistant Romeny was, and how Romney's reasons were just political speech. And then Rommeny comes up with the fact that Santorum supported the Airliner Bail Outs and Santorum had to launch into the same type of political speech to defend it and say how in his case, "it was different." Did not wash too well IMHO, and I am a Santorum supporter.
So, Santorum did not have a good night, though I still believe he is the most conservative of the bunch.
We'll have to see how it plays out next week in Michigan and Arizona. If Romeny wins both of those by any appreciable margin it will hurt Santorum, and the great hope will then be that Super Tuesday with Newt in the South becomes the next fire break against Romney.
Just my opinion.
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You’re right Jeff, Santorum’s answers were NOT good on that question, and we’ve heard countless “I felt I should vote for it because some of our stuff was in there too” lame justifications for just such political choices in voting for this or that. Ron Paul was laughing when Santorum came out with that explanation. When Santorum came out with “politics is a team effort” , that said it all. The accomodationist blending of Right into Left (it’s never the other way around)
is a big part of the problem with the Washington Establishment, it’s clever procedures for built-in levelling out of both parties into one big Establishment party.
You’re right Jeff, Santorum’s answers were NOT good on that question, and we’ve heard countless “I felt I should vote for it because some of our stuff was in there too” lame justifications for just such political choices in voting for this or that. Ron Paul was laughing when Santorum came out with that explanation. When Santorum came out with “politics is a team effort” , that said it all. The accomodationist blending of Right into Left (it’s never the other way around)
is a big part of the problem with the Washington Establishment, it’s clever procedures for built-in levelling out of both parties into one big Establishment party.