If you swap the names over, your point still makes total sense.
I am not going to even attempt to argue you out of your support - you have your candidate and defend and fight for him both fairly and well, without the usual cr*p. I respect that, probably more than you know.
My problem with Santorum is simple. He is a social conservative. Not a bad thing, but a one note thing when the country is dying for want of a fiscal conservative.
While social conservatism is the very heart of being conservative, fiscal conservatism and celebration of exceptionalism is the soul.
Rick Santorum ticks one box. Newt Gingrich ticks all three - though Newt’s social conservatism is ticked very lightly in pencil!
Santorum is a very good man. Newt, to be honest is not. Don’t need a saint in the WH right now, need a fighter instead.
The sad thing is, I don’t “have” a candidate. I think I like Santorum as a conservative more than Gingrich. However, from what I see, Gingrich has some better ideas, along with some not-so-good-ones.
Santorum has a better character and demeanor — I’d much rather have a man like that running our country than the more bombastic and off-the-cuff Newt Gingrich.
Gingrich is clearly the better leader, to the degree you want a leader. But he folded enough that I’m not sure if, on any particular issue, he’d back off, or worse, change his position as smart people sometimes do just to prove how leading-edge and open they are.
Santorum, I don’t know if he has the ability to lead. Neither have run anything, but the only guy left who did is unacceptable — Perry checked off a lot more boxes for me.
Anyway, if I thought the two were equally electable, I’d be supporting Newt now. I almost decided to do so in that one day when it looked like he’d be on the ballot here in Virginia and Perry wouldn’t. Then Gingrich was out.
My fear is that Newt will implode. We’ve seen signs of it. So my goal now is to keep the discussion at FR from irrepairably destroying Rick Santorum — we might well need him, especially if it turns out Gingrich, while he gets more “1st-choice” support than Santorum, can’t get enough conceded support to beat Romney.
As part of that, I wish we could let every Freeper know what FACTUAL issues there are with Newt, so we don’t get into a place where he’s all that’s left, and then conservatives look at what he is doing and decide the can’t support him after all. Because, while some freepers are clearly in the “I’d vote anybody who could stop Romney”, most conservatives have their limits (which is why Santorum’s support hasn’t collapsed to nothing like Perry did).
Not the crap being thrown around about Gingrich “opposing Reagan”. Or his stupid ex-wife stuff. But rather about things he is saying NOW. I wrote several paragraphs after this more than once, and deleted them because I don’t feel comfortable even explaining the point — I like being here at FR and don’t want to get banned.