Problems With the Truth: Confessions of a 22-Year Rick Santorum Observer

Forbes ^ | April 4, 2012 | Jerry Bowyer

[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.

[darrellmaurina]

Thank you, Yaelle.

FWIW, we agree on the charitable contribution issue being a concern. Is it enough to keep me from voting for him, or backing him for president? Not with the seriousness of the problems with Mitt Romney or Barack Obama.

For whatever it's worth, I do believe it is important when working with conservative Roman Catholics to recognize that their faith leads them to place an emphasis in places where I would not do so. Tithing is emphasized much more in evangelical circles than the Roman Catholic Church... not saying priests and bishops don't encourage charitable giving, just saying the emphasis is not there in the same way that would be found in many evangelical churches.

An additional factor — one probably not present in Santorum’s case — is that Scripture has some pretty strong words to say about publicly sounding trumpets to announce charitable giving. We do not necessarily know the full amount of a candidate's charitable giving and there are good reasons for that.

Matt 6:2-4: “So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

[csmusaret]

I am constantly amused by all the die hard Santorum and Gingrich supporters. Face reality folks; your guy lost. This primary is about the evil of three lessers and the general will be about the evil of two lessers. I don’t know who the next Reagan is- Rubio? DeMint? Ryan?. I do know, however, that he or she didn’t run this time. I will vote for the GOP nominee, whoever that is, not because I am a huge fan but because he will be infinitely better than Obama. I am realistic enough to realize that Romney will be that nominee, and I am willing to support him and try to get him elected. To me not supporting Romney at this point is supporting Obama, and no way in hell am I doing that. I will make my displeasure known to the Republican party, and continue to support Tea Party types at the local and State levels. I will not, however, sit this election out just because I am disappointed and pissed.

[Yaelle]

Exactly: it might be unpleasant if that were the full donation he gave to charity, but still not enough to prefer Romney.

And I agree, there is a possibility that he gave privately or anonymously and chose to not report it to the IRS.

I’d like to hear him rebut this article.

[darrellmaurina]

Hi, Yaelle... you may want to read CharlesWayneCT's post higher in this thread. It may be the closest thing we'll get to a direct rebuttal of the article in Forbes.

One of the problems faced by the Santorum campaign is they simply don't have the staff to do the research necessary to deal with any but the most dangerous attacks on his campaign. Money counts, and there's a limit to how much volunteers can do.

This article in Forbes is serious. My guess is we'll see a letter to the editor of Forbes or an op-ed piece by a Santorum supporter who knows the situation personally. However, those things take time.

And yes, I do realize there are paid staffers for candidates who post on Free Republic, and other people who don't post are paid staff members whose job is to produce a digest of posts here, just like national political figures have always had staff members to produce clip files of the daily newspaper reports.