Nonetheless, I respectfully respond to your #18 by saying that whatever the argument that Mark Crutcher may be making on this is a losing argument. I cannot condone any more than you do Rick Santorum's support for Arlen Specter over Toomey for the GOP Senate nomination but that is hardly the whole story. What follows is some of the rest of the story:
1. The perfect is the enemy of the good. We should eagerly hope for perfection without expecting it. The last Guy Who was perfect was crucified for his efforts and that was a looooong time ago. We don't expect to see His like again until the end when He returns in triumph. Rick Santorum never pretended to be perfect. Neither do I and I'll bet you don't either.
2. Toomey claimed to be pro-life when he ran in 2004 but he was elected to Congress as a pro-abort. He then claimed to have changed his mind on abortion after the birth of his first child. I'll take that but he conveniently announced this for the first time during the GOP Senate primary.
3. While Arlen Specter is no pro-lifer (and never clamed to be) and is not even vaguely acceptable as a candidate as a Republican or as a Demonrat (his original party and and the one far more congenial to his voting record), Santorum's support (as a fellow Pennsylvania Senator and a ranking GOP Senate caucus leader) for Specter was not justified but it was the only mistake on his generally and powerfully pro-life record.
4. Crutcher cannot accurately say that Specter "has always been viciously hostile toward anything the pro-life movement does..." Does the name Clarence Thomas ring a bell for Mr. Crutcher??? Arlen Specter was given the job of utterly demolishing Anita Hill and her lies about Thomas. Few here are aware of Specter's capabilities as a trial lawyer and cross-examiner. He left her bullet-ridden corpse in the gutter that she have emerged from. Maybe a probable 35-40 year tenure of Clarence Thomas holding the old Thurgood Marshall seat doesn't mean much to Mark Crutcher but I dissent from his view and note that the conversion of that seat on the life issues (and many others) was one of our most crucial victories in my lifetime.
5. Orrin Hatch came to Connecticut in 1988 to scold those of us who were busily removing Lowell P. Weicker, Jr., from the US Senate. Goldwater (a reprehensible excuse for a human being but admired by "fiscal conservatives") showed up to do likewise and so did other conservative senators. Personally, I despise Lowell Weicker as much or more than I despise Comrade Obonzo. Crutcher probably would not urge anyone to vote for a Goldwater (whose first wife was on Planned Barrenhood's National Board of Directors for 35 years until her death). GHWB's mother (W's grandmother) served about as long on the PP Board and was furious with her son and grandson for abandoning her baby-killing principles. I happen to think that Dubya was sincere and GHWB turned because in the old formula: Paris is worth a Mass. None of these guys is perfect any more than we are (OK, OK, Weicker is perfectly evil but that is not the perfection we are talking about). I have little doubt that Crutcher would not treat Hatch, however, as he treated Santorum.
6. Did Specter vote for Chief Justice Roberts and/or Justice Alito? To tell the truth, I have forgotten but I would be really surprised if he opposed both.
7. Apparently, former Congressman Toomey has been consistently, although somewhat quietly, pro-life since his 2004 campaign. That is good and we should make room for the converted but let's not pretend he was always pro-life. He was not.
8. Crutcher was writing on primary day, 2004, at what was presumably the high point in his frustrated anger over yet another pro-abort vs. pro-abort senatorial contest. People who want to be taken seriously in matters political need to reign in their emotions and go on to fight another day.
9. Well, the Crutchers and other perfectionists got their way and Santorum was defeated by that two-faced liar Casey. We sure taught US a lesson. Was that some sort of pro-life progress??? BTW, Casey was one of only seven Demonrat Senators (along with Leahy, Sanders, Durbin, Burris, Whitehouse and one other). DeWine was defeated in Ohio by Sharrod Brown, more real pro-life progress, huh? Again, we sure taught US a lesson.
10. Rick Santorum, as a US Senator, said he was pro-life and, as a Senator, he voted pro-life. He should not have campaigned for or voted for Specter in the primary. That deviation does not erase many years of Santorum's consistent pro-life voting record of decades in the House and Senate and in private life.
11. It may not mean much to Crutcher (who I believe is not Catholic but Santorum's public smackdown of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops at a Catholic Church Mid-Atlantic conference of Catholic laity for pleading for Congressional funding for a witch's brew of pro-abort "progressive" groups, kicking the leftist hierarchs as their numbers were seriously eroding and as Rome was systematically replacing those dying and retiring with substantially more conservative bishops, was a more important effort with more important results than most anything else that public officials do.
12. Mark Crutcher would do well to return to his area of competence which is instigating and assisting malpractice suits against the medical babykillers and leave matters political to those far more competent in that area than he.
BlackElk,
Thank you for your post 37. I’ve been to your posting page over the years to see your position on various matters, and admire your thinking and writing, so I appreciate your post.
I agree with much in your post, especially on the reality that in politics the perfect can be the enemy of the good, however I don’t think anyone on FR is naive enough to expect anything close to perfection with pols.
I too believe Santorum is a good man. Sadly our culture is so atrocious that I don’t believe we can turn it around with a good man, we need a truly great man for POTUS. I don’t know if there is one for 2012, but when taking everything I know about Santorum into account, I believe he falls short.
The very facts of his pro-life record is what made his support of Specter AND Christine Whitman (any other pro-aborts?) all the more upsetting.
He compromised big time on one of if not the biggest issue he championed.
Principle above Party. The reverse gets us nowhere.
BlackElk you have good points but I don’t see any that offer reason to trust Santorum wouldn’t make the same type mistakes and compromises as POTUS, which presents even more opportunities for mistakes and compromises than for a senator.
Still, I would have voted for him over Casey, so I suspect that you and I are not too far apart on all this.
Again, Santorum is a good man, but under the current circumstances, not good enough. That is why I said We MUST demand better than Rick Santorum.
And from the purely political level: Santorum seems an unrealistic candidate as he lost his last election, six years out of elected office from 2012, moved out of his home state and mostly off the national radar.
A RELATED POINT
If Santorum were to win the nomination I would in a heartbeat support him over obozo. The RNC knows that this would be the case with most R voters for almost anyone they might nominate against obozo. After 4 loooong hellish years of obozo, many would haul a$$ to the voting booth in complete desperation even if the ticket were John McCain and Lindsey Graham. And therein lies a big part of the bigger problem.
We’re freaking stuck and it’s getting way past unbearable.
The RNC is broken. The nomination process problem is a disaster waiting to happen AGAIN. Limbaugh—God bless and protect him, is correctly warning against a third party at this time. But the RNC leadership is infested w RINOs and I have yet to hear concrete solutions on how conservatives can take back the GOP and prevent another stinking rotten RINO from getting nominated.
Read my post at #45