Free Republic

Rick Santorum dropped out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination on Tuesday. Almost to a column, editorial and news account, the analysis centered on Santorum’s somewhat successful capture of conservative voters. And there lies the mystery. How could a man seemingly so opposite of conservative have entranced so many voters who label themselves just that? The easy answer is that as someone who made his religion such a prominent part of his campaign strategy... religious types who tend toward conservatism perhaps felt they’d found their man. [...] Indeed, if we ignore for a moment how very anti-conservative it...

Richard Viguerie, a veteran conservative activist and top Santorum supporter, tells National Review Online that Santorum is “reengineering” his presidential campaign. “You can’t repeat the same behavior and expect different results,” he says. “We’ve got to do things different. We’ve got to reengineer the campaign. We’ve got to add things, take things out, and make changes. Everyone recognizes that, from the candidate on down.” Earlier today, Viguerie, along with a group of movement leaders, met with Santorum at an office in northern Virginia. For over an hour, they discussed ways to revive his bid. “We came up with a number...

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 had Rick as a guest at the request of my friend, Mark Rogers, who was running Rick’s campaign. Over the years I interviewed Rick at least a dozen times and debated him several times as...

(Sigh...) How else can I start? I support Rick Santorum, donated to him, but I'm losing count of the times I watch him on a live interview and feel the need for a facepalm. God love you, Rick, but you do not think well on your feet (or perhaps someone working for isn't doing his job prepping you). When Chris asked Rick about siding with "big labor", the right answer was that "there are valid reasons for labor unions and I'll support them when it's fair to do so. Unions get a bad rap when union leaders abuse their leverage...

By the time Mitt Romney arrives in Wisconsin Friday – his first campaign stop in the state before its GOP primary on Tuesday – his challenger Rick Santorum will have already become a familiar face. Mr. Santorum has been in Wisconsin since last weekend and has dined, bowled, and played shuffleboard with residents in every pocket of the state. He’s even tossed a football at Lambeau Field, home of the Green Bay Packers. Santorum’s once-generous lead in Wisconsin is eroding. In February, the former US senator polled at 34 percent among the state’s likely Republican voters, while Mr. Romney, the...

GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum on Thursday took GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney to task for his past as a self-described “independent” who claimed he did not want to “return to the days of Reagan-Bush. Santorum, speaking to supporters at the Jelly Belly factory – which had honored President Ronald Reagan in the past for promoting the jelly bean – asked which candidate would be pull together the “Reagan coalition” and win swings states, which are “vitally important” for winning the presidential election.(Snip) “Governor Romney said that after the Etch-a-Sketch flap that he was going to run as a conservative in...

FAIRFIELD, Calif. — Republican leaders and voters, frustrated by their party's prolonged presidential contest, are increasingly coalescing behind front-runner Mitt Romney. Yet Rick Santorum on Thursday urged conservatives not to forsake their principles under pressure. He did so by conjuring the memory of Ronald Reagan, still the conservative icon, at an oddly symbolic place: the jelly bean factory that created the former president's favorite treats. "Let them know, conservatives all across this country have not given up the fight, we're not going to concede to the moderate establishment who wants to convince everybody that it's over, it's time to go...

Newt Gingrich's campaign has asked the Tennessee Republican Party....to not seat Knoxville state Sen. Stacey Campfield as a Gingrich delegate at the national convention. Campfield, who served as a state co-chair for Gingrich's campaign, abruptly switched his support to Santorum days before the March 6 "Super Tuesday" election. "Please be advised that Stacey Campfield does not have the consent of the Newt Gingrich for President Campaign to be seated as a delegate at the Republican National Convention," wrote John Fluharty, the campaign's director of delegate access, in a Thursday letter to the state GOP committee. "As a matter of information,...

April will be a tough month for Rick Santorum. The primary schedule has nine contests next month ... three on Tuesday, a non-binding caucus in Missouri (again!), and five primaries on the 24th. The two most likely states for a Santorum win are winner-take-all Wisconsin on the 3rd and the candidate's home state of Pennsylvania on the 24th. Santorum trails in the latest Wisconsin polling, and a new poll by Frank & Marshall College suggests that his support back home has declined significantly: Rick Santorum appeared to be the Republican presidential candidate to beat in Pennsylvania a month ago.With the...

My Message to Rick Santorum March 23, 2012 Not too long ago, I had asked a woman from Pennsylvania what she thought about Rick Santorum. Knowing that she was as conservative and as Republican as I am, I was surprised at her response. She said, “He is the worst. Those of us who know him best have nothing but contempt for him. He is not an honest person and certainly would not hesitate to stab a fellow politician in the back.” That was a few weeks ago, but I have learned what a tawdry character Santorum is. He is a...

Rick Santorum's latest attempt to use a Mitt Romney aide's "Etch-A-Sketch" remark against the Republican front-runner instead gave his rival a chance to fire back on Thursday, after Santorum seemed to say he'd rather see President Obama reelected than send Romney to the White House. Speaking at an event in Texas, Santorum again made the case that Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom's comments Wednesday on CNN about a "reset" of the campaign if Romney clinched the nomination showed the former Massachusetts governor's efforts to appeal to conservatives were insincere. "You win by giving people the opportunity to see a different vision...

The media is smearing Gingrich right and left while going relatively light on Santorum. We don't know who he is, we haven't examined his record thoroughly, we blindly believe in faith the statements he as a Christian family man uses to make a quick point, and he is the last one standing to experience the negative carpet bombing from Mitt Romney.

Somewhere, buried in Rick Santorum’s fatally flawed campaign messaging, were winning words. Had he committed to them, the former senator could have derailed Mitt Romney’s path to the GOP nomination. Despite Romney’s overpowering resources and organization, Santorum’s potent argument — that the party could not throw the issue of healthcare away by nominating someone who had supported mandates — was his key to victory, but he threw it away. As he transformed from Senator 2 Percent to the last credible alternative to Romney, Santorum often made the point that nominating Romney — or Newt Gingrich — would take the issue...

Oklahoman Editorial: Demos' stimulus plan comes up short 2003-01-08 Still licking their wounds from the November elections, House Democrats were determined to offer a stark contrast to President Bush's $674 billion, 10-year economic stimulus plan, unveiled yesterday in Chicago. Well, they succeeded. The Democratic alternative offered by new Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi could hardly be more different -- and, we think, inadequate. Where Bush's plan is bold and multi-layered, the Democrats' version is small and temporary. Bush's plan focuses on tax cuts for taxpayers -- more than $1,000 for 92 million Americans. The Democratic proposal cuts taxes (a little), even...

Letter from RPOF Chairman Al Cardenas -- Focus Email on Bush/Mcbride campaign The few people who are jumping into the political waters offered by Democrat Bill McBride are finding themselves standing in a very shallow pool. There is no vision; there are no new ideas. There are only the vague ramblings of a man who thinks tooting the one-note horn handed him by the teacher's union bosses ought to be enough. It's not nearly enough, of course. Anyone seeking to be elected governor of the fourth largest state ought to respect the people enough to offer up detailed ideas. So...