Replies

OK, since people asked. I don’t really care myself, and I don’t have time for detailed analysis, but I’ll take a stab.

“Lie 1” - raise local taxes or teams would leave”. I am wary of ever calling future predictions “lies”, because nobody can tell the future. In this case, the taxes weren’t raised. But we don’t know whether the teams would have left, because they found a way to get alternate tax money without a local tax increase; although it did bankrupt the city, it seems to have saved the teams. Now, was Santorum “lieing”, because he didn’t know they’d bankrupt the city and raise state taxes to save the team? Did it turn out better for Pittsburgh to be bankrupt than to have the tax increase? I’m not going to argue in support of taxes paying for stadiums, but that is a policy question. I judge that there is no lie here.

“Lie 2 : No Plan B to save teams”. Author provides no evidence there was a plan. When taxes were rejected, a new plan became known, but for all we know that plan started formation when the tax increase failed. And since that plan bankrupted the city, it wasn’t a very good plan, and one could say it wasn’t a “plan” so much as the inevitable consequence of the tax rejection. Again, this was no Lie.

“Lie 3: (2) Where Santorum Lived” - this story is well-known, and the author shows no indication of a lie. Santorum attacked the previous office holder for not living in the district, and said he would, but again, this is a prediction of the future. He owned a residence which is what many in DC do to maintain a legal residence, so that wasn’t a lie. He wasn’t found liable for the cost of the charter school, and the whole “cost” thing is one of those fictions of government accounting, as they pass fake money around and pretend they are spending it. Who thinks it really cost and extra $100,000 because Santorum’s kids took online courses that already existed? The programs were paid for, the computers were operating, the teachers were being paid whether there were 5 extra kids or not.

“Lie 4: He claimed he wanted to live in Pa, but then didn’t when he was fired” — once gain, this is a future prediction problem. That he didn’t move back to Pa in 2006 doesn’t show that in 2004 he wished he could. Maybe getting soundly beaten in an election made him change his mind about where he lived. When my son asked if i wanted to do a C&O Canal bike trip, I said no way. We just did it — does that mean I lied? No, I changed my mind. Did Santorum ever promise that he’d be a life-long Pa resident? no.

“Lie 5 : Santorum said he was underwater” — This is the first lie where there is some actual evidence. Except the evidence is a newspaper attempt to assess the value of a “2 million dollar home” in a collapsing real estate market. Actually, here in Northern Virginia house prices bounced back somewhat pretty quickly. My house was once listed at $500,000, and later was around $220,000, and then some around me sold for $350,000. If my loan was $300,000, and I said in one month I was underwater, and a paper came 3 months later and saw the recent $350,000 sale price, they would conclude I wasn’t underwater, but I might have been when I said it. I might have still been, because who knows if I could actually sell my house. Certainly not a “lie”.

“Lie 6: Santorum said his child cost a lot so he gave little” — Actually, the author never refutes that claim, he just says it doesn’t actually explain low giving. But it certainly could explain the low giving in that year. If I never gave any money and instead bought pizza every day, and then one year I couldn’t buy pizza because I spent all my money caring for my sick wife, and then I was asked why in that year I didn’t give more money, it wouldn’t be a lie to say that I could not give more money because I spent it all on my sick wife.

“Lie 6: He said he gave more in earlier years, when tax returns show he didn’t”. This is the first lie that appears to have merit, if you assume the story is correct about the tax returns. I don’t have time to research tax returns. The family might also have still had major expense; 7 kids and a mortgage on a 2-million-dollar house is a big deal. Note that the author plays class warfare while pretending not to. Anybody can own a 2-million dollar home, you just have to find someone stupid enough to lend you 2 million dollars. Having bought a 2-million-dollar home (which btw isn’t exactly the upper crust home in Fairfax, as I said I own a pedestrian home in Prince William that was appraised at half a million at the height of the bubble (4 bedroom, 1/3rd acre in an older community with no sidewalks or curbs, and the home is poorly built), Santorum had a huge monthly mortgage, so maybe he couldn’t afford to give money. I don’t excuse his not giving, because charity is a calling of God. But it might not be a lie to say he had no money to give. Still, I won’t reject this one — so that’s one lie in the 1st 6 attempts.

“Lie 7 : (4) - disparagement of a pollster” - I guess if we are going to call attacking pollsters for bad polls “lies”, we’ll have to call all politicians liars. I’ve heard every candidate say the polls were bad, sometimes they are, sometimes they are not. Now, can I do research to find out how well the pollster does? I don’t have the time, but I will note that the author didn’t give any evidence to show the pollster was accurate, beyond stating that the pollster managed to release at least one poll in each of Santorum’s senate runs that correctly showed who would win. Well, I would note that the poll Santorum was complaining about actually showed Santorum winning Pennsylvania, so if Santorum wins the poll would be “correct”, and the argument was over the percentages. In order to show that Santorum was exagerating or lying about hte pollsters accuracy, the author needed to show that the pollster consistantly got the PERCENTAGES right in Pennsylvania races. I will say it is the responsibility of the person claiming a lie to SHOW it is a lie, not my burden to prove it isn’t a lie. I reject this pollster claim as a lie of any consequence, and note the author was REALLY personally upset about this comment, and said this was the entire reason he wrote the article.

(WHich means the author, who claims Santorum is a serial liar, was HAPPY to let all of us vote for him in ignorance, until his personal friend was attacked, and THEN he decided to tell the truth. What kind of guy lets the world be mislead as it is of no consequence, only to lash out because he is personally angry?)

So there you have it. The entire article is an opinion-based attack, so I have used an opinion-based response. By my reckoning, without spending a lot of time on it, I can rationally and logically dismiss 6 out of the 7 claims of “lies” as being something other than a lie. Only one case, that of the charitable contributions, appears to be a lie, and maybe a better study of the facts might also show that to be tenuous.

This CERTAINLY is no knock-out blow, or a definitive show of the lack of moral character of Rick Santorum.

Rick is in a hard race, and he’s getting frayed nerves, it appears. He’s saying things in frustration and desperation, and it isn’t pretty (his George Zimmerman comments were worse than anything in this article). He lashed out at a poll because at the moment he was asked, it was an outlyer, and a candidate has to build momentum by claiming things are looking up. That caused this article’s author to get angry and lash out in a personal attack against Rick Santorum.

If Rick was doing better, he would be calmer and would have found a better way to speak to the polls, and this article wouldn’t have been written. If you want a guy who is pretty calm and is unlikely to say rash things about Zimmerman or pollsters, that unfortunately is Mitt Romney, because he’s doing well enough he isn’t frazzled like Gingrich was after Florida or Santorum is now.