Your memory is either short, or you are willfully being ignorant.
Santorum got himself in trouble on that topic on several fronts.. He lied about living in the home when he obviously did not and When he was running against Wofford he made a bit deal that WOFFORD didn’t live in PA and his family lived in DC... So it comes full circle.
Santorum attacked his opponent for doing it, then when he was in the same position he did it, you think that’s not something that going to cause you problems you are out of touch with reality.
Claimin residency for nearly 9 years when you bought a home in Virginia and moved your family there, and keeping an vacant home (and yes we know it was vacant, because you don’t have to be a vigilante to walk up to a vacant house a look into a window and see no furniture, which is exactly what was the deal with that home.
You can keep trying to spin Santorum as a national politician, he’s not. I challenge you right here right now, go hire rasmussen or one of the other polling companies to conduct a poll right now in PA, ask them Casey V Santorum 2012 Senate PA, should cost a couple of hundred bucks, and you’ll see Santorum would lose still by a large margin.
You don’t have to like the fact Santorum got caught doing the exact same thing he chastise opponents for earlier in his career, but the fact is he was, and voters didn’t like it, or tons of other things he had done over the years.
Santorum couldn’t play the “Everyone does it” excuse because he went out of his way to make it a campaign issue against wofford... Like I said, Santorum isn’t remotely astute, politically savvy or intelligent enough to handle a national campaign that will be awaiting the nominee.. He couldn’t handle some outside money and leftist activists in 2006.. he got painted effectively as a radical and 2012 national race will be 100 if not a 1000 times larger and nastier and he couldn’t answer it in 06 and won’t be able to handle it in 12.
I'm not sure when Rick bought this particular house, but I'll take your word of 2006 minus 9 years or, 1997.
So what? He was paying local property taxes. A lot more than you can say about a host of other congress critters.
Was he 100% ethical about it? No. Did he do anything illegal? Emphatically no. Was it at least somewhat hypocritical after what he did to oust Wofford, an appointee who, by the way, was an appointee warming a seat to replace a dead Republican? Yes it was, but on a scale which would barely even register on the Richter scale if he hadn't been a conservative Republican.
Does Pennsylvania have a distaste for even the appearance of corruption? Again, it depends. If you want to see just how much corruption is tolerated, read today's local headlines about Bill DeWeese, the state representative convicted of actual corruption. If the election were being held today, DeWeese would probably be re-elected. That says more about his constituency of government teat suckers than it does about DeWeese.
OTOH, Rick Santorum took his loss like a man, learned something and has now made a comeback. I can't help but admire that.
Yeah, politics is about personality as well as politics. Yes, Santorum is imperfect on the personality issues as well as some political issues.
Ask yourself: Who is closest to that generic Republican which we consistently see beating Obama in the polls. The serial adulterer who has never won an election outside of a safely conservative congressional district? The wooden former governor of Massachusetts who can't crack 50% in any primary of national poll despite the most impressive list of endorsements? Or everybody's second choice (and clear first choice for about 1 in 5 of us)?
Particularly when most of the Gingrich people say they will never support Romney. And most of the Romney people say they will never support Gingrich. How are you going to win the real prize by picking either one of them?