Posted on 03/22/2012 6:27:59 PM PDT by true believer forever
Rick Santorum's latest attempt to use a Mitt Romney aide's "Etch-A-Sketch" remark against the Republican front-runner instead gave his rival a chance to fire back on Thursday, after Santorum seemed to say he'd rather see President Obama reelected than send Romney to the White House.
Speaking at an event in Texas, Santorum again made the case that Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom's comments Wednesday on CNN about a "reset" of the campaign if Romney clinched the nomination showed the former Massachusetts governor's efforts to appeal to conservatives were insincere.
"You win by giving people the opportunity to see a different vision for our country, not someone who's just going to be a little different than the person in there," Santorum told a crowd in San Antonio, according to NBC News. "If you're going to be a little different, we might as well stay with what we have instead of taking a risk with what may be the Etch-A-Sketch candidate of the future."
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
I am a former Santorum supporter
Hope you haven;t forgotten what Santorum did in Michigan....Using the democrats Roll-A asking the dems to vote for him in the GOP primary.
It just goes on..when did you last see and hear Santorum standing tall and acting like a real man. All over the news today he looked like a weasel holding a kids toy in his hand.
What about his answer about voting for the Union in the senate, his answer, it was add ons to bills he wanted passed.
I am from Union country in the North, his dad was a member of the union, and maybe his mother. Do you know how hard it is to get the union loyalty out of a union member and family member? I do, it may not be possible.
I pray we won't make a mistake this time.
I am a former Santorum supporter
Hope you haven;t forgotten what Santorum did in Michigan....Using the democrats Roll-A asking the dems to vote for him in the GOP primary.
It just goes on..when did you last see and hear Santorum standing tall and acting like a real man. All over the news today he looked like a weasel holding a kids toy in his hand.
What about his answer about voting for the Union in the senate, his answer, it was add ons to bills he wanted passed.
I am from Union country in the North, his dad was a member of the union, and maybe his mother. Do you know how hard it is to get the union loyality out of a union member and family member? I do, it may not be possible.
I pray we won't make a mistake this time.
The problem with your statement is the 'anybody but Obama vote'. It seems only the hardcore lefties are the only ones left in Obama's camp.
Santorum just had his McLame moment.
Oh, wow, nobody else has picked up on that anywhere that I have read... No-Risk Obama. Thank you so much..
It seems as candidates they should be telling us how they will beat Obama, not how they will get Obama re-elected.
And Romney would be worse than Obama for us in some ways but I dont want them saying it.
Maybe if you watched this, it's 30 minutes long, you would have a good reaction to it. It is Newt speaking on American energy, and many people have found it a seminal moment in their 'newt conversion' :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=d7T_gY2O3LY
*******
I don't know if you are a reader or not, but this is a pretty complete rundown of what Newt is pledging to do if elected. If you don't like these, and are sincerely interested in some inspirational Newt, please just let me know. He's the only one who can change DC... the only one.
The words of Newt Gingrich:
"I’m going to give you a series of solutions that are big enough to get America back on the right track, and I think this has been the greatest challenge of this campaign. We have lots of bickering. We have lots of argument – we have virtually no discussion of what does it really take, to take the most complicated society in the world, the largest economy in the world, and move it back to being the most successful, most prosperous and safest country in the world, so I’m going to try to set a stage for that.
Let me start with jobs. If I am the nominee, with your help, I will ask the entire Republican ticket to campaign with me, on the pledge, that when the Congress comes in on January 3rd, it will stay in session, and by January 20th, when I am sworn in, we will have repealed ObamaCare.
All three of those are job-killing bills which centralize bureaucracy in Washington DC and increase the corruption of the political system. All three should be repealed and held at the desk until I am sworn in. That afternoon, on the very first day we should sign the repeal of all three. That’s a reasonable start.
Two hours after the inaugural address I will begin signing Executive Orders and Presidential Signings – all of which will have been published by October 1st. The country will know precisely what this campaign is about. The very first Executive Order will abolish all of the White House Czars as of that moment.
We will sign that day an Executive Order, that as of that moment, approves the Canadian Pipeline to Houston – period. My message to Prime Minister Harper and the Canadian Government is simple: you do not need a partnership with the Chinese. Give the American people a few months, when we beat Obama on election night, you can start buying equipment, because we will approve it on January 20th.
There will be an Executive Order to approving putting the US Embassy in Jerusalem on that day. Period.
