Posted on 04/05/2012 8:17:49 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
I’ve known Rick Santorum for 22 years, having first met him in 1990 before he’d won his first campaign for Congress. I interviewed him on WORD-FM, an evangelical Christian radio station where I was a frequent guest host (and eventually a full-time host) early in his campaign.
If I was not the first media personality to interview Rick, I was one of the first. I had Rick as a guest at the request of my friend, Mark Rogers, who was running Rick’s campaign. Over the years I interviewed Rick at least a dozen times and debated him several times as well. I personally knew most of his staff, almost hired one member of his staff as the research director of a think tank I ran, and eventually did hire another of his staff members as my administrative assistant.
As I mentioned before, I was friends with the man who ran his first campaign and who ended up being Rick’s chief of staff when Rick was in Congress. I was best man at the marriage of a Santorum staff member and one of my closest friends. This couple may well be my wife’s and my closest friends. I’ve had dealings on more than one occasion with a media/public relations firm run by John Brabender, who has done most of Rick’s media campaign work.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Ditto that ...
The whole thing stinks to high heaven IMO....we have been boxed in and barely with a fight. If this does not go to convention then I’m genuinely done with politics altogether.
Primarily because even when we get our guys in office they quickly lay their gloves aside....and doing so sets us, in the field, back years of what might otherwise be.
Sometimes the idea of the whole system crashing is not hard to imagine as a good thing....and may take just that for Americans to ever really wake up. Too many are still far to comfortable in their lifestyle and it won’t be until they see a tornada actually take thier home will they rise to the occassion....if that.
I know and it deplorable to say without knowing the facts! What else does Santorum say and do without knowing the facts???
I'm really waiting for Hades to be raised at the convention! Maybe something radical will happen which will dismantle the whole republican rino establishment.
As convoluted as this may sound, Romney might be the nominee, and if he is I hope he beats Obama, but I won't vote for his sorry rino ass!
Iowa. Just like Huckabee...
Both Perry and Gingrich are both far superior candidates than Little Saint Ricky, yet do not mercilessly flog their faith in everyone’s face. Evidently, enough voters see this as a plus, and not a flashy curtain obscuring utter vapidity on nearly all matters pertaining to governance that this charlatan was able to stay in the race.
It also helps that the MSM went total blackout on Newt after Florida, instead only reporting on the “two front runners” in Mittens and Little Saint Ricky. Newt was too effective against them, so they shut him up.
With Little Saint Ricky and Mittens, the Establishment wins either way. Both are big spenders and will further the expansion of Big Government. Slower than Il Douche, but expansion nonetheless.
Santorum’s last minute surge in Iowa started when the media started putting forward the narrative that Santorum would get a “second” look..... He was a desperation vote since Cain was gone and Newt took damage, and Ron Paul was possibly going to take the win.
And the author is to be trusted? Forbes? How about NBC or CNN?
At this point, I think the timing of the allegations is a good reason to treat them with extreme scepticism. People don’t have to invent things to have something to criticize Santorum over.
Unfortunately, no sitting politician has a record that is entirely wart free. Mittens’ handlers have been very good at getting conservatives to devour their own while he stands on the sidelines. Now all the geniuses here who posted with vitriol against Perry, Cain, Santorum, Newt, RP, and Bachman get Romney.
The Rs aqren’t called the stupid party for nothing.
The point was that the establishment is petrified of anyone with a backbone. Since Santorum is avowedly against abortion, I don't think it needs further proof.
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.
Thank you, CharlesWayneCT.
I myself used to say things and make promises that I did not keep. I would certainly not hold it against those people I said these things to, if they regarded me as a liar.
If Rick Santorum is not actually a out-and-out liar, a case could be made from this article that he cannot be trusted to do what he says he is going to do. He might have meant something at the time he said it, but so did I, when I made those promises and then did not keep them.
That's exactly what happened. He lost in Florida...because Romney had been campaigning here for the last several years and because Romney had bought Rubio, having identified him as a rising star and given him a donation when he ran for office (not to mention trading on Rubio's Mormon past). Probably the most damaging thing was that a large number of Florida voters had already voted by the time the campaign rolled to Florida. I heard some of them say they regretted voting for Romney, but by then it was too late.
So this gave the press an excuse to dump Gingrich, because he was clearly the only serious threat to Obama's world view. Both Romney and St Rick are fine with it...the only thing they want is to be the ones in charge.
To the degree the Santorum votes came from Newt, they were not going back, they had already abandoned Newt and were looking for another choice.
If Santorum was going to be taken down, I wish it would have happened before Iowa.
I disagree. As the race went on and Newt started to slip, people shifted support. Had Mr. Sweater Vest’s proclivity to lie and the damning information about his fondness for Keynesian economics come to light from the start, those who weren’t necessarily in Newt’s corner but definitely not in Mitt’s would have turned more strongly to Newt.
I never supported Sanatarium and never will. It is my desire that he be expelled from the Republican Party and banned from K street when he loses. He needs to get himself a few snakes and a revival tent and hit the “Born Again” circuit talking in tongues, healing paralized folks and bilking the innocent of their SSI payments. While I realize he is on a first name basis with all the good-uns in Deliverance Country he has done a bang up job on fleecing a lot of innocent folks that should have known better than to listen to a slick tongue loser of historic numbers as an incumbent.
I’ve been a Newt supporter since Palin announced she wouldn’t run. It chaps my butt that this guy just came forward, now.
So Saint Rick joins PA native Joe Biden and Washington, D.C. native Al Gore in giving little to church and charity. Nothing surprises us any more. Seems like there is another one in that camp too, but I forget for the moment.
Thoughtful post.
What upset me the most about the article was the giving . Or the lack of giving. I thought our religions compel us to give. Whether we feel like it or not. When times are bad as well as good. Also, it’s chintzy to over claim your old crap that you donate to goodwill. Sheesh. If all that is true, I lose respect for him.
Unless he comes forward with charitable giving he did in private and did. Or declare.
I do not mind the author defending his friend, but I am not sure all of those things are full on lies. I’m just really disappointed by the lack of giving.
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