Posted on 03/05/2012 7:58:47 PM PST by Fred
Rick Santorum's pitch to Republican voters is simple: He is the "true" and "consistent" conservative in the GOP's presidential nomination fight. He describes himself as "a candidate who, throughout [his] career, has not only checked the box on conservative issues but has fought for conservative issues." And he slams front-runner Mitt Romney for flip-flopping on abortion and the Wall Street bailouts and, most of all, for passing government-mandated health care reform in Massachusetts. If elected president, Santorum vows, he will end the "tyranny" of President Obama's Affordable Care Act.
Yet as an up-and-coming congressman in the early 1990s, Santorum took a much different line. Then—like now—health care was one of the nation's most divisive issues. In 1993
(Excerpt) Read more at motherjones.com ...
I guess if we are to vote for the candidate that has never been for the unconstitutional individual mandate, we’ll have to vote for Paul. :)
The more I learn about RS, the angrier I get.
For pure political profit, he has blown the entire mandate issue out of proportion, and be damned if he isn’t guilty of it too.
The mandate is the technicality that the court will use to throw it out perhaps, but it is NOT THE MAIN problem with Obama Care and no one thought it was until that’s the legal technicality that might defeat it.
There are many many other things worse about Obama Care than the mandate, and Rick has made it so important and BE DAMNED, he is guilty of supporting it too.
What a phony and a fraud.
I don’t understand why people are turning a blind eye to this guys record.
Read the whole article. It`s about health care, but it has much broader implications. It speaks to Santorum`s view of the role of government. When I hear politicians talk about using the government to shape the marketplace it makes me cringe. (and there`s many more quotes that provide insight regarding his thinking)
I really don’t care much what Rick Santorum said 20 years ago. I was 14 in 1993.
SnakeDoc
Oh I know, but his going on and on and on and on and on about the mandate has been screwing us all into a hole. And he did it just for his own chance to gain against Newt. And it turns out, he was for it too.
I agree with your point, but the mandate stuff is particularly irritating to me. I started a piece for American Thinker called “Mandate Madness” just today on this very subject - so perhaps it’s a raw nerve for me.
Well Snake, that would be a perfectly reasonable position, except that RS himself and most of his supporters have been obsessed with many things Newt said and did many years ago too.
If the vest fits, wear it.
I don’t dislike Newt. I think he has some strengths Santorum doesn’t. He’s a vicious debater. Maybe the best the right has had since Buckley.
But, Newt has some major weaknesses that can’t be overlooked. He’s said some weird stuff fairly recently (a lot more recently than 1993). Nothing deal-breaking ... but still weird. He tends to shoot his mouth off on occasion. And, his family history is a freaking mess.
I’d take either of them over Romney. I’d take Santorum over Gingrich, barely. Mostly because of Gingrich’s cluster of a personal life, which is just embarrassing and indefensible. On policy, I’m mostly fine with both.
SnakeDoc
Arlen Specter announces for the White House, with endorsee, Rick Santorum at his side.
At Senator Arlen Specter’s official presidential campaign announcement in March 1995, then-Senator Rick Santorum showed his public support and encouragement of Specter by sitting directly next to him as Specter denounced the GOP’s war on abortion. It was at this event that Specter proclaimed his total opposition to social conservatism and declared he is in fact running to make the GOP pro-choice.
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/64281-1
Santorum is seen nodding and applauding at Specter’s side:
3:46 mark: “In 1996, I intend to win the other house — the White House — with ten commitments to America… including a woman’s right to choose…
13:22 mark: “Even though we have this historic opportunity for these achievements, there are those in our party who would lead us down a different path — and squander this unique moment in our nation’s history — by using our political capital — to pursue a radical social agenda — that would end a woman’s right to choose…
13:48 mark: “When Pat Robertson says there is no constitutional doctrine of separation between Church and State, I say he is wrong…
14:31 mark: “When Ralph Reed says a pro-choice Republican isn’t qualified to be our President, I say the Republican Party will not be intimidated or blackmailed by those kinds of threats.I, and millions of other pro-choice Republicans, will not be disenfranchised and made second class citizens.
15:33 mark: “… it is not Christian, or religious, or Judeo-Christian to bring God into politics; or to advocate intolerance and promote exclusion.
15:54 mark: “I want to take abortion out of politics. I want to keep the Republican Party focused on the vital economic and foreign policy issues — and leave moral issues such as abortion to the conscience of the individual. I believe abortion is an issue to be decided by women…
16:40 mark: “I pledge to lead the fight to strip the strident anti-choice language from the Republican National platform…”
Very reasonable and I appreciate the thinking. I had to digest some of these same things about Newt and I did so because I think he is so talented and now seasoned for a time such as this. I just don’t see much ability in RS and I see a ton of weaknesses in his so called true conservatism.
But again, while I disagree with your conclusion, I respect your thought process.
I’m in Texas. I figure one of the two will be out by the time we get around to voting, so it probably won’t matter.
If both are still standing, I prefer Santorum ... but I’ll probably just vote for whichever has a better chance of winning Texas from Romney. Last I heard, Rick was ahead around here.
I’m hoping the anti-Romney vote can coalesce. Not sure it can. I think it’d be better if one of the two — Rick or Newt — dropped out after Super Tuesday.
SnakeDoc
Sure you do.
He's a Social Conservative and he sings their song. Nothing else matters.
In contrast to Hillarycare, which required most employers to offer health insurance to their employees, Gramm-Santorum maintained the voluntary nature of employer-sponsored health insurance. However, the bill required that an employer that chose to offer coverage must also offer a consumer-driven health plan consisting of high-deductible insurance and a health savings account. Section 201 of the bill states that employers who failed to do so would “not be allowed” to deduct “the expenses paid or incurred by an employer for a group health plan.”The Forbes writer states, "While the Gramm-Santorum plan did bar certain individuals from seeking federal assistance if they chose to forego health insurance, the bill did not include an individual mandate in the way we have come to understand the term. While the bill did not do enough to address the problem of the uninsured, it did contain a number of important market-oriented proposals that most certainly would have improved our health-care system: and no obvious ones that would have made it worse. In the checkered world of health policy, that counts as a pretty good show."In those days, consumer-driven plans were strongly discouraged by the tax code, and almost no one had them. (Interestingly, Forbes was one of the few employers that offered such plans at that time.) Santorum, a CDHP pioneer, sought to drive their uptake as a way to make health insurance more affordable. As it was described in a contemporaneous account in Congressional Quarterly, “Under Gramm’s proposal, which is not aimed at universal coverage, no employers would be required to offer health insurance to their employees. But if they did, they would be required to offer a catastrophic plan with a medical savings account, in addition to whatever health insurance plan they now offer.”
See post 11, it seems to trump everything.
Shouldn’t be a shock. His plan to exempt manufacturers from paying the same taxes every other company does is an even more gross abuse of the role of government in the economy than what he discusses in this article (which doesn’t discuss the mandate). We have to give Republicans some slack though, because Hillarycare was such a threat that it probably wasn’t a viable political position to stop it to just come out and argue for the status quo. So you can’t blame them for taking some time to figure out the right policy.
I agree. I think many Republicans embraced government intervention to some degree as a way to combat Hillarycare. That article makes clear Santorum’s general approach. It goes way beyond health care. He thinks it’s the government’s role to shape markets in order to encourage or discourage behavior.....social engineering.
It’s also an issue because he ran around for months saying he was against the individual mandate.
It is nice to see the socialist rag “Mother Jones” so concerned about us getting a truly conservative GOP nominee. Thank you Mother Jones. I’m sure your staff can’t sleep at night worrying that our candidate might not be true conservative.
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