Santorum is a social conservative, and if you want to view him through that lense and that lense alone, then you can conclude he’d be better than Romney.. However if you look at his overall record, the guys record really isn’t all that different. You take social issues out of the mix and you have basically a guy does not believe in limited federal government and is on the record repeatedly saying so. Only difference is WHAT issues santorum feels the government should be overly involved in.
For his social causes he will use the force and power of government to be as intrusive as it can be... for things he doesn’t agree with, not so much.
You don’t have a huge ideological conservative in Santorum. What you do have is another “compassionate conservative” like Bush with “social conservative” leanings. If you want small government, Santorum ain’t gonna give it to you.
I am not defending Romney, he sucks.. Santorum’s a milk toast, Romney’s sucks... viewed under the context of limited government, there isn’t much differnce between the two.
And that’s not even getting into the electability issues Santorum has.
Basially the election boils down to a vote of confidence in Obama... And every poll out there say people want his lame arse gone. So any republican who doesn’t come across as an absolute monster will likely win. Its a shame that given that, we have a guy Santorum who is easily painted as one with his own soundbites, and a guy who can’t easily be painted as one, but will likely govern farther left that I would like. However both are better than the current occupant, but only one has any shot at electability, and it ain’t Santorum.
Personally I think Newt was the only candidate truly worthy of the Job, but that isn’t going to happen...so 4 more years of crap. Just a question of how much.
An interesting article by one who knows Santorum well...and does explain why Rick will have a problem in Pa:
“I’ve known Rick Santorum for 22 years, having first met him in 1990 before he’d won his first campaign for Congress. I interviewed him on WORD-FM, an evangelical Christian radio station where I was a frequent guest host (and eventually a full-time host) early in his campaign.
If I was not the first media personality to interview Rick, I was one of the first.
I haven’t written any articles about Santorum’s presidential bid, until now. He was no longer my business. And I resisted the urge this election season to tell fellow Republicans around the United States about Rick, because I figured they would find out soon enough.
And then Rick made himself my business.
“Rick makes things up.” The more I thought about it, the more clear it was to me that Santorum’s main problem (and there are many) is as simple as that:..... he does not tell the truth. He makes things up as he goes along, assuming no one will check. ...When the people of Pennsylvania figured that out, they were done with him and fired him as their Senator, and Rick even lied about that.
So, since the ACU has an objective method of summing up respective records by the same criteria I tend to trust their assessments.
According to them, Santorum, while not as good as some, is a better conservative choice than most.
Anyway its true all this is increasingly moot.