I've been around politics long enough to know that something like the article caww cited didn't come out of nowhere. It's virtually tailor-made to damage Rick Santorum in his home state with his core constituency of conservative Christians. While I am not going to criticize the motives of the author and am inclined to take him at his word about his reasons for writing and maybe even his own timing, the timing of the article's prominent appearance in a major conservative magazine like Forbes is pretty likely intended by the Romney campaign to attack Santorum and is likely part of an effort to knock Santorum out of the race by wrecking his polling numbers in Pennsylvania.
I know nothing about the author or his background as an Christian broadcaster or his credibility in Pennsylvania. I also don't know local issues. What I do know is this article has to be rebutted by the Santorum campaign, and rebutted quickly.
I see at least two potential problems with the article. There may well be others which I have not noticed because I don't know Pennsylvania politics, and what I write here is tentative. Somebody from the Santorum campaign needs to write a much better response.
First, the article uses the “lie” word in ways which are questionable at best. That is a very, very serious charge. That word needs to be used very rarely and only when it can be proved that someone has deliberately stated things he knew to be false with an intent to deceive. Most statements by political figures are made carefully enough that they can't be caught in a deliberate lie, so even if I think an elected official lied, I usually can't prove it, and if I can't prove it I'm not going to make the accusation.
In this specific article, while I think some of the accusations (i.e., the charitable giving) are potentially capable of being proved to be deliberate lies, I'm not at all convinced the article has proved that Santorum lied even about that, and much less so the other accusations. I don't recall any case where I have accused Gingrich or even Romney of lying, and the evidence the author cites is weak in at least some of the situations he cites. I'm not saying it's wrong, only that the evidence isn't there.
Second, I am not at all convinced that Santorum backing a proposal to use government funding to keep professional sports teams is a good example of his supposed “big government” views. Do I like such things? No, but the reality is that I live in an area where the entire future of our community depends on Department of Defense spending, and where things like TIFs and CIDs and NIDs and other things of that type are standard engines of economic growth which the broadcaster dismisses as Keynesian economics.
I think it's clear that Pennsylvania is far from the only area where governments have spent tens of millions of dollars to keep a professional sports team in town, or to provide some other incentive to a private business to keep its owners in town or convince its owners to move to town or expand an existing operation. We can say Santorum was wrong to do that, and that's fine, but blaming Santorum for doing what his constituents wanted, especially when what they wanted has become standard practice in economic development, is asking Santorum to be the sort of elected official who probably can't get re-elected in a moderate-to-liberal state.
If that's the worst example the author can come up with of Santorum’s supposed “big government” views, I think the author is proving only that Santorum is from a northern “rustbelt” state where the government has been involved in providing incentives to business for at least a century. I also think it wouldn't be too hard to find lots of conservative Southerners who support the same or similar incentives to business. Feel free to disagree — that's a fair question — but those who disagree would have been in a very small minority of people in government until the current economic crisis in which lots of people agree staving off bankruptcy needs to be the key priority.
As the Primary now turns toward Rick's homestate there is no doubt the Romney camp will be in full swing to upset his chances. However there are also those in Pa. who have not forgotten why Rick was booted before and are not about to be taken in by him again. So we'll be seeing more articles from authors etc. who might very well be airing their own opinion for that. It's no secret the idea is to prevent Romney taking the state...though it's almost too late for that. I will soon be voting and though not in Santorums court if he looks to take the state over Newt then I will vote for SAntorum to keep Romney out. But not happy to do so.