Rick Santorum is a Hard-Core Conservative.
Newt Gingrich is a Hard-Core Conservative.
Santorum is better than Gingrich on this ranking.
Santorum's lifetime ACU rating is within two points of Gingrich's lifetime ACU rating (88.1 to 89.9).
Posted on 03/20/2012 4:36:52 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Rick Santorum makes an excellent point that “past performance really does indicate future results.” I completely agree—but not just “in Mitt Romney’s case.” Rick Santorum became the third-highest ranking Republican in the Senate in 2001 at a time when Republicans inherited balanced budgets, surpluses, and conservative, pro-life majorities. Senator Santorum and his big spending GOP allies proceeded to squander this inheritance.
The leadership of the Rick Santorum Republicans proved disastrous:
* The Rick Santorum Republicans never passed a single balanced budget, after inheriting balanced budgets and record surpluses. They racked up $1.7 trillion in deficits and increased the average number of earmarks by almost 500 percent. The Senator even voted for the Bridge to Nowhere.
* The Rick Santorum Republicans increased the national debt by 12 percent and voted to raise the debt ceiling five times to accommodate it—even while dealing with a president of their own party.
* The Senator voted with Democrats and Big Labor to defeat the National Right to Work Act of 1995. He justifies this vote saying he was representing Pennsylvania where forced unionization is the law but today, PA Senator Toomey is cosponsoring nearly identical legislation.
* The Senator voted with Democrats and Big Labor — repeatedly — to protect Davis-Bacon legislation, an old law on the books that requires the federal government to pay more to its contractors. He was so wedded to big labor that he even voted against waiving Davis-Bacon in times of emergency. By voting to protect Davis-Bacon, the Senator cost taxpayers many millions in higher taxes, deficits, and national debt.
* The Senator sponsored the “Santorum Amendment” to raise the Minimum Wage 21.4%. He supported Ted Kennedy’s proposed hike in the Minimum Wage. And, in a 2006 campaign commercial, he bragged about his support for a higher Minimum Wage.
* The Rick Santorum Republicans abandoned their principles, resulting in the worst electoral defeat for Republicans since Watergate and the loss of GOP Congressional majorities in both the House and Senate. This left Congress in the hands of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. And in destroying the Republican brand of balanced budgets and spending control, the Rick Santorum Republican failure gave us Barack Obama in 2008.
This is not a record of leadership to be proud of, and in 2006 it resulted in a catastrophic 18-point defeat. I fear it would do so again in the fall of 2012 if he were the nominee.
Unlike Senator Santorum, I did not go to Washington seeing politics as a “team sport.” Instead, I set out to change the game, and was willing to fight the forces of the establishment within the Republican Party to do so. The result was the first GOP majority in 40 years and the largest increase in pro-life votes in House of Representatives history. When I was Speaker, we balanced the budget for the first time since the 1920s — and it stayed balanced for four straight years. We reformed welfare, lifting millions of Americans from poverty. We passed the biggest capital gains tax cut in history, helping create 11 million jobs. And we did it all while paying down the national debt by $400 billion.
If you agree with Senator Santorum that “past performance really does indicate future results,” it means there’s only one candidate in this race who can offer the change our country desperately needs.
Or does he think we should have cut spending after 9/11? Because 9/11 pushed our country deeper into recession, while at the same time requiring a large re-buildup of our armed forces.
Does Gingrich think we shouldn't have built up the Armed Forces in response to 9/11? One way the budget was "balanced" was Clinton's military cuts. Does Gingrich think that was a good thing?
After 9/11, we went to war in Afghanistan, and that cost hundreds of billions. Does Newt Gingrich think we should not have done that? We then invaded Iraq, and that cost hundreds of billions. Does Newt think that was a mistake?
Unemployment shot up before and after 9/11. Does Newt think we should have cancelled the tax cuts when revenue was clearly going down because of the recession? Does he think we should have cut the programs that increased after 9/11 because of increased unemployment -- food stamps, unemployment payments?
Where is a quote from Newt Gingrich in 2001 complaining about the deficit spending in that first budget after 9/11? Or in 2002, or in 2003, or in 2004? Where is Gingrich telling us not to do more tax cuts in 2003?
What was one of the biggest spending increases in the 2000s? The Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit. Did Gingrich oppose that? Not at all, he is responsible for it:
Newt Gingrich played the role of political godfather in pushing the Medicare prescription drug benefit into law, returning to Capitol Hill in November 2003 to deliver a pivotal speech that turned some conservative skeptics into believers.
