Posted on 04/13/2012 10:18:18 AM PDT by Josh Painter
Rick Santorum dropped out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination on Tuesday. Almost to a column, editorial and news account, the analysis centered on Santorum’s somewhat successful capture of conservative voters.
And there lies the mystery. How could a man seemingly so opposite of conservative have entranced so many voters who label themselves just that?
The easy answer is that as someone who made his religion such a prominent part of his campaign strategy... religious types who tend toward conservatism perhaps felt they’d found their man.
[...]
Indeed, if we ignore for a moment how very anti-conservative it is for any candidate to coddle certain commercial sectors, the simple truth is that to the extent that manufacturing jobs were ever glorious (a big reach on its own considering the proud history of sons and daughters of factory workers moving away from manufacturing locales), the very investors whose capital creates those jobs feel it’s yesterday’s news. That investors no longer value factory work explains why they migrated to China, and why a rising China has begun to similarly shed those jobs. For Santorum to then say he’ll bring them back not only smacks of a controlling, central planning gene, but it also speaks to a candidate divorced from reality in the economic sense. If Santorum were to actually succeed in reducing the manufacturing tax rate to zero, this wouldn’t alter the all-important investor perception of work that is no longer valued from a labor-intensive point of view.
Happily Santorum’s candidacy is in the rear-view mirror. Not so happy, however, is what his candidacy said about the beliefs of conservatives. If Santorum was truly their guy, it seems a movement once animated by the sunny, economically advanced dynamism of Ronald Reagan has taken a giant, impoverishing leap backwards.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
sorry, but I cannot understand your intent. Please elaborate... :)
I too was angry at Newt for the DeDe fiasco. However the fault lies with the shenanigans of the New York GOP’ers native to that district. They knew she was no real GOP’er other then by registration but she was married to a local yokel (Union organizer!) who was pals with the right people. Newt was given bad information on that one. Doug Hoffman has explained this and is in no way angry at Newt.
Newt has always had a soft spot (which has sometimes led to a soft thinking !) on environmental issues. He has argued for sometime that conservatives can't just cede this political battlefield to liberals. If we do then we make the liberal cant that conservatives are pro polluted air and polluted water. Sitting on the couch with Peolosi was a stupid but well meaning attempt to demonstrate that. Newt has acknowledged that it was a dumb decision. Newt also testified in Congress against AlGore’s “Cap and Trade” schemes. Now Newt did hang on far to long with the idea of anthropogenic global warming. However he has changed his tune on that. Hey he admits he made a mistake and changes his mind with new information comes on hand. How many politicians do that publicly?
The House impeached Clinton! How was it botched?
The Senate didn't convict. If you have a beef with the result blame the right legislative body.
As far as his divorces go, his first wife divorced him and it had nothing to do with affairs. Read his daughters explanation. His second wife some people say she was a nut and a crook. They were separated for quite a few years and he met someone else. Ultimately I really don't know the bottom line there. If you are going to be anti-Gingrich then ok but does so factually not by relying on misconceptions.
Originally I was disdainful of Newt (read my past posts!) but listening to the debates. It was clear he was the only one that a) actually the understood nation's problems and b) Had viable detailed thought out solutions all within the context of our history and traditions. Everyone else with the exception of Ron Paul had variations of same-old GOP talking points we have heard for years. Economically I think we are on the brink and all you have to do is look at the Middle East and realize the explosion that's coming there. (Europe may even be on the edge!) Ron Paul's stick one’s head in the sand and saying “la la la” isn't going to changes, his policies would be ignore it all, unfortunately its not going to ignore us! Newt articulated a vision and had a plan that could not only help us ride this out, but make the necessary changes to finally shake off the remaining FDR New Deal shackles. The only other candidate who came close with that complete package was Perry but he imploded early.
It took you 48 seconds to answer the question.
What the heck is wrong with Journalists?
To make matters worse Santorum supporters didn’t realize that the POTUS has very little power to make the world that only ever existed in Santorum’s imagination a reality :)
The fact that the attacks on Santorum still continue show that he was and is still seen as a threat to the GOPe.
That doesn’t leave any candidates, does it?
BTW, I didn’t like the comment about Zimmerman either, but no candidate came out and said what should have been said.
Social conservatives will reject any fiscal conservative who is not socially conservative enough for them. Ditto for fiscal conservatives. In the end, both camps cancel each other out and hand victory to the RINO.
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I don’t see that.
I’m a Socon. I was for Rick Perry, then Newt, then Santorum.
Where would a Socon ever have had an option to reject a fiscal conservative? Or vice-versa.
Face it. This campaign process was rigged from the get-go for Romney.
There’s no such thing as a fiscal conservative/social moderate or vice versa. Its a lie to drive us to the left.
A social moderate will forever find ways to spend taxpayer dollars on the objects of his compassion. Faith based initiatives and public/private partnerships are the babies of these so called fiscal conservative/social moderates.
THAT answer will take considerably longer than 48 seconds to formulate.
But how are taxes and compassion reconciled in a country that considers itself a Christian country with a growing 'needy' in a Darwinian economy world?
Joe, I’m talking about those purely “economic” conservatives. No society disconnected from God ultimately will respect the private property of wealthier citizens. People (such as the Punk) think that those who thrive can only do so at the expense of others. Bob
Good question.
The growing numbers of needy are a direct result of taxation and welfare state. Taxation kills the ability to give charity and the money used for welfare promotes reliance on itself.
There was an old timer in my little town who arrived here during a cold winter night during the depression. He went to the parsonage and asked the pastor for a place to sleep and maybe a meal. The pastor’s wife fixed a modest dinner for the guy and let him sleep in a small heated shed behind the church. The next morning the pastor told the guy that he could wait out the cold weather if he was willing to work for his meals and a place to sleep.
That drifter spent the rest of his life living in this town. He picked up more and more work from the church parishioners as they got to know him. He built that little shed into a respectable house, bought a car, found a regular cash paying job, got married etc.
The same people demanding more taxes to pay for compassionate government are the same people who are wrecking the economy thus creating “darwinist” conditions.
Its a trick question. Turn the economy around and there will be plenty of money for government largesse. Even the ineffective kind. Keep driving the economy into the dirt and there won’t be any money for anything.
In any case, the problem isn’t just taxes; people have a bad habit of using the tax issue as shorthand for the real issue which is government intervention in the economy, government intervention in private lives, and regulatory agencies that have become predatory. The government wrecks an industry and then wrings its hands over the poor who used to have jobs. And demands to fix the problem by means of further intervention.
You can argue that it's the wrong policy, but not that it's somehow not conservative.
Whether it's the right policy or the wrong one in any given case, I wouldn't want someone who automatically excluded all protectionist measures or all "tax credits for procreation" because of ideological fervor.
We can certainly argue about policy, but I'd hope that Wall Street and libertarian think tanks weren't the only ones with a voice in the debate.
Also, Tamney seems obsessed by this "a future president could undo that" argument.
Well, d-uh, a future president or Congress could undo just about everything a president or Congress does.
That's the nature of the political system, and it's not an argument for voting against someone you agree with about the issues.
I get your point. But I'm old enough to remember a successful electronic manufacturing industry, also automobiles and computers which were highly successful both for profit and jobs that they are no more. I think blaming government [of both parties] is an overreach. I know the other pinata is unions but they were stronger during the hay days. IBM was not unionized nor did GE pay a lot of taxes.
The USA needs a way for its citizens to exist without government support in the emerging world-wide Darwinian economy.
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