We will on that day reinstate Ronald Reagan’s Mexico City Policy – no money for abortions overseas. Period.
I want to talk now about how to create jobs. America works when Americans are working. The number one theme of the Fall campaign will be a pay check president vs. a food stamp president. I believe we will win that fight by a huge margin. In President Reagan’s years we created 16 MILLION jobs. I worked with President Clinton, and in those 4 years we created 11 MILLION jobs, and got down to 4.2% unemployment
Really serious change. I have only one measurement for what I’m about to tell you. I want the establishment to understand up-front – this is not about fairness, this is not about being revenue neutral. This is about maximizing economic growth to put us back to work and to create the most dynamic economy on the planet, to rebuild our manufacturing base, so we pull away from China, and become once again the dominate country on the planet in economic terms.
How do we do that? First, we eliminate the Capital Gains tax. Zero Capital Gains for all investments in the U.S.
Second: we go to 100% expensing so all new equipment at every level, farmer, factory, doctor, business – all of it gets written off in one year.
The goal is to make the American system, the most modern, and the most productive in the world.
Also, if you are going to modernize the equipment, you want to modernize the work force. Unemployment compensation should be changed so that in order to get compensation, you sign up for a business-led training program, so we are modernizing our work force.
Never again shall we pay someone 99 weeks for doing nothing. In 99 weeks you can earn an Associate Degree. Think about the total waste of human capability when you teach people to sit at home for 99 weeks. It is fundamentally wrong and a violation of the Declaration of Independence that we have the right to pursue happiness.
If we are serious about manufacturing, we have to eliminate the EPA, which is a job-killing agency. We should replace it with a new Environmental Solutions Agency, made up of new people, and the number one requirement should be common sense.
They should also have to take into account economics. The idea that at the highest gas prices we have had, they are looking at regulations that would raise the price of gasoline 25 cents a gallon, tells you how utterly, totally irrational the EPA is today, and why we should replace it with a new agency. Not try to reform it, because the people in it have been self-selected to be radicals, who are anti-business, anti-local control, and seek to dictate to America.
We also need a 21st Century Food and Drug Administration whose job is really simple. Be in the laboratory. Understand the science and accelerate getting it to the patient so that we save as many lives as possible, as rapidly as possible and in the process, we create hundreds of thousands of new jobs dominating the world market in health care.
We need a 12.5% tax rate. That’s the Irish tax rate. It makes us incredibly competitive in the world. It brings home $700 BILLION in profits that are locked up overseas. It enables our companies to compete and I say to my Liberal friends – General Electric will actually pay taxes.
We should abolish the Death Tax permanently, because it is an immoral tax. You know, when Governor Romney released his taxes, the Liberals were shocked. He was only paying 15%. Their answer was to raise his taxes. I’m a conservative. I believe the goal should be to get your taxes down to 15%. Now, how do you do that? We have in my plan something we got from Hong Kong, care of Steve Forbes. Hong Kong has had for years a two-track system: you can keep the current code, all the red tape, all the deductions, all the forms, or you can fill in one page: here’s how much I earned, here’s how many dependents, here’s 15%.
And here’s what I want to say to the establishment, who is going to jump up and say, “This is not revenue neutral.” They are right. This is called a tax cut.
I have a simple principle – this is going to become a huge argument inside the Republican Party – I worked and helped balance the federal budget for 4 consecutive years – the only 4 years in your life time, so when people are saying Gingrich is being irresponsible, none of the people saying they have ever balanced the federal budget, we’ll get a federal budget balanced, but I have a single principle. My intention is to shrink spending down to the level of revenue, not raise revenue up to the level of Obama’s spending.
This is the fight we had in 1984 when we put in the “no tax increase” platform, which I worked on with Jack Kemp…, against the establishment. We are not the tax collectors for the welfare state. We are not assigned the job of going out to raise extra money so Liberals can give it away. We are interested in a tax code that creates jobs, that maximizes freedom, that gives you a chance to take care of your family, your neighborhood, your charities, your church or synagogue, and that’s a fundamentally different model than the establishment model that is oriented toward government. We will not tax the American people for Barack Obama’s credit card.
So how do we get to a balanced budget then? You cut spending. You cut taxes to maximize economic growth, you reform government and you use American energy.
At 4.2% unemployment, which is the rate at which I left office, Social Security is safe for a generation, a huge increase in revenue and a big decline in cost. You take people off of food stamps, off of Medicaid, off of public housing, off of unemployment, off of welfare. You put them to work paying taxes, the government gets increased revenue by more people paying taxes, and the government spends less – the first big step to balance the budget.