...
“Newt was critical to the passage of Medicare Part D,” recalls John Feehery, who was Speaker Dennis Hastert’s chief spokesman at the time. The speech “was very powerful,” Feehery said.
...
His sales pitch, more than anything else, switched my vote and votes of others on a bill that still took most of the night to pass while the vote was held open,” former Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) recalled in a recent interview with POLITICO conducted via e-mail. “And Medicare is going broke faster than ever.”
Of course, while we had deficit spending in the early 2000s, that spending was coming back down. Too slowly, but we were working back toward balance, until TARP. GIngrich opposed TARP, right? Well, not quite:
STEPHANOPOULOS: “Speaker Gingrich, there’s also, I think, a recognition, at least in some of the polls I’ve seen, that something has to be done.”SPEAKER NEWT GINGRICH: “Sure, look, something has to be done. … I suspect were I still in Congress, in the end George [Will] is right, and I probably would end up voting reluctantly yes....
Of course, the important thing is to beat Romney in Illinois. And by attacking Santorum for not balancing the budget, that will certainly draw more voters away from Romney and to Santorum in Illinois today, right? I mean, it's not like Gingrich is going to get enough votes in Illinois to matter, he's not even running advertising there. Heck, Santorum even started using Gingrich's flawed attacks on Romney's Bain Capital days, in a last-ditch effort to stop him (seems to be working about as well as when Gingrich tried it though), and then Gingrich attacks Santorum for spending too much?
But as a Gingrich supporter, I'm sure you will have a bunch of quotes from 2001 and 2003 where Gingrich says the congress is overspending and asks for specific spending cuts to get back to balance, right?
Has Newt changed his mind about Climate Change or is he still lecturing us on being wrong about it? They all have their flaws.
Pray for America
I believe that after Santorum is unable to win in the primary math, we will hear soon after that Adelson is cutting the funding on Newt. Newt will give the appropriate speech to announce his departure.
There really is no reason for him to stay. He is just spending money for nothing. Neither Newt or Santorum will win in a brokered convention. I am sure they both know that.
Of course, the undecided won’t stay that way. But in Loisiana, the 20 statewide delegates are awarded proportionally based on a 25% threshold. If nobody gets 25%, they go as uncommitted, and can vote for anybody.
So if the numbers actually stayed as they are, except gingrich got 4% of Santorum’s vote by attacking him, Gingrich would have the effect of turning Santorum delegates into uncommitted delegates who could vote for Romney.
Now, if GIngrich just ran attacks on Romney, and could keep Romney below 25%, his time in Loisiana could actually be a good thing. But in a proportional contest, it HURTS conservatives when Gingrich attacks Santorum. It hurt us in Georgia, where Gingrich robocalled against Santorum, and pushed Santorum just below 20% — which gave Romney 4-6 more delegates.
And if he manages to suppress the Santorum vote here enough that Romney gets 25%, he’ll end up giving delegates to Romney. Would it be good for Gingrich if Gingrich and Romney got the delegates, instead of Santorum? Well, I guess - but it certainly wouldn’t be good for the plan to stop Romney.
On a radio newsbreak, I heard a clip of Rick being played from the IL primary campaign.
Of course it was a gotcha moment...the reporter was bagged for Mitt, it was obvious...but first time I actually heard Rick’s voice saying the unemployment rate doesn’t matter, I don’t care about that, as preface to making a point about his candidacy.
Apparently somebody asked him a question...no
way would you say that out of the blue.
Then they had a clip of him clarifying his remarks.
No worse than Mitt saying he likes to fire people, and his wife drives a couple of cadillacs, etc. But that was a bit ago in time, which allowed the reporter to ignore it and focus on Rick.
Made me think, when you’re anybody but Obama and Romney, there is no margin for error. There is no room for gaffes, mistakes etc. The Dems, your own side, the media, will all savage you and never give you a pass.
Newt, imperfect as are we all, fares best in such an unfair scenario. He has more substance, more experience, more knowledge, more communication skills, more demonstrated success.
Without Mitt’s scorched earth backed by many millions, that Newt didn’t have, in IA and FL, Newt would be standing tall today.
Rick walked into that yawning chasm of opportunity and with a lot of help from the evangelical pastors put himself where he is.
He can’t close the sale with enough people, and we are talking Republican primaries, we aren’t even talking the general.
There’s no margin for error. That’s unfair and a shame, but it’s true.
