The real Santorum:
In 2004, while serving as a United States Senator, Rick Santorum claimed his legal address was a house in the Pittsburgh suburb of Penn Hills, which was immediately next door to the home of his wife’s parents. During the spring and summer of that year — in the leadup to the presidential election — Pittsburgh news crews started investigating whether or not Santorum really lived in the house he claimed as his Pennsylvania residence. Several of these “investigative reports” showed the Penn Hills “Santorum House” as abandoned, with an unkempt lawn, peeling paint, and junk mail piled up near the front door – as if no one had visited the house in many months. When the cameras peeked inside the house, viewers saw room after room empty of any furnishings; it was clear that the Santorum family did not live at that residence at all.
* The Pittsburgh media made a great stink over this, which quickly spread to average men and women on the street who became upset that Santorum didn’t really live at his “official residence”. The reason this really hit home with Pennsylvanians was because Santorum had railed against Congressman Doug Walgren for moving out of his own district and not maintaining a real residence there. Pennsylvanians hate hypocrisy — and that’s just what Rick Santorum was…a hypocrite…for haranguing Walgren for not living in his district when Santorum himself didn’t even live in the state of Pennsylvania anymore.
* Records ultimately showed that Santorum lived exclusively in a $600,000+ near-mansion in Virginia. This is another thing you need to understand about Pennsylvanians to appreciate just how damaging this was to Santorum. On paper, Santorum claimed his residence was a $90,000 modest house in a suburb of Pittsburgh, when in reality that house was abandoned and Santorum was REALLY living in a house six times as expensive in another state. Here in Chicago, $600,000 can’t buy you a big house, but in Pittsburgh it would land you a palace…so the people who heard about Santorum’s residency scam were enraged that he “abandoned the state” and “lied to his constituents” by living in what they perceived to be a mansion instead of the Penn Hills residence he claimed.
* After the 2004 election was over, Santorum very quietly tried to eliminate the appearance that his Penn Hills home was abandoned by renting it out to unnamed individuals. This didn’t solve the problem, but only made things worse, because the renters registered to vote using Santorum’s Penn Hills address. It’s a similar situation to what Rahm Emanuel found himself in when he rented out his Chicago home when he moved to Washington, only to later try to claim he still lived there — technically — when he wanted to run for Mayor of Chicago. Just like with Emanuel, Santorum was able to survive the residency challenge because he paid $2,000 worth of property taxes a year on his Penn Hills home and still held its deed…even though he hadn’t lived there in many years and had no intention of moving back there (at least not until the lease expired with the people he rented it to).
* The net effect of all this was an ingrained sense amongst Pennsylvanians that Rick Santorum couldn’t be trusted, was a slippery snake, and that the things he did “just weren’t right, even if they were legal”.
* The other shoe to drop in all of this was the question of where, exactly, Santorum’s children were living and who was paying for their education — the people of Pennsylvania or the people of Virginia. Even though Santorum’s family was clearly living in Virginia, Santorum was billing the state of Pennsylvania — and the Penn Hills School District in particular — around $40,000 per child to educate each of his five children in the “Western Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School”. After the Pittsburgh local news stations started showing viewers the tours of Santorum’s empty and abandoned Penn Hills home, irate citizens started demanding an investigation into the legality of Santorum charging the Penn Hills school district for the expensive education of five children who didn’t really live there, and instead were living in Virginia.
* Things got incredibly ugly as this was all hashed out in both the media and in the court of public opinion. Ultimately, Santorum yanked his kids out of the “Cyber Charter School” program and had his wife Karen start homeschooling them instead — but he refused to reimburse the state for the hundreds of thousands of dollars that were spent “cyber-schooling” the Santorum children while they lived in the state of Virginia. When confronted about any of this, Santorum became incredibly brittle on camera, lashing out at those who questioned him, and earning a solid reputation as an insufferable and impersonable jackass
How about something on the REAL Romney, Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich? Huh? And then we’ll make a decision as to which of these “sins” are the most disqualifying compared to Obama...
You hatred of Catholics is well documented here .
Your pro abortion ?
Interesting. Thanks for filling in some of the details about Santorum. I had been wondering about his fall from grace with Pennsylvania voters.
If that’s the best anyone’s got on him then he looks pretty good.
1) He lives with his family near where he works.
2) He takes advantage of government benefits.