Let’s talk about cutting spending. We should replace the 130-year-old civil service system and regulations, with a new model, under new management, using systems like Lean Six Sigma and we should be prepared to save $500 BILLION A YEAR in the operation of federal government, and increase the economy by at least $2 TRILLION a year by simply making the government cease to be incompetent, inefficient and a hindrance to the future of the American system.
We should look at every single agency, and start with abolishing the Department of Energy, which has been a total failure since it was founded.
Apply the system of American Express, Visa, MasterCard to cut out fraud. We can save $60 BILLION to $110 BILLION, a year, in Medicare and Medicaid alone by going to modern systems that work, almost a TRILLION dollars in one decade, in just that one zone.
We should apply the Tenth Amendment – Governor Rick Perry has agreed to head up a project to develop this summer for a contract this Fall, and for a bill in January, a Tenth Amendment implementation to return power back home.
We have an obligation to open up the American system to produce the maximum amount of oil and gas for three reasons: keeping the $500-$600 BILLION here at home strengthens our economy. If we maximize production our goal should be to get back to $2.00/gallon gas to prove to the American people that the free market works in a practicable way, that affects your life. this isn’t pie-in-the-sky. This is supply and demand. When you realize that North Dakota alone has 25 times as much energy as the US Geological Survey thought 8 years ago, 25 times as much, and we are not allowed to look at Alaska where we own 69%, nearly 1.5 times the size of Texas, we don’t look offshore.
Obama has been an anti-American energy president and every American pays the price every time they go to a gas station.
We want to insure that no future president, ever again, bows to a Saudi King. Period.
We need to move towards a personal savings account for social security for young Americans, while taking Social Security off-budget for Senior citizens. We need to make sure no politician ever again lies to seniors by threatening to keep from them checks they earned and deserve, because the trust fund is there, even if there is no trust in Barack Obama.
We need a complete audit of the Federal Reserve to find out every decision – we deserve to know who got our money and why. If Bernanke has not resigned by the day I am sworn in, I will ask Congress to pass a law ending his term.
We need a commission on gold and solid currency much like the one Ronald Reagan had in 1981, and I am delighted that Lou Lehrman and Jim Grant have agreed to be the chairmen.
I will close on two big topics. Very important, and not about the economy. First, this administration is waging war on religion, but so are the courts. This is why we need a movement that is bigger than just beating Obama. We need a movement that understands that we are going to change the Congress, the White House, the bureaucracy, and where necessary the courts. We all need to understand how real this is. This country was founded by people who came here in order to avoid religious persecution. Our core document says we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights and Barack Obama seeks to cut across those and I don’t care what deal he tries to cut, this a man who is deeply committed…if he wins re-election, he will wage war on the Catholic Church the morning after he is re-elected. We cannot trust him. We know who he really is. We must make sure the country knows who he really is.
For a real bold solution: Check my website Newt.org for a detailed paper on how to re-balance the judiciary [9 years in the making] and how to reestablish the right of the people to protect themselves against dictatorial judges who are rewriting the constitution rather than enforcing the constitution. It’s a very serious topic.
Finally, this is an administration who lies about who our enemies are. Who refuses to tell the truth about what threatens us, is blind to the dangers we are running, seeks to weaken radically our defense system, has crippled our intelligence system and is making a series of decisions around the world that are stunning in their misunderstanding in the nature of their reality. Today we have Americans held hostage in Egypt, precisely like the hostage crisis during the Carter administration. Today we have the person who helped us find bin Laden has been arrested by the Pakistani government. What more do you need to know? They didn’t say, this is terrific. You helped to find the most wanted terrorist in the world. They said this is terrible. How could you help the Americans?
We need a profound national debate about our entire policy and it needs to start by telling the truth about radical Islamists who seek to kill us.
Let me be very clear, all of you have seen the Washington establishment and the Wall Street establishment pile on top of me. All of you have seen then say things that were just profoundly false, and there is a good reason they are doing it. This campaign is a mortal threat to their grip on the establishment, because we intend to change Washington, not accommodate it…"
Newt Gingrich
I am a former Santorum supporter
Hope you haven;t forgotten what Santorum did in Michigan....Using the democrats Roll-A asking the dems to vote for him in the GOP primary.
