In the past 48 hours, two Senators, one among most principled conservatives (from Rick Santorum’s home state, the other perhaps the chamber’s most prominent Tea Party supporter have praised Mitt Romney for offering a conservative altnerative to the failed policies of Barack Obama.
Pennsylvania’s Pat Toomey called Romney a “conservative” who “is absolutely committed to the principles of limited government and free enterprise.” Meanwhile the Keystone State’s more senior colleague from the Palmetto State said that he was “not only comfortable with Romney,” but also “excited about the possibility of him possibly being our nominee”.
Meanwhile, Rick Santorum is refusing to apologize for saying that since Mitt Romney was all but an ideological clone of Obama and that “we might as well stay with what we have instead of taking a risk with what may be the Etch A Sketch candidate of the future”. The former Senator later clarified, saying he was really talking about the “enthusiasm gap“; he meant we’d “have a tough time rallying” the nation in an election “about Obama versus the Obama-Lite candidate”.
That didn’t really satisfy Santorum supporter Ed Morrissey who called “this one a half-walkback.” That 2010 CPAC blogger of the year contrasted his guy’s remarks with “Newt Gingrich’s consistent argument thateveryone in the GOP race would be a quantum improvement on Obama”.
Quite striking how quickly Rick has changed his tune. On Tuesday, he took credit for Romney’s more conservative, freedom-oriented rhetoric. By Thursday, he was saying there wasn’t much difference between the candidate and the man he seeks to replace. Santorum might have served himself better by eching Rush Limbaugh and saying, yeah, now he sounds more conservative, and then speculate about his sincerity.
Morrissey minces no words in distinguishing Romney from Obama. Interesting Santorum’s recent remarks given that, as Peter Wehner reminds us, “Santorum enthusiastically endorsed Romney in 2008 — and Romney is no less conservative now than he was then.” Indeed, the former Massachusetts governor hadn’t then fleshed out as conservative economic agenda as he has in the past month.
Santorum needs to apologize for even suggesting that the Obama status quo might be better than what he might deem) the risky change of electing Mitt Romney. With his latest musings, the former Senator has demonstrated, as Glenn put it, “that it’s time” for him “to end [his] campaign.” Every time he opens his mouth, he puts his foot in it.
He seems sometimes more interested now in attacking the likely Republican nominee than in defending the party’s Reaganite ideals.
In answer to your headline…YES big time. Certifiable nutcase
Santorum was never a Readanite. Santorum was always a Santorumite.
PS. I could be wrong on this, but I recall reading that Reagan actually didn’t go to church that much – that riding on his horse in the countryside was where he felt closest to God. That never would have passed Santorums religious test.
To borrow from Michael Ledeen: faster, please.
No.
Santorumite? Good one, I think they got turned into salt in the Old Testament. Unfortunately he will be doing more shark jumping tonight.
It was ironic to see Santorum using a banner on stage that says “FREEDOM”, the man is no friend of individual freedom.
We’re probably stuck with this guy until the Pennsylvanian primary. Fortunately, Romney will not pick him for VP.
Perhaps Mr Santorum ought to “shake the Etch-a-Sketch’ and pretend he never said it… much as Mittens apparently intends to do with the conservative positions he took during the primary season.
Along with the tight jeans comment, VTK is bringing it!
“Readanite”????
How did I type a a “D” instead of a “G”
Is all this “certifiable nutcase” and “religious test” and “no friend of individual freedom” just because Santorum sees lust as a sin? If so, what does that say about the people who cast the aspersions?
Do we need to fear and silence those who hold people responsible for their vices and how they conduct themselves?
The “seven deadly sins” are: Envy, Lust, Anger, Sloth, Covetousness, Gluttony and Pride (also known as Vain Glory or Boastfulness.) Every one of us has eaten too much, drunk too much, let green-eyed jealousy distract us, risen to anger when patience would have been better, procrastinated, and set out to fulfill sexual gratification ahead of positive works.
If we can not recognize our failings, what good is it to try to better ourselves? There are basements in everybody’s life where the base desires find company and encouragement. It is amusing to hear someone belittle others with a sharp wit. The bar scene is tantalizing. Casual sex is sometimes exciting and a high. Taking the welfare road is sometimes more appealing than chump change and responsibility. Hissing at those who disagree with your comfort zone is energizing. But it is not a productive and useful life. Those people who do the world of Ba’al as a social scene are forever trading partners and friends and feeling empty and unfulfilled.
So, if Santorum makes you really uncomfortable, perhaps you should just clap you hands on your ears and yell “I can’t hear you” at the TV screen.
I am not making a commercial here for Santorum, I am just telling it like it is in terms of how all this put down talk comes across.
The atheists have decided to have an atheist march and rally. For what? The self-actualization oxymoron of existential nihilism? To rally around the concept that one’s life is the choice to continue one’s own life while at the same time stating that it is not worth more than any other life? Really?
