Posted on 06/09/2011 11:07:11 PM PDT by Sun
Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) is keeping the pressure on former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney over the healthcare plan he championed as Bay State governor.
A day after Romney officially launched a presidential exploratory committee, Santorum again questioned whether Romney was the right candidate to carry the party's torch against President Obama next year.
"I really believe ObamaCare is the most important issue in this election," Santorum said during an interview on "Fox and Friends" Tuesday morning. "It is the turning point for our country. We better have a candidate who is out there and very, very strong in opposition to government-run healthcare and focuses on healthcare that centers on you, not on the government. snip
"That, I think, is a problem for Gov. Romney this time around," Santorum said.
Santorum has proven to be the most willing among the pack of GOP presidential hopefuls to go after the field's presumed frontrunner on healthcare, directly challenging Romney's plan on several occasions in recent months.
The former senator made similar comments in an interview with The Hill earlier this year, suggesting Romney's healthcare plan could disqualify him for the Republican presidential nod in 2012.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
huck had some bad ideas but romney actually signed romneycare into law. He actually said in a GOP debate in 2008... Remember this?
“Debate moderator Charles Gibson of ABC News: “But Gov. Romney’s system has mandates in Massachusetts, although you backed away from mandates on a national basis.”
No, no, I like mandates. The mandates work.
GOP contender Fred Thompson: “I beg your pardon? I didn’t know you were going to admit that. You like mandates.”
Romney: “Oh, absolutely. Let me tell you what kind of mandates I like, Fred, which is this. If it weren’t –“
Thompson: “The ones you come up with. Bingo””
—
That wasn’t poll-driven. He really believed in that stuff.
Actually in 2012, the #1 issue may not even be the economy (not that I expect it to get better).
It may be a nuclear armed Iran.
Mark Levin, who likes Santorum (and a few others), said it’s up to the voters if they want to forgive Santorum, or not. Toomey did, and endorsed Santorum in his last election.
I hope conservatives will forgive Santorum for not being perfect, because I’d hate to lose a man this good:
“Full-spectrum conservative: While perhaps best-known as a social conservative, Santorum has bona fides in all areas of conservative philosophy — economics, foreign policy, etc. Put simply, he’s versatile.
And in a field that will likely have no other senators and correspondingly limited foreign policy experience, Santorum can point to his eight years on the Senate Armed Services committee as proof that he will be prepared to handle an uncertain situation in the Middle East from day one.
While other candidates may have tax increases in their past as governor or have not always been hard-line on social issues, it will be tough to paint Santorum as insufficiently conservative in any facet of his record. And he can point to specific evidence of his conservatism no matter what the issue du jour is.”
I've actually wondered, since everyone is called a RINO now, if Palin ran and got the nomination, would she have to leave the VP blank, since there isn't anyone who isn't a RINO ? lol
Hey man. I had a bucket of sh!t to choose from on the GOP side and a Marxist Radical on the Rat side. What was I supposed to do? Nothing? I am fully aware of Mittens. I hate him. A number of us made a choice. I chose to be stabbed instead of shot. So shoot me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pVqZzHm3Z4
I don’t know if all people realize that if the government has control over our life and death (Romney/ObamaCARE), they own us.
“if Palin ran and got the nomination, would she have to leave the VP blank, since there isn’t anyone who isn’t a RINO ? lol “
Good point, and some would even call her a RINO. Guess they want Obama to win, so we can become slaves to the government.
Santorum did the only thing he could with that decision. Being from PA, there was no way he had any shot at reelection going against the sitting President and GOP apparatus running as a Conservative here. If anyone should be blamed for that mess, it should be Bush.
Don’t worry. I won’t hold it against you. It was a bad field.
But there were a lot of people who really loved Romney back then and many (at least from the reported polls) still do.
If folks are wondering about Santorum and DeMint supporting Romney in the past, what is going on now since the 2010 election the R party is kind of like when the officer corps starts figuring out the war is lost, but the politicians don’t want to give it up.
The R establishment has listened to Tea Parties, and knows people want political outsiders, and so forth, but to career politicians it’s all just background noise drowned out by them salivating over the next election. In their typical pavlovian response of preparing for it in the same way the always have they simply worry about getting big bucks in their campaign chest. So even though they listened, I don’t think they really get it. Private citizens get it, but politicians are only little by little understanding just how sick of them people are. It just takes elections to prove it to them.
DeMint even says he had a change of heart AFTER he was elected. I think they both realize that things have drastically changed from when they first were elected.
Did you read my post #18? DeMint doesn’t like Romneycare.
I could also come up with positive statements, like Romney has nice hair, but I sure as heck won’t support him.
He had a brain fart!
They will all listen when they see who we vote for in the primaries. And with the Tea Party, voters will vote more intelligently, as they did in the last election.
Yep - unless a candidate is a "purist" that candidate is a RINO.
The real problem is that "purist" has as many different faces as there are folks who demand purist candidates. Folks have their own subjective differences as to what the term means and don't realize that without some variances, "purists" are just as much doctrinaires as communists and others that would crush freedom.
Santorum has a lifetime ACU rating of 88.1.
Allen West.
Santorum's a party animal. Nuff said.
I was pulling for Myth back then too along with a lot of serious minded Conservatives. Do you remember the even worse piece of garbage he was fighting against?
That is precisely my point. A LOT of conservatives went for Romney back then who would not go for Romney today. Here in Missouri, for example, it came down to Romney, Huckabee, or McCain. My man, Thompson, had dropped out shortly before the primary. So, to stop McCain, I voted for Romney.
That was then, this is now. RomneyCare was not in the spotlight then, it is now. And Romney has defended it, rather than admitting his mistake.
My point is, I don't hold support of Romney *last* time against anyone *this* time.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.