Free Republic

Former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum dismissed Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul’s 2016 presidential ambitions, claiming “the Republican Party is not a libertarian party” and suggesting few GOP voters would be swayed by Paul’s small government message. Santorum swiped at the senator Monday during an appearance on CNN’s “Crossfire,” where he told left-wing host Van Jones that Republicans “need a positive agenda” to win in 2014 and 2016. “So positive agenda,” Jones replied. “Rand Paul, who now seems to be everywhere. He’s the frontrunner in your party. Do you agree with his ideas, are you going to support Rand Paul?”...

Rick Santorum is rebranding himself. With the bruising 2012 primary behind him and another presidential bid in his sights, the former Pennsylvania senator and famous culture warrior is out with a new book, Blue Collar Conservatives, that puts his longstanding interest in working-class issues at the fore. Defeating same-sex marriage has become reclaiming marriage culture. His new book’s index doesn’t have one reference to abortion, and it’s barely mentioned in the text at all. In Santorum’s much-longer 2005 work, It Takes a Family, several chapters are devoted to abortion. Medicaid goes from one mention in his 2005 book’s index...

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — Texas Gov. Rick Perry turned his rhetorical fire on Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke here Monday night, saying that the chairman would be committing a “treasonous” act by ordering the printing of more money and said doing so would amount to a political decision to help President Obama win reelection in 2012. “If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I don’t know what you all would do to him in Iowa but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas,” he said of the possibility of another round of so-called quantitative...

Notably absent from the Republican leadership's self-congratulatory comments regarding the recently completed special session on public school finance were any references to the fact that, because of the leadership's inaction, more than 1.3 million senior citizens and people with disabilities in Texas will receive little or no property tax relief. Given that the governor, lieutenant governor and House speaker were all in positions to intervene on behalf of these vulnerable populations (living for the most part on fixed incomes), I question why the interests of these particular Texans were left so far behind. House Bill 1, the property tax reduction...