Posted on 02/02/2012 5:31:46 PM PST by writer33
Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum commands a lot of respect in the Pikes Peak region.
And that support was hammered home Wednesday evening when Focus on the Family’s founder, Dr. James Dobson, made a surprise appearance at a Santorum rally to announce his endorsement.
“I’ve been watching you,” Dobson said to Santorum, with a quiet smile on his face. “We need you in the Oval Office.”
Santorum grinned broadly, and the thousand people at the rally stood and cheered.
And the senator told them solemnly, “God called me to do this.”
The event was Santorum’s second in the Pikes Peak region on Wednesday, during a campaign swing through Colorado. He stopped first in Woodland Park, where supporters filled the Ute Pass Cultural Center to capacity. So many people showed up that organizers worried about violating the fire code, and the campaign moved its evening rally to Mr. Biggs Family Fun Center, which had a much more room than the original location.
(Excerpt) Read more at gazette.com ...
I've come to Dr. Dobson's defense in the past. Thank you for doing it now. There are a number of Freepers who despise Christians voicing an opinion. They are afraid to face their own mortality. A life without Christ is not a very comforting life. The best one can do is pray for them.
A whole lot of people have been saying that same thing. If everybody who said that simply got behind him, his "shot" would improve dramatically :-)
Certainly he's not perfect, and many decry his lack of charisma. IMHO, we've had enough flash and bombast in the white house to last the rest of my lifetime. I wouldn't mind having somebody more along the lines of a "Silent Cal" Coolidge (who Reagan greatly admired).
I wonder if Patton, Halsey or Eisenhower would have ever been talked into abandoning their campaigns simply because the odds seem stacked against them...
Anyway, glad to see Dobson saying good things about Rick Santorum. He’s a good man who doesn’t deserve all the slime and personal attacks he’s getting just because he thinks he’s the best person for the Presidency, and is willing to fight for it.
***Hence, my tagline.
Agreed. Maybe that's why some of them stay out of politics.
You won't hear me disagreeing with your point that many evangelicals are politically naive.
Furthermore, I am the first one to respect the military victories of American patriots who defeated enemies of freedom but who were themselves steeped in sin, or sometimes open enemies of the Cross. Our modern American military is heavily Southern and therefore considerably more Christian than it has been at many times in the past. God is perfectly capable of using weak vessels as well as utter unbelievers to accomplish His will — after all, Osama bin Laden’s compound was attacked under Barack Obama’s orders — but that doesn't mean we should choose weak or unbelieving candidates if better choices are available.
What you will hear me saying is that poll data shows that if Santorum left the race, a significant percentage of his supporters would go to Romney, not Gingrich. CharlesWayneCT has some interesting data showing that Santorum voters are split on their second choice about evenly between Romney and Gingrich.
Poll and commentary here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2840285/posts?page=58#58
My guess is that's due to the “family values” concern and the lack of awareness of just how bad Romney's prior positions on abortion really were. if that's the case — and other Freepers have posted poll data which seems to prove their case — having Santorum leave will do very little to help Gingrich and might very well help Romney.
You'll also hear me saying that this race has been so volatile that I don't think any of the three frontrunners should yet be counted out. Ron Paul has no chance but I think the other three have a realistic shot at winning.
Gingrich basically came back from the dead to take the second-place position in the last few months. He deserves credit for that. If he wins the nomination I can't see any reason today why I wouldn't vote for him.
But it wasn't that long ago that very few people thought he had a chance. He was being attacked on Free Republic and elsewhere as a big-government Washington insider with a history of bad positions on key issues who had no chance of winning.
That was unfair to Gingrich then, and many of those same criticisms are being leveled against Santorum today. They're just as unfair today about Santorum today as they were about Gingrich back then.
A thousand people - very nice. :-)
Depends on the politician.
Why is Dobson’s endorsement a liability if Santorum can’t win anyway?
Yes, and lurkers and fellow FReepers, the fact that CharlesWayneCT was an outspoken Romney supporter on Free Republic in 2007-2008 and even afterward, should bear no consideration as to his motives for so ardently supporting Santorum now.
*rolls eyes*
Here’s one of my groupies. He’s actually a tame one, probably because he can’t think of anything clever to say about me. He probably also thinks that “all” actually pings everybody. :-)
Like it or not God calls people to vocations. I am not saying that The LORD called him to become President but that doesn’t change the fact that God does call people. Some people He calls to be pastors, some doctors, some teachers etc. If people would listen for His call we wouldn’t have so many poorly performing people in their respective vocations.
I think you subconsciously came up with “pastor” because that’s exactly what he seems like...a preacher on a mission not quite in touch with the clay at his feet. I think Gingrich is the better choice, but if Santy truly had the best shot at beating Romney, I would support him.
Finny, you got my attention. Thank you for this information, which I either never knew or forgot.
CharlesWayneCT, would you like to explain this? I can think of both good and bad reasons for this — for example, lots of people, including me, didn't realize four years ago just how bad Romney's views really had been when running for governor.
But Finny’s raised a question that deserves an answer.
It’s hard to explain exactly what my arguments were in 2008, because even repeating opinions held at the time could be seen as supporting Romney, and get me banned.
I will say that you should not agree with what I say because I explain this well, or disagree if I don’t — I just offer an argument, and you should evaluate that argument based on what you personally know to be true.
There’s a reason those who wrote the Federalist papers did it anonymously. They wanted their arguments judged on their merits, not on personality. I don’t post anonymously, because I think people should be wise enough to separate the two, and because I have a public presence anyway. I’m a hobby freelance opinion columnist for a local paper, and I occasionally post those columns here if they are of interest (my column title is “Critically Thinking”, I signed up here when I started to get good conservative opinion to help shape my arguments, and hence the “CT” at the end of my name).
I will say that while my defense of Romney was comprehensive, exhaustive, and I believe as some have said, skilled, my support now is overstated for effect. I was a Fred Thompson supporter once he entered the race — my daughter and I even made “FredHead” shirts to wear. Romney was my backup plan if Thompson failed (In that regard, Santorum is the backup plan I am trying to keep viable now in case Gingrich fails). For example, I didn’t back Romney for VP.
Once he was done, I didn’t care about him personally (some will point out I continued to argue about a couple of factual disagreements, which some considered “supporting Romney”). My last public act of support was to vote for Romney in the Virginia Primary, as a protest vote against John McCain, who was the nominee at that point (actually, more of a protest against Huckabee — I wanted Romney to do better than Huckabee in the final vote count. I will point out that Huckabee was not considered conservative by the majority here at FR, and Rush didn’t put him in the list of conservatives to use to stop McCain).
That’s all I’ll say, because I do not intend to break the stated rules of the forum. Maybe after the election is over, and we are hopefully celebrating the defeat of Romney in the primary, I will post a vanity defending myself from the distortion of my record. Right now we should focus on that goal.
How dare you go against group think!
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