Funny, I remember when Santorum was serving in the Senate, and he was extremely popular with conservatives at the time. (certainly moreso than Newt was when Newt served as Speaker, history revisionism notwithstanding) Must have been doing all that evil liberal stuff behind the scenes, right? Sneaky guy.
"One of the criticisms I make is to what I refer to as more of a Libertarianish right. They have this idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do, government should keep our taxes down and keep our regulations low, that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn’t get involved in cultural issues. That is not how traditional conservatives view the world....There is no such societey, that I am aware of, where we've had radical individualism and that it succeeds as a culture.” -- Rick Santorum
Santorum voted for raising the minimum wage six times. He was all for getting rid of Planned Parenthood -- good!!! Atta boy Rick! I hate abortion as much as you do, amen brother! -- but instead of ceasing its funding so free people as taxpayers kept more of their money, he wanted to continue government involvement by using at least some of those taxes to pay for pro-adoption programs. As if Americans couldn't handle it without government "help."
Moral Americans can do and have done incredibly great things. They would continue to do incredibly great things except their government is an amoral force that tyrannically overpowers them "for our own good." Rick doesn't trust Americans to do the right thing morally any more than the Democrats do -- he wants to use government force to assure they make the "right" moral choice. That's government tyranny.
Santorum supported government force backing of labor unions that favor them in no-longer "free" markets. Santorum worked happily and well on the model of applying government liberally -- free-handedly, and although it was in pursuit of Christian ends, it was still the liberal use of government.
Bottom line, fellow FReepers, is that during the 2012 campaign, I read every single word of the websites of both Newt and Santorum. EVERY SINGLE WORD.
I bet not a one of you Santorum supporters did. Newt laid out a plan -- a flawed plan, a bumpy plan, but a RIGHT plan -- to cut back government significantly on almost every level. It was detailed and it was mostly of substance with a minimum of feel-good phraseology.
Santorum had mostly a lot of happy talk about how strong "family values" build "strong economies" (?? Then why does Mexico, where family values rule supreme, have one of the weakest economies?????) though with some solid positions on taxation somewhat akin to Gingrich's except for favoring unions more. There was zero anywhere in Santorum's campaign or presentation that marked him as a conservative -- that is, advocating for the conservative use of government. Meanwhile, most of Gingrich's website detailed a plan -- flawed perhaps but a plan nonetheless -- that specifically addressed and declared a strong foundation in limited government conservatism.
People accuse me of being a "purist" because I, a life-long middle-aged Republican, refused in 2012 to vote for a Republican with a standing record of advancing the force of government on five major fronts: health care, homosexual "rights," environmentalism, abortion, and judicial activism (that would be Romney).
Yet if it had been Gingrich, I'd have voted for that Republican, with all of Gingrich's many flaws. So I was some "purist."
There are limits to what I will vote for, these days. I will only vote for politicians whose vision and goal is to CUT GOVERNMENT. Anyone who has looked at Santorum's standing record understands that his goal is fundamentally to change government into one more friendly to Christian values, but with the same tyrannical force.
The words in his quotes above illustrate it pretty clearly. "Conservative" if you mean "advocates Christian values," "liberal" if you mean "liberal use of government."