It just goes on..when did you last see and hear Santorum standing tall and acting like a real man. All over the news today he looked like a weasel holding a kids toy in his hand.
What about his answer about voting for the Union in the senate, his answer, it was add ons to bills he wanted passed.
I am from Union country in the North, his dad was a member of the union, and maybe his mother. Do you know how hard it is to get the union loyality out of a union member and family member? I do, it may not be possible.I pray we won't make a mistake this time.
What made you a former, I mean, what was the tipping point? Do you support Newt now? I pray along with you.
Just as I wrote in my previous post, Santorum acts like a spoiled brat. If he loses he does not take his loss well.
He lashes out with these off the wall remarks, today he said in so many words that he would vote for Obama. Then he tried to walk it back saying he was misunderstood.
Well we're not stupid.
That is not how a leader thinks, he is a sore loser.
I think Newt would shake things up in Washington. But I doubt he will get that chance. My second choice now is Romney.
Does he look or sound Presidential? Not Hardly
Desperate? Possible
Confused on Message? Possible.
"2008: There is nothing to fear from an Obama presidency - Juan McLame
Santorum just had his McLame moment. ~ Freeper hattend
I am glad he got off that rich businessman are evil’ stuff. And the Manned-Moon-base stuff was a huge joke and it made him look crazy.
He is at his best when he is making fun of Obama’s stupid ideas. That is when I enjoy watching him.
I don’t believe a word that any of these candidates say when claiming what they will get done But Romney is the WORST liar of them, he is competing with Obama.
Only what Newt was talking about is already happening, and is a major national security concern. Here is just some very general reading on it, there's loads of technical stuff about how China, along with Russia, have major plans for moon occupation... newt also wanted it spawned and supported totally in the private sector for the first time, with only the govt providing prizes, deregulation, and grants that would be repaid...
http://www.myfoxdc.com/dpps/news/russia-us-moon-base-nasa-dpgonc-20110119-to-_17194074
"Russia is talking with the US and Europe on plans to create a manned research base on the moon, the head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos said Thursday. Roscosmos is discussing the possibilities for a permanent moon base with officials from NASA and the European Space Agency, the agency's chief, Vladimir Popovkin said.
"We don't want man to just step on the moon," Popovkin told Vesti FM radio station, according to the Ria Novosti news agency. "Today, we know enough about it, we know that there is water in its polar areas ... we are now discussing how to begin [the moon's] exploration with NASA and the European Space Agency."
He said the plan was either to set up a base on the moon or launch a station to orbit around it. Russia also is planning to send two unmanned mission to the moon by 2020, Popovkin said."
Chinese moon base 2002
http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/5/22/181737.shtml
Just as I wrote in my previous post, Santorum acts like a spoiled brat. If he loses he does not take his loss well. He lashes out with these off the wall remarks, today he said in so many words that he would vote for Obama. Then he tried to walk it back saying he was misunderstood. Well we're not stupid.
That is not how a leader thinks, he is a sore loser.
I think Newt would shake things up in Washington. But I doubt he will get that chance. My second choice now is Romney.
Why don't you act on your affection for Newt, and help him out, and wait things out a little. There is a good chance Newt will take this to the convention... where the elites could get an inkling of how much they are despised...
Don't give up, things are just a little tough right now, and it's hard to see the light. But it's there and will break through.
If you want to help Newt in anyway, making calls or donating, or getting involved grassroots, here are 2 links:
www.newtsnetwork.com - Clink on Make the Call
$$$ newt.org/donate
I have no inkling what the above means, or if it is good or bad re Santorum... I'm gonna go out on a limb, it is santorum negative...
Three Stooges
Yes, the private sector. How conservative sounding. Well lets see. Given the US cant put a man in orbit how much would it cost the private sector to build a manned moon base? $100B?? $500B? $1000B?
There is something funny about the private sector that Newt doesn't understand because he worked with government projects all his life. They don't invest money unless there is good chance they will make even more back. Newt never had to worry about that. His government enterprises like Ethanol never had to make money/
This non-sense is much like Newts sales pitch for green energy as a Ethanol contractor. Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining.
By that measure the only candidate in the race who has true private sector experience is Ron Paul when he set up his medical practice.
This is being misinterpreted, especially by the pro-Romney crowd, which is desperately grasping at any straw to erase the Etch-a-Sketch remarks.
Romney is too much like Obama — that Mitt is a RINO whose record looks like that of Obama and thus, you can choose either one and get essentially the same thing.
