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Some consider this guy the conservative in the race?

February 12, 2012 by B. Daniel Blatt

From the Corner, we learn not just that Rick Santorum endorsed Arlen Specter’s presidential bid, but that he also “voted to confirm Sonia Sotomayor to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals”.   When he sat on the Republican side of the aisle (before flipping to the Democratic in a vain attempt to save his political skin, Specter was one of the most liberal Republicans in the Senate).

And then on Facebook, my nephew linked this:

Touting bringing him the pork and voting to raise the minimum wage.  Why can’t we get a serious Republican contender for the White House who understands how such increases have “eliminated jobs – hundreds of thousands of them – for young persons on the low rungs of employment“?

UPDATE:  Via Walter Olson on Facebook–Rick is no Reagan Republican, having said, “I am not a libertarian, and I fight very strongly against libertarian influence within the Republican Party and the conservative movement.” Read the whole thing.

As a reminder, here’s the Gipper on libertarianism: “If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism.”  Seems like Rick is fighting against the heart and soul of conservatism as Reagan saw it.

Filed Under: 2012 Presidential Election

Comments

  1. V the K says

    February 12, 2012 at 9:31 am - February 12, 2012

    As if fellow northeastern Republican Mitt Romney would have voted against Amtrak, against Sotomayer, against Specter had he defeated Ted Kennedy in 1994.

  2. Azure says

    February 12, 2012 at 9:51 am - February 12, 2012

    I don’t like Santorum, but I’m not going to fault him for funding Amtrak: the Northeast is about the only place where the they run in the black. However, just approving their budget amounts to passing the buck on dealing with that bloated monstrosity of nationalization and union pandering. When will someone have the balls to either shut it down or legitimately try to fix it up and untether it from the federal government?

  3. B. Daniel Blatt says

    February 12, 2012 at 9:51 am - February 12, 2012

    V, you did read my commentary after the clip of the commercial–and follow the link, didn’t you? 🙂

    Yes, Mitt is flawed, but Santorum is not a reliable conservative.

  4. davinci says

    February 12, 2012 at 10:03 am - February 12, 2012

    I used to live in PA in the 1990s, and I voted for Santorum twice, once for Congress and once for the Senate. Back then, he was not nearly as much into social issues as now. However, he has that blue collar GOP viewpoint that is for more pork and govt spending while controlling people’s private lives. Not a good combination for a libertarian leaning person like myself.

  5. V the K says

    February 12, 2012 at 10:53 am - February 12, 2012

    Yeah, I did, Dan, which is why I also didn’t go onto mention Romney supports automatic minimum wage increases. I just wanted to point out that it’s hypocritical of Romney to criticize Santorum for doing the same things we would have done. Sorry for not making that clearer.

  6. ILoveCapitalism says

    February 12, 2012 at 11:01 am - February 12, 2012

    As if fellow northeastern Republican Mitt Romney would have voted against …

    No, not “as if”.

    Romney, Gingrich, Santorum… They all suck. They’re all Big Government types, cut from the same cloth. And then there’s Ron Paul who blessedly is not, however, he is shaky for other reasons (the isolationism, the refusal to disown white supremacists, etc.). The surviving Republican candidates all suck. Let’s admit it. Sure we have to defeat Obama, but let’s start with the truth.

  7. Serenity says

    February 12, 2012 at 11:17 am - February 12, 2012

    but that he also “voted to confirm Sonia Sotomayor to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals”

    Not to defend Santorum too much, but this does seem harsh. Back when that vote was cast, it seems probable that Sotomayor was a complete nobody among dozens of court appointees and that the vote to confirm her only seems controversial in retrospect due to Barack Obama later appointing her to the United States Supreme Court.

  8. Seane-Anna says

    February 12, 2012 at 12:12 pm - February 12, 2012

    Let’s be honest, B. Daniel. In terms of fiscal/limited government conservatism, Santorum may have done some questionable things, but the real reason you oppose him is because he doesn’t worship at the altar of “relationship recognition”. Just say so for once.

