Santorum’s best line in the debate:
You [Casey] believe that we’re going to win or lose this war on the battlefield in Iraq and the battlefield in Afghanistan. I don’t. I think we’ll win or lose this war right here in America.
You’re well aware that I don’t support all of Santorum’s views. He has sometimes voted for extraordinarily bad legislation (No Child Left Behind stands at or close to the top of that list). And I know you’re well aware of how hot-headed I was back in 2004 when Santorum and Bush single-handedly preserved Arlen Specter’s senate seat (and the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee) when they endorsed him over the venerable Pat Toomey. Despite their powerful endorsements, Toomey came within .5% of defeating the left-leaning, Scottish-law-invoking incumbent.
Many Pennsylvanians (yours truly included) who, up until then, had been strong supporters of Rick Santorum held him personally responsible for sending Specter back to his powerful position in the senate, and for denying Toomey a decisive opportunity to be a voice of unrelenting conservative principle in a senate that is badly in need of a powerful dose of conservative realism, pragmatism, and allegiance to the Constitution, our national sovereignty, and the rule of law.
But time heals some wounds.
I am no longer a believer in voting for the lesser of two evils. And, for that reason, there is at least an outside chance that I will not cast a vote for one of the two major party candidates for the presidency in 2008, for the first time in nearly four decades.
But voting for the lesser of two evils is not the same as choosing to vote for someone with whom you do not always agree … especially when the stakes are as high as they are at this point in history.
Santorum’s July 20th speech at the National Press Club was a passionate, eloquent call to arms. It was as if we were listening to the inspiring words of a modern day Thomas Paine.
I hope you've read it -- or will, if you haven't. You’ll come away with the understanding that Rick Santorum isn’t just a crusader for greatly increased border security, the right to life of the unborn, uncovering government corruption, welfare reform, privatizing Social Security, training and equipping first responders, simplification of the tax code, and tort reform. He is all that and much more. He is a rarity in Washington these days: He is a leader who recognizes the brutal and obsessive nature of Islamo-fascism, and who isn’t overcome with politically correct reticence when the opportunity to awaken and educate his countrymen presents itself.
A contributor to my weblog recently wrote:
No more talk, no more lies, no more dissembling, no more diplomacy. They stop, and they stay stopped, or they die, and their countries die with them. In Iran, in Syria, in Somalia, in Waziristan, leaders and civilians who support terrorists have forfeited their right to breathe the air of this planet. We don't have to occupy them, we don't have to rebuild them, we don't have to ‘bring them to justice,’ or grant them habeas corpus or let them have lawyers. We just have to destroy them.
I believe that, on the national level, the above paragraph must be our litmus test. If a candidate does not openly and vocally embrace that philosophy, he does not get my vote.
Rick Santorum does … and will. And I will do all that I can between now and November 7th to see to it that as many of my family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers comprehend the difference between a leader who wants to confront and unambiguously defeat the unparalleled malevolent forces threatening to extinguish the Western world as we know it, and who will disperse even their shadow … and a pretender whose political ideology depends on which way the politically correct winds happen to be blowing.
The next two elections are not about the economy, stupid.
They are about nothing less than the survival of Western civilization.
~ joanie
Allegiance and Duty Betrayed
posted on 09/07/2006 8:41:59 PM PDT by joanie-f
Very well articulated, and I share the same sentiments.