You might remember that Mittens voted for Tsongas.
Romney has said that he is for a national health mandate (Obamacare), even though he is denying that right now. You can find him saying that he is for a mandate on a NATIONAL level, on Youtube.
*Romney ran as a PRO-CHOICE candidate for Governor
*Romney supported Cap and Trade
*Romney supports a national healthcare mandate and is the creator of Romneycare (the blueprint for Obamacare)
*Romney helped give Massachusetts gay marriage
*Romney believes in man-made global warming
*Romney was for the bail outs.
I’m supporting Mitt Romney, but I agree that Rick Santorum has disqualified himself from further consideration.
You miss the point: Mitt Romney isn't a viable candidate. (He's a losing candidate)
Casting a vote for Mitt Romney, should he win the nomination, is throwing away your vote.
(May I suggest you start doing the math?)
Here's what I mean...
(1) There's more unregistered voters in this country (29% of entire population) than there are registered Republicans (29% of registered voters...so that's 29% of 71% of the population)
* So the GoP probably had less than 40 million voters in 2008
* In 2008, over 57% of the nation voted...which means over 13% of registered voters didn't show up to vote...1 in 25 of these registered voters (about 4% of all registered voters) were Gop-registered...So just over 1 in 7 registered didn't vote... ,br>* Of course, it IS true that the "no-shows" among registered voters are pretty equally distributed among GoP, Dems, & Independents...so a "no-show" GoP voter is oft' offset by a "no-show" democrat voter...
* But still, if you had about 40 million GoP voters in 2008 -- of which about 1.5 million were no-shows...how many more would the GoP have to "scare away" before they put the party at-risk of a "no-return" evaporation?
(2) We know that in 2010, White Evangelicals were 34% of the electorate...that wasn't just 34% of the GoP...but over 1/3rd of the entire vote!
Evangelicals in 2010 were probably almost 2/3rds of the GoP vote!
(3) So...at this point of the primaries...how's Mitt doin' "reeling in" those Evangelicals?
In the primaries, "If one excludes Virginia (where Romney faced only Paul) and Arizona (with its substantial Mormon population), Romney’s average among these voters drops to 17 percent.
Source: Romney’s challenge to sway evangelical voters
OK, yes, that's the primaries...but let's assume that Evangelicals "have nowhere to turn" and triple their support for Romney were he to win the nomination...Let's say that over half of Evangelical registered voters vote for Romney...
Even with that scenario, that still could mean that up to 15-16% of the entire electorate (almost 1 in 6 voters) -- either vote for Obama, don't vote, or vote third party...and that's just white Evangelicals! (That says nothing about non-Evangelical GoP voters, Independents, or Dems!!!)
I really can't see -- after the MSM & the Dems get done with Romney...plus Evangelical reluctance to vote for a racist-"I'm-a-god" candidate...where Romney would get much beyond 30% of the vote!
So...if you can find 1% of the electorate to agree with your "chance of beating Obama" philosophy -- people otherwise inclined to either vote third-party or not vote for the POTUS race...and you collectively manage to change the Romney total from say, 29%, to 30%, so what?
It's meaningless to say, "we helped a team in the SuperBowl so that instead of losing 46-29, they lost 46-30...or even if you somehow catalyze 3% to budge...do you really think that extra "field goal" that made it 46-32 instead of 46-29 was so "difference-making?"
No. A team that gets drubbed by 14 instead of by 17 gets drubbed either way.
People like you conclude that voting for a losing candidate (i.e. a third-party candidate) is throwing away your vote. Well, Romney is a losing candidate. And just because he could grab 1 in 7 more voters than a third-party candidate, still doesn't magically transform him into a "winning" candidate. Therefore, by definition, since he is a non-viable losing candidate, a vote for Romney (were he to win the nomination) is throwing away both your vote and your conscience...and furthermore, it sends a horrific message to the GoP establishment...that you'll ALWAYS vote for whatever RINO they send to you.
After leaving Congress, Newt built and managed 9 or 10 small business, which means he met payroll, dealt with regulations, and saw up close how government hamstringed the small entrepreneur. In fact, in the one on one debate with Herman Cain, a noted businessman himself, Newt said seeing up close how government impeded the private sector, was the major thing he learned after leaving congress, and becoming part of Main Street.
And you never did address the documented national security concerns re moon habitation and bases for military purposes. Newt has the vision to look down the road, it appears you don't. Santorum, right?
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