What should Rick do if asked questions that do not concern the economy, price of gas, etc. ignore them? Plead the 5th?
If you accept that a candidate should honestly attempt to answer questions put to him, how should he have dealt with what surely was a question apparently concerning many in PR, which is where he was campaigning?
There're are some poster here who would criticise Santorum for standing during the national anthem, but as another poster asked, what really was wrong with the answer he gave here?
Well, for one thing that he seems to think the Constitution or some other law contains a federal mandate for English (it doesn’t) and, for another, PR already has a law making English one of its two official languages (the other, of course, being Spanish, which is logical). Most people in PR, except for people out in the hills, speak English, and many of them speak it as a first language.
This was an unnecessary thing to say, and he obviously did it to pander to what he perceives to be the “base” without knowing a single thing about how things actually operate in Puerto Rico. And since he knows nothing about economics, monetizing the debt, Iran, the balance of trade or the price of gas, what else was he supposed to talk about?
If you examine my posting history, I hope you will find that I am not one who serially criticizes whatever Rick says or does.
Learning how to “pivot” on the “loaded” questions is a skill that has to be learned and practiced to be effective. It requires that the candidate is articulate; well informed and has a good grasp of the major points of the message he/she wants to emphasize and convey to the particular audience. Newt is very adept at doing this; which is one major reason I have supported him.
If Rick was asked directly whether he thought that Puerto Ricans should learn to speak English; he simply could have pointed out that the question was irrelevant as most Puerto Ricans already do speak English and it is already taught in their school system.
It isn't an easy skill set to develop and not everybody has the ability to do it well; especially under the pressures and rigors of a national political campaign
Skeeter is right in what he says here. (I disagree with his last paragraph beyond what I excerpt above, however — reference my last post about the admission of New Mexico to the Union. Another poster has cited precedents in Louisiana and California, as well as Pennsylvania.)
From what I've seen in the media and what I know from people who saw Santorum in Iowa, one of the things which makes Santorum unusual among presidential-level candidates is that he doesn't just give stump speeches or rephrase people's questions to give the answer he wants rather than answering the question he was asked.
That has good and bad points. He engages questioners by giving them real answers to what they wanted to know, and while that is a huge part of his one-on-one appeal, sometimes that means he gets drawn into stuff that creates problems when broader audiences hear the answer to a question asked by a single individual.
This is what politicians call getting drawn off-message.
Reporters hate it when a candidate answers the question the candidate wanted to be asked instead of the question we asked, and so do voters, but usually voters don't get to complain in public when their once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to ask a question to a potential future president doesn't get answered.
I'll give Santorum lots of credit for believing that if he wants people to vote for him, he's in a job interview and needs to answer the questions that the hiring boss — i.e., the voters — want to ask.
My read of this is that Santorum, as a job candidate, just gave a really bad answer in the job interview. I've hired people before who gave bad answers to some questions if I liked most of what I heard.
While Santorum’s answer sounds like the same thing Newt Gingrich would have said to an “official English” question and may actually help him with traditional Republican primary voters, this could create serious damage for Santorum long-term with Hispanic voters that did not need to happen. As a conservative Roman Catholic, Santorum has real opportunities with religiously conservative Hispanic voters who don't usually consider Republican candidates, and I sincerely hope this doesn't come back to bite him.