  9. Kurt says

    February 12, 2012 at 1:23 pm - February 12, 2012

    ILC–I’d have to agree with you about the current crop of candidates. Of the four, I do prefer Romney for two reasons: because he has a significant and noteworthy history of achievement outside of government, and because I believe he does have more “electability” than the other three.

    As far as Santorum’s social conservatism goes, my personal theory is that in contemporary America, social conservative candidates for national office are rarely popular with the public at large unless they have the sort of personal attributes that takes the focus off their social conservatism. Reagan had a winning personality and a positive outlook that made him enormously popular; because of that, the media had a hard time demonizing him for his socially conservative views. Santorum is no Reagan. It’s too easy for for the media to caricature him as a moralizing scold.

  10. ILoveCapitalism says

    February 12, 2012 at 2:00 pm - February 12, 2012

    Kurt, fair enough. I’m just going to hold my nose and vote for whichever of the four it is (as still-better-than-Obama)… while giving my time and money if any to lower-level, Tea Party type candidates.

  11. TGC says

    February 12, 2012 at 3:51 pm - February 12, 2012

    but the real reason you oppose him is because he doesn’t worship at the altar of “relationship recognition”. Just say so for once.

    Hi Seane-Anna. Welcome to GayPatriot. Be sure to have a look around and read some of the archives.

  12. davinci says

    February 12, 2012 at 4:46 pm - February 12, 2012

    Santorum also had that ridiculous comment about women and emotions in military combat. Can you imagine him as the GOP nominee? He would be fortunate to get 36% of the female vote, thus allowing Obama to win in a landslide and keep the Senate Democratic.

  13. Sebastian Shaw says

    February 12, 2012 at 7:22 pm - February 12, 2012

    Romney is a liberal Democrat in Republican clothing; therefore, with Romney not even running on his liberal record of RomneyCare & raising taxes in Massachusetts, Santorum is the best Conservative in the race.

  14. JP says

    February 13, 2012 at 12:12 am - February 13, 2012

    not the conservative in the race. . . . .just the most conservative left…maybe. and anyone pointing to RP gets a kick to the head.

  15. V the K says

    February 13, 2012 at 8:20 am - February 13, 2012

    Unlike Romney, Santorum has willingly taken a lot of arrows for the conservative cause. That gives him a lot of street cred. Sure, he lost his Senate seat to a retard, but Romney didn’t even try and get re-elected in 2006 because he knew he’d have been shellacked.

  16. Jimmy says

    February 13, 2012 at 6:57 pm - February 13, 2012

    Unfortunately a lot of those arrows were for marginalizing sodomites. I’ll grant that Santorum is running mostly on economic issues this time around, but I have a difficult time ignoring the fact that the guy has made his name as a social conservative. The problem with social conservatives is that they’re only conservative in the sense that they favor old fashioned family values and not necessarily in the sense that they favor a very limited government. I find myself very suspicious of Santorum when he speaks about the government’s role in dictating how people live their lives in their own homes. As far as respecting the individual liberties of people, Romney is miles ahead of Santorum.

    And as for Santorum on economic issues, he was drinking the DC koolaid by the time he got booted from the Senate. With Democrats in control of the senate things are much much worse in comparison, but we cannot fool ourselves as conservatives into thinking that the GOP was doing a good job in 2006. They weren’t, and Santorum was complicit.

  17. Sebastian Shaw says

    February 13, 2012 at 7:58 pm - February 13, 2012

    Jimmy, so you’re going to support RomneyCare & the fiscal black hole it has created in Massachusetts; RomneyCare is also ObamaCare. I just don’t see the logic that Santorum isn’t Conservative enough, but people are going to support…Mitt Romney???

  18. V the K says

    February 14, 2012 at 5:39 am - February 14, 2012

    BTW, under our current circumstances, Santorum *is* the conservative in the race. Sure, he’s not Reagan, but he’s not running against Reagan. He’s running against one guy who proudly signed socialized medicine into law, another guy who attacked the first guy for making money under the capitalist system, and a third guy who thinks America is a war-mongering evil empire.

    So, relatively speaking, Santorum is the most conservative candidate.

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