Santorum has continued to toss out little moral bombs that have the same effect as a painful bone spur. He is not much of a missionary. But overreaction to him sends another message and it is not about the sanity of Santorum.
Which is part of the point I have been trying to make. Thanks for stating it so well.
It’s not the criticism I object to, it’s the piling on. Santorum certainly deserves criticism, for example, for his endorsement of Arlen Specter and some of the spending he voted for. Fine, but remember that Mitt Romney praised Ted Kennedy as his “collaborator” on Romneycare, and that on the watch of Romney… the astute businessman and fiscal conservative… the Big Dig grew from a $3 Billion boondoggle to a $15 Billion boondoggle that started falling apart almost as soon as it opened and, by the way, it was funded partly through the same sort of earmarks Santorum is criticized for.
Santorum seems to me a good and decent man who has been maligned by men far less good and decent than he. Claiming that Santorum is going to outlaw contraception because he’s a Catholic is like claiming Romney will outlaw coffee because he’s a Mormon.
“Is all this “certifiable nutcase” and “religious test” and “no friend of individual freedom” just because Santorum sees lust as a sin?”
No, it’s because of the comments he makes that make it seem like he’d be all for the government forcing his morality on people. If you’re for abstinence and never drinking and letting your religion tell you how to live you life then awesome, I hope it makes you happy. But if you wanna try and get other people to follow your idea of morality then you should start a youth group or become a priest, not run for president.
And yeah, maybe the media keeps bringing the focus back to Santorum’s social ideas, but they’re still his ideas and I don’t want anyone in the Oval Office who wants to ban porn and let the government tell me what I can and can’t do in my bedroom.
Cy,
You missed my point entirely. Your conclusion (I don’t want anyone in the Oval Office who wants to ban porn and let the government tell me what I can and can’t do in my bedroom) lacks any sense of moderation. You have jumped to dismal conclusions.
Certainly you do not favor porn in kindergarten pre-readers. Therefore, you favor some sort of “control” to settle the issues. You don’t want the government in your bedroom, but you also don’t want manufacturers to be selling stimulants for sexual prowess that destroy your lungs and liver. So, you really do want government control in your bedroom.
To go straight for the jugular and say Santorum is coming after porn and sex is absurd. The President (excepting Obama) does not have such power. Now if you have evidence that Santorum is an Obama bent of shredding the Constitution and mandating control of your personal liberty, then man up and present the evidence.
Otherwise, you are running second to Chicken Little.
Chicken little? I think Heliotrope has jumped the shark on us.
I’m ready to rumble for the main bout of Romney vs Obama.
Overreaction = the fools on other blogs who make digital pics of Rick from porno shots.
Helio – you make some good points but in our 50/50 nation, sailing blindly towards Fiscal Falls, I want (as WFB might say) the most conservative candidate that can win.
A Santorum candidacy would be a bloodbath with the lefty establishment slandering the man with wave after wave of agitprop that no campaign could deal with.
Romney’s not ideal but he stands a better chance at election, IMHO.
The term “existential threat” gets overused but in the case of an Obama second term, I think it’s appropriate.
And the Obama strategy will be different against Romney how?
Which seems to me, furthermore, very similar to the way his opponents on the right are waging war against him as well.
Hey!
I am not endorsing or campaigning for Santorum. The only candidate I toyed with supporting was Herman Cain and that was mainly to cripple the race card crap the libs are playing, will continue to play and will parlay into a rent-a-mob Juicy Jerkson, Al Sharpton, Calypso Louie Farrakhan, type of no-justice=no peace riot fest.
Santorum gets under your skin. I get that. He is no threat to you. You have made him into something far bigger than he is. You have said he is a “certifiable nutcase” and he is “no friend of individual liberty” and that he would install a “religious (litmus) test” and that he wants “to ban porn” and “tell me what I can and can not do in the bedroom.”
Now, what do you do if Santorum were to get the nomination? Eat crow? Vote for Obama? Not vote? Write in Jeb Bush or Captain America? The last two are the same as throwing your vote away and thus voting for Obama.
My “issue” with you guys who so fear Santorum is that you do not have and have not made and can not make a case for your fear. You, like Chicken Little, have been beaned by an acorn and you are running around yelling about the sky falling.
You are hyperventilating and spewing hyperbole. Santorum is not certifiable anything. He has managed to continually stoke the MSM attack machine by doing his piety dances and being elevated to some sort of Puritan scold who cares more about your sheets than gas prices, the economy, the Constitution, etc. He is d-u-m-b to keep sticking his foot in the same old trap over and over and over again.
But for you buy into what the MSM gins up and spreads like gonorrhea in a liberty port whorehouse is depressing. Think about these no latitude statements from this thread:
Certifiable nutcase. (I covered that one.) Hyperbole; excusable, I suppose, as overstatement to make a point.
no friend of individual liberty. Individual liberty covers an enormous range of knowable and unknowable activities. He opposes all of that? Really? He is a dictatorial control freak that just might bar you from flipping pancakes with a deft twist of the wrist as you maneuver the pan?
