Posted on 02/21/2012 7:12:42 AM PST by Marguerite
HERE'S A THOUGHT for Presidents Day: President Santorum.
Did you just shiver?
How in the name of all that's holy is Rick Santorum atop national polls for the Republican nomination?
Get it? All that's holy? Maybe that's the answer. You know, the Tebow factor; the Jeremy Lin effect? Well, I have another theory.
I wrote Rick off after his strong showing in Iowa, a state that - in an example of what a wacky year this is - he officially won weeks later by one-tenth of 1 percent.
I predicted that after Iowa, members of the national media would find what Pennsylvanians found in 2006 - namely, that Santorum's core beliefs and personal traits are untenable in a general election.
They did not.
Instead, they continued to ignore him as he finished third or fourth in subsequent contests in New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida and Nevada.
Then came three wins on Feb. 7: two in low-turnout caucuses in Colorado and Minnesota; one in a nonbinding primary in the "show-me state" of Missouri.
(His combined vote total in these three wins, by the way, was 35,296 votes fewer than he got in his third-place finish in Florida.)
Still, national media did not "show me" the roiling Rick whom many Pennsylvanians came to know and loathe.
To the contrary, they helped elevate him (as it did Trump, Bachmann, Perry, Cain and Newt) to the level of an alternative to the mushy Mitt Romney.
How did we get here? And how does this prove that GOP voters are nuts?
We got here via media overhype, Mitt's underdeveloped political skills, finance laws allowing rich guys to keep any campaign afloat and the fact that stuff Rick says plays well in primaries, which forces candidates to appeal to base voters.
Yes, polls change, as we've seen. But some things do not change.
For example, everybody knows that Santorum doesn't like gays in relationships and doesn't like gays in the military.
But he also doesn't like women in the workplace, doesn't like women in combat, doesn't like women (or men) using contraceptives.
He says that contraception is "harmful to women" and society, and that "radical feminism" ruined society by encouraging women to work outside the home, which is one reason an Inky reviewer of his 2005 book, It Takes a Family, called Rick "one of the finest minds of the 13th Century."
(This is an asset in many GOP primaries.)
The problem is that women vote in national elections. They vote more than men. They've done so in every presidential race, by proportion since 1980 and by raw numbers since 1964, says the Rutgers Center for American Women and Politics.
Santorum's beliefs energize women's fundraising and turnout.
As to his personal traits, think preachy arrogance and doctrinaire judgmentalism.
Over the weekend, he slammed government-supported public education as "anachronistic" (he home-schools his kids), and said that President Obama's agenda is based on "some phony theology . . . not a theology based on the Bible."
If you're shaking your head thinking, "Here we go again," believe me, I feel your pain.
But, he perhaps said it best in a recent Fox interview: "He believes he's the smartest guy in the room and he should tell people what to believe and how to run their lives."
He was talking about Obama. But his words are a perfect self-assessment.
Really? I would be ashamed to. Usually articles by liberal scum are only posted for counterpoint arguments...not to support our own views. It looks to me like a desperate move to smear a good man. Shameful.
Romneybot post.
Big hair boy Trump must have written this.
at the end of the day it boils down to that.
Did you catch Santorum on Hannity’s TV show last night? Sean had him on to help him “explain” his recent remarks concerning phony theology, contraception, etc. Sean did his best, but the problem is that if a candidate has to go on a friendly TV show and spend 10 minutes or so explaining remarks that the media can play over and over in sound bites, well, he has a big problem. I see that in one poll, Romney has caught up to him in Michigan. If Santorum falls in Michigan and Arizona, I don’t believe he has time for another comeback. Newt seems to be positioned perfectly, as Rush said, to step in as the non-Romney once Santorum falls back.
Many of us have not really decided on our favorite candidate in the GOP...but we sure don't want you guys telling us who to chose, or why. Especially since you obviously picked the wrong guy last time and he is in the WH now destroying our country. Y'all ain't too smart! LOL
Me thinks that the article poster is a Newtbot.
That's not a problem for me—or for Santorum. Most women are pro-life, by a bigger percentage than men.
You have 4 or 5 choices. St. Rick, St. Newt, St. Mitt, or St. Paul. And you already know the 5th is Dear Leader.
That is it. Two are okay, one is not, and one is only half okay. One is horrible.
The two that are okay are all we have left against the one that isn’t, and the one that is horrible. The fact we still have two that are okay is a good buffer.
That is reality. A brokered convention will give you St. Mitt.
From 2001 to 2004, the Pennsylvania district school paid $38,000 per year as tuition for five of his children living in Virginia all around the year, on a cyber-home school program to Rick Santorum.
Do the math yourself.
Santorum told KDKA Radio that his niece lives in and “looks after” the Penn Hills house when he’s not there. He also admitted that when he goes to Pennsylvania, where he spends “about a month per year” there, he and most of the family usually stay somewhere else — with his in-laws — while his niece and her husband keep “watching” the house:
“We have a nice arrangement there. It works out well. Candidly, we just sort of work it out. Sometimes, a couple of my kids stay over there with the niece and her husband.”
But $100,000 paid for by local property taxes isn’t nothing. So under public pressure Santorum withdrew his children from the cyber school, but refused to reimburse the Penn Hills School District, who had to go to court to get back the $100,000 – spending even MORE time and MORE taxpayer dollars to get back money Santorum never should have pursued in the first place.
The Department of Education decided to end the dispute in 2006 by paying back to the Penn Hills District School a sum of $55,000 (federal funds from taxpayers’ money as well).
Absurd.
And who is this “we”? You and this Marg are a team?
I’ve seen Marguerite on other threads. She’s a Newt supporter.
When do I ‘patholgically smear’ Newt? I merely point out that Newt is undisciplined and can’t be trusted. I can point to his climate change rhetoric and commercials as examples. That’s not a smear. That’s an argument. Posting drivel from liberals is a smear.
What you said! I get sooo sick of people like Neal Boortz saying the same thing, that we've got to bow to the precious moderates and independents. Funny how Comrade Zero doesn't have to come across as a "moderate".
so this reporter is upset the MSM did not “take out” santorum.
This just goes with what Brit Hume is saying, the MSM is so out of step with the real world that when someone makes a statement about the obvious, the MSM freaks out.
Yep. And a frustrated, desperate one at that.
That may be the worst analysis I’ve seen on FR in days. That is not at all what happened. You may be technically correct about his comeback, but your reasoning is beneath specific reply.
I have a better question.
How the hell did a common grifter become President of the United States?
ML/NJ
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