What you are saying is that Santorum is more conservative than how he performed for his liberal constituency.
That is precisely what Romney supporters say about him. “Well he was governor of Massachusetts...there was only so much he could do”
I actually like Santorum and think his time could come but likely not this go around but I'm not going to parse it out.
He has flaws like everyone of them. Supporting Spinchter was a big one.
They all make practical decisions.
and by the way...speaking of weird voting....the House Speaker often does not vote, in fact he is bound not to unless he allows the pro tempore he has to appoint for this to take his seat first which is infrequent
so by your logic a Speaker's voting record is just as compromised by procedure as a Senator's is by his more liberal than he constituents desires
it's a veritable briar patch ain't it?
I was as upset about Senator Santorum’s 2004 endorsement of Specter over Toomey in the GOP Senate primary as anyone. This is the text of a letter I e-mailed Santorum back then:
“Dear Senator Santorum:
Let me begin by saying that I am not a resident of Pennsylvania, so I am not technically your constituent. But as a member of the Republican leadership in the Senate, you represent Republicans throughout the nation, and as such I feel at the liberty to drop you this friendly note.
I am an active participant in the conservative movement, and regularly mention your name not only as an example of the type of leadership, platform and voting record Republicans need to get elected in competitive states and districts, but also as my preferred candidate for President in 2008. I defended you when you were unfairly attacked for your foresighted criticism of the pro-sodomy arguments in the Lawrence case, and I am certainly proud to have someone like you in the Senate to speak out and act on issues near and dear to me, such as opposition to abortion and judicial activism and support for tax relief and national defense. But I am at a loss for words when someone asks me why you are actively supporting the reelection of Senator Arlen Specter, who disagrees with us in every single one of those important issues.
I know that tradition dictates that incumbent Senators not oppose the reelection of their colleagues from the same party, especially when they represent the same state. And as Republican Conference Chairman, it would be unbecoming for you to actively campaign for the defeat of a Republican colleague. But is it really necessary for you to run commercials supporting Arlen Specter’s candidacy when he is running against Congressman Pat Toomey, a true conservative Republican from a blue-collar Democrat district (just like a certain Congressman Santorum from a decade ago) who can lead the party to a statewide victory?
I am especially disheartened by your claim that Arlen Specter votes with conservatives “on votes that matter.” When the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban, which you had been fighting for years to pass, got to the floor last year, it was nearly derailed by a sham substitute amendment by Dick Durbin that would not have prohibited a single abortion so long as the doctor stated that the mother’s health (including mental health) may be in danger. You know better than I that passage of the substitute amendment would have signaled the defeat of the PBA ban, and would have been a major setback in the pro-life movement. I remember that you spoke eloquently on the Senate floor as to why the sham substitute had to be defeated, and that the only way to end that heinous practice was to vote against Durbin’s substitute amendment. Wouldn’t you call that a “vote that matters”? I sure do. And, in case you’ve forgotten, Arlen Specter voted in favor of Durbin’s sham substitute, and the only reason it failed was because a few Democrat Senators, most of whom were up for reelection in 2004, voted against the amendment. Arlen Specter can only fool ignorant pro-lifers into believing that he supported the PBA ban, since he voted for its final passage, the results of which were a foregone conclusion. (Why, even Tom Daschle voted for the final bill! I hope that, in his Senate race against John Thune, Daschle doesn’t run ads saying that he supported President Bush’s agenda “on votes that matter.”) But most pro-lifers are not that ignorant, and we will not support someone like Arlen Specter for reelection.
I could go on for paragraphs about Specter’s voting record, the dangers posed by someone as unreliable as him serving as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee (had Specter not opposed Robert Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court, Roe v. Wade would have been overturned in Planned Parenthood v. Casey back in 1992, which would have saved millions of lives), the fact that Governor Rendell would name Specter’s replacement in case he can’t serve out his entire six-year term, and how Specter’s proven inability to attract votes from blue-collar Democrats in the Pittsburgh area and in the “T,” not to mention the fact that he cannot rally the conservative base, will make him more vulnerable to a challenge from Congressman Hoeffel (who will not allow Specter to win by his usual margins in the Philly metro area) than would Pat Toomey (who would defeat Hoeffel by winning votes from pro-life, pro-gun, pro-defense Democrats, the group that gave you two House victories and two Senate victories), but I know that you already know all of that. My plea to you is that you think about these things, and reconsider your participation in an active campaign to defeat Pat Toomey in the GOP primary. If, God forbid, Specter defeats Toomey, then it would certainly be acceptable for you to campaign actively for Specter’s reelection. But now is not the time to go wobbly.
I hope that you receive this note in the spirit with which it was intended, and that, after meditation and prayer, you do the right thing.
Sincerely yours in Christ,”
So, irrespective of how Rick Santorum was pressured by President Bush and by PA Republicans to be “congenial” and “support the incumbent” who “would keep the seat safe,” I will not defend Rick Santorum’s cowardly endorsement of RINO Arlen Specter in 2004. But that being said, Newt Gingrich’s full-throated endorsement of DIABLO Dede Scozzafava (compared to whom Specter voted like Jesse Helms) in the 2009 special election, and doubling-down after it became clear that Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman (i) was far, far more conservative than her and (ii) had an exponentially better chance of defeating Democrat Bill Owens, was a million times worse by any objective standard.
And I mention the fact that a Speaker rarely votes (and that, for such reason, Newt cast very few votes while the GOP was in the majority) because that means that Newt’s lifetime ACU rating is almost entirely composed of votes taken when he was in the minority and representing an overwhelmingly conservative district.
As for how people don’t like vote ratings unless they agree with the point they’re trying to make, there’s certainly a lot of truth to that, but I have consistently stated over the years that (i) comparing ACU scores from different years is a fool’s errand, since a 92 on one year may well be no more conservative than an 80 another year (it will all depend on what votes the ACU chose to highlight on each year) and (ii) it is far preferable to look at the aggregate ratings of several different groups in order to weed out outliers. I like to take 6 ratings from Michael Barone’s Almanac of Am,erican Politics-—the liberal ADA, AFS (labor) and LCV (League of Conservation Voters) scores and the conservative ACU, CFG (Club for Growth) and FRC (Family Research Council) scores. Of course, I have to subtract the liberal scores from 100 to get a “conservative equivalent” before I can add them up to the conservative scores; I then divide the total score by 600 to get a conservative percentage. So if a congressman has voter ratings of 5 from the ADA, 8 from the AFS, 10 from the LCV, 90 from the ACU, 88 from the CFG and 100 from the FRC, his “Conservative Score” would be 92.5.