It was bad, I live in PA, there is history here with Santorum, he’s not forthright on things, and it caught up with him. Casey’s name has weight, but to claim it was just his old man is nonsense. Santorum was so weak of a candidate, he literally ran against someone who phoned in, never talked, never did anything but laid low and won, and won huge.
There is a REASON for this, Santorum alienated he didn’t build support or coalitions, he alienated the very people he needed repeatedly.. Republicans.
You can continue to believe that Santorum is more than he is, but you will eventually learn. Yes, on votes he’s pretty conservative, and he says things most conservatives want to hear, but he’s not a overly talented politician, and shot himself in the foot repeatedly, insulted and alienated parts of the core Republican constituency etc etc etc. He has no path to the white house. At best he is a VP at this point, and that’s on a long shot.
Santorum came to the senate attacking Wofford for all sorts of things, not living in PA, this that and the other thing.. then by 2006 he was doing all those “corrupt” things he was accusing wofford of, he’s slimey, and not very astute. He won’t remotely survive a national campaign where the press are going to be riding him every step of the way. He’s not going to connect with voters on a national level to pull in more than high 30s.
You think the house scandal isn’t bad, claiming you live in PA, when you clearly don’t and then getting caught at it, was bad, his already pathetic poll numbers took a big hit when that came out.
Like I said, strictly from his voting record and speech, I like the guys stands, but I also know him as a politician and what he talked a good game, but he wasn’t as ideologically conservative as he portrays himself.. which isn’t really his problem. His problem is that he won’t connect to voters on the national stage, and while conservatives will love him, he’s not going to motivate the swing vote his way.
It is sad that in a time Republicans should be able to run mickey mouse and win due to the abject ineptitude of the current administration, that isn’t going to happen. The press, and a multi Billion dollar war chest are going to do every nasty thing in the book, and when things get nasty around Santorum, he doesn’t handle it very well, he gets nasty and looks bad when doing it.
Santorum can’t connect well enough with Republican primary voters to get the nomination, if he can’t do that, believing he can win a general election is simply denial. You can win a primary, and not win a general, but if you can’t even win your own parties primary, you have no shot in a general, and while anything could happen, I really don’t see Santorum ever getting more than 15-20% of any primary vote.. not straw polls but actual walk into a voting booth and vote primaries. Time will tell, but I think there is a whole lot of wishful thinking going on with claims Santorum could win a General.
We’ll just have to agree to disagree on this one.