Errors there will be.
Newt works best.
Illinois is all Mitt’s and Rick’s.
Let’s see what Santorum can do mano-a-mano against Romney.
Newt took the weekend off and is in Louisiana all week.
Go pout somewhere else.
Rick Santorum is a Hard-Core Conservative. Newt Gingrich is a Hard-Core Conservative.
Santorum is better than Gingrich on this ranking.
Santorum's lifetime ACU rating is within two points of Gingrich's lifetime ACU rating (88.1 to 89.9).
Actually, so far as I can tell, most Santorum supporters want to stop Romney, and realize that GIngrich can’t do it, given that Gingrich stopped winning anything after his only win outside his home state, in South Carolina, back in january.
That we are still even talking about the possibility of Newt Gingrich as winning the nomination, when he can’t win a single state and hasn’t beat Santorum anywhere except Georgia since the Nevada caucus, is rediculous.
Most freepers were ready to support Newt Gingrich when it looked like he could win. When he imploded (cue the “it’s not his fault he can’t win, Romney has too much money” crowd), we needed another candidate — because you can’t force the general population to vote for the candidate YOU like just because you think that’s the right thing to do.
I’m not telling people to stop supporting Gingrich — people should vote their conscience, and for those who are at the point where it’s not important anymore who wins the nomination, just that they personally vote for the guy they think is the best, Newt is still a valid choice.
Yesterday Romney was saying that the economy is improving (Santorum recently said that the economy isn't the main issue anymore).
We're in economic quicksand and we cannot have a moderate in the White House.
Not to mention, if Newt vaporized, there are hardcore Newt backers who think both Mitt and Rick are terrible alternatives, and who actually think Rick is worse than Mitt, as a candidate to put forward. Gallup polled Newt backers second choices after Newt and there was a decided SPLIT.
People are trying with all their might to debunk that, because they’re meme is that if no Newt, they all go to Santorum.
That might be a Free Republic result, although many here say they would not vote, but most say Rick if not Newt.
But FR is not a representative sample of state by state or national GOP primary voters.
No matter how hard some try to pretend otherwise.
I understand how people could say Mitt was less bad than Rick, to put forward as a candidate.
It all goes back to the superficial...well, he was a BUSINESSMAN and saved the Olympics. And he was a Governor (never mind what he did).
REmember how Newt lost the battled to reform Medicare? He made a perfectly valid point, but the way he said it gave the Democrats a national advertisement to beat up all republicans, and because of that, medicare reform was dead.
“Now, we don’t get rid of it in round one because we don’t think that that’s politically smart, and we don’t think that’s the right way to go through a transition. But we believe it’s going to wither on the vine because we think people are voluntarily going to leave it — voluntarily.”
As I said, a perfectly valid statement — talking about one specific aspect of Medicare. But it was the WRONG WAY to say it apparently, by the criteria used here against Santorum, because his quote became a national rallying cry against conservatives.
And if you somehow want to argue the point, just google Newt “whither on the vine”, and see all the thousands of references to that by the media.
Rick’s voice, by the way, said that the unemployment rate was not what was driving his campaign. The unemployment rate is manipulated by the administration, and if it drops in October of 2012, Obama still needs to go.
Freedom is all that government can really do to impact unemployment numbers conservatively. Freedom from regulation is what will get companies hiring again. This is the conservative message.
If I am asked “what will you do if the unemployment rate drops before the election”, I say “I’m not voting because of the unemployment rate, I’m voting to stop Obama taking away our rights and freedoms.”
Right, because nobody in Illinois will be able to read Newt Gingrich’s article.
Gingrich sure does take off a lot for a guy who says he is running for President.
I think voters would say that because they have had it rubbed in their faces that Romney has the GOP-e money and muscle in his camp. I also believe that the GOP-e has gone easy on Rick so that the Rick and Newt camps will be so busy "attacking" each other that Mitt doesn't have to get his hands dirty (Mitt "I know nothing about those attack ads" Romney).
The GOP-e sees Rick as the weakest one to eliminate once there are two. Newt clearly sees, that if he leaves the race, there will be no choice but the Massachusetts Moderate and that means 4 more years of Obama.
By going to the convention we can air all this dirty GOP-Establish laundry. Let's let it flap in the breeze on prime time for all to see.
The audience can hear the conservative message sized up against the party mush.
Google Newt! He's just "all over the news!" /S
Red State published this in their blog. I hope that doesn't offend your idea of free speech.
There is a perception lingering about Newt Gingrich that he was a critic of Paul Ryan’s budget plan and therefore a critic of conservative fiscal policy in the House of Representatives. Is that conclusion true? Or is it an oversimplification? Like many misconceptions floating around during a heated political season, it is not true. Let’s examine the facts.
On April 5, 2011, Representative Paul Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman, introduced the Republican budget for 2012. Included in that budget was a premium support model for Medicare. This budget was based on a similar plan previously laid out by Ryan called The Roadmap for America’s Future. That document had been a Republican Party policy call to change the budget and put it on sound fiscal grounds compared to the Democrats’ unwillingness to budget at all and tax and spend into infinity. The Harry Reid-run Senate has not passed a budget for over three years, even though they are required to by law.
Gingrich praised the Ryan plan in an article in Human Events on April 13. He called it the most serious attempt by an elected official to rethink our public finances and the modern welfare state in a generation. That is quite a compliment from a former speaker of the House to a current committee chairman. Using a golfing metaphor, Gingrich celebrated the plan, calling it a Ryan “eagle.” Is that comparison a negative critique, or is it commendation? One week later, on April 20, Gingrich in the same space heaped more praise on the plan. He compared Paul Ryan to Paul Revere, one of our nation’s great heroes, and compared the Ryan Medicare plan with his own previous welfare reform. Why would he disparage something he would compare to one of his greatest achievements? Gingrich later said he would have voted for the plan if he had had the opportunity.
On May 15, 2011, Gingrich was on Meet the Press. He had a slightly disjointed discussion with host David Gregory because Gregory kept interrupting him. After a substantial discussion on the debt-ceiling debate, Gregory turned to entitlements and asked Gingrich a hypothetical and loaded question. He said, “What about entitlements? The Medicare trust fund, in stories that have come out over the weekend, is now going to be depleted by 2024, five years earlier than predicted. Do you think that Republicans ought to buck the public opposition and really move forward to completely change Medicare, turn it into a voucher program where you give seniors...some premium support and — so that they can go out and buy private insurance?”
Notice that his question is not about whether the Ryan plan is a good plan. Gingrich had already praised the plan. The question was, should Republicans buck public opposition and completely change Medicare? Gingrich’s answer was a criticism not of the change, but how it should be implemented. Not because it wasn’t the right thing to do, but because politicians should get the public behind it first. Note what Gingrich said:..................
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/02/does_ryan_now_agree_with_gingrich.html#ixzz1pfBN7AUT
Yes, I caught that there was a context behind Rick being asked about the unemployment rate, but he actually said the words, I don’t care about the unemployment rate, that doesn’t matter, blah blah blah, then had to backtrack on what he meant.
Romney is wrong that the economy is improving, if by that you mean the people thrown out of work are getting jobs back.
The housing market continues to crash. Millions of young people are living with their parents because they can’t help it. Growth is anemic at best.
Gasoline prices are through the roof, and people are running up debt again instead of paying it down like they did. The deficit and debt is growing faster than ever.
Rick is wrong to say the economy isn’t the main issue anymore.
What did he say was, the loss of our Freedoms? That is of course absolutely critical, but they are all tied in together. The more people hurt financially, the more they tend to bow down to dependency on government. Food stamps, anyone??
And the main point is, in the minds of most Americans, the economy is still number one.
Newt can handle these complexities the best, the most informative, the most direct, the most reassuring.
You make no sense. If Newt really wanted this to go to a convention, he wouldn’t be attacking the one person who is making it a remote possibility.
All this brokered convention blarney is merely an excuse to continue to split the vote until nobody left can beat Mitt.
Helping Romney is exactly what people here said they would not do, yet they are.
Then you will probably proclaim, no Romney, no way. Huh?
He can’t close the sale with enough people, and we are talking Republican primaries, we aren’t even talking the general.
There’s no margin for error. That’s unfair and a shame, but it’s true. Errors there will be. Newt works best.”
Except for Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, Kansas, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Colorado, Oklahoma, Missouri ....
Santorum lost Michigan (Romneys “home state”) to Romney by 4%, Romney 41%, Santorum 37%
Newt got 6.5 % of the vote total
Assuming the conservative race is against the establishment Romney the GOP and democrats have pre-selected for us, and thus for #2, tell us, if “Newt works best” why are so many GOP voters in so many states so stupid, and why does Santorum have twice as many delegates as Newt, and 5 times as many primary victories?
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