Religious (litmus) test. If you have no religion or Santorum approved religion or flunk his test, are you doomed to Hell on Earth in a Santorum gulag? Or worse?
Ban porn. Whew! Is this a plea to get the state out of the porn control business and let porn be free to seek its own societal level? Any clever ideas for porn on Sesame Street?
Can’t tell me what I can or can’t do in my bedroom. Like eat the arm off a three year old you just raped?
Sure I have gone to extremes in this little exercise. But my hyperbole is no more egregious than yours.
Think things through, please. You give Santorum way too much power over your God given common sense. It is as if a spider walked across the floor and every little girl shrieked and started trying to kill it using AK-47’s equipped with 45 round magazines.
Caution: My repeated reference to “you” is meant for those who get the willies over Santorum, but have not examined what about him is the cause of all the angst.
I have probably said more than enough on this topic. But, honestly, get control of yourselves. On his worst day, Santorum is nowhere near the threat Obama is to this country. And, if you still feel he is the demon, depend on people like me to cut him down to size. I have no time in my schedule of what is urgent for any President in these times to run around playing golf or getting sidetracked on porn.
VtK: you know it’s true… the democrat-media establishment will unloose one tsunami after another of bile with little, if any, basis in truth. Look at what it’s accomplished in the case of the guy in FL that shot Trayvon Martin. The facts, whatever they turn out to be, won’t matter.
Romney, faults and all, is not BHO. Conservatives have some chance of keeping him in line (especially, and most importantly, if we gain more seats in Congress). But BHO, without the need to worry continuously about reelection, will be the proverbial bull in the china shop.
I think Heliotrope makes the point well; it’s not that Rick Santorum wouldn’t be beaten by a bigger margin than Mittens will be beaten by, it’s just that so much of the criticism hurled at him is deranged and over the top.
Rick Santorum has no intention of outlawing sex or contraception. People need to get over that.
Rick Santorum made some bad choices while serving as a senator from Pennsylvania; but is anyone going to argue that Mitt Romney, as a Senator from Massachusetts, would have voted to the right of Rick Santorum? That proposition seems absurd to me.
Yes, and Mitt Romney made some terrible choices while serving as governor of Massachusettts. The point is, there is no point in gelling all over the top in one’s support or criticism for any of the candidates, because they all suck, but they are also all much better than Obama.
Heliotrope,
Santorum is nowhere near the threat Obama is to this country.
That is true, true, true.
I think what gets me most about Santorum is the question.
Is this really the best we can do for second place in 2012?
He just feels like a rehash of previous decades.
I think back to September when the whole rigamarole began and Santorum seemed the least likely to survive the opening rounds, let alone to gain traction.
But, wonders never cease, here he stands. If he bests, Romney, I will support him. But as V the K aptly notes, he would be the candidate who keeps on giving when it comes to getting pigeon-holed by self inflicted distractions. He seems to have some sort of reverse Tourette’s Syndrome characterized by variable noises and outbursts of piety and expressions concerning dragon slaying.
I am in great hopes that Obambi can not only be beaten, but skunked. I stop short of confidence, because I know the power of crooks and liars and how they can steal close elections. They are still reeling and in rage over their unsuccessful Florida heist in 2000.
When I look at what the Chicago machine was able to hire and serve up to Herman Cain and paint him as the stereotypical black man who loves loose shoes, a lot of illicit sex and a warm place to dump……I can only image how they would characterize Santorum so that the gays and the crowded field of leftist libertines would race to pile on.
Santorum is a magnet for the politics of personal destruction. Even normally mild mannered people join in on his evisceration when they are made uncomfortable.
I am expecting Romney to take this nomination and I will enthusiastically fall in behind him. As a true conservative, I know him to be uncomfortable around people like me who stick to principle. I intend to be part of the active crowd that keeps him in line. Unlike John McCain, he is neither a loose cannon nor a Captain McQueeg who is both mercurial and oppressive. Romney is not a pretend leader, like Obama. Romney is not cloaking his past or his agenda. Romney is not spoiling for some sort of group retribution.
I have never gotten a clear handle on what the Romney “dirty” tactics are that set Huckabee off in 2008 and Gingrich, Perry, Santorum in 2011/12. But, if he has the opposition underground to treat the Chicago machine to its own medicine, I am satisfied that sometimes flame throwers are the only way to clear the caves.
My main reservation about Romney is whether he is bold enough to go full bore into clearing out all the nests of rats, rescinding the oppressive regulations, attacking the entitlement structures, stopping Obamacare, opening America for business, getting energy production and the electricity grid renewed, and a whole lot more.
Somehow, I believe that Romney already knows the teams he will need and that they are already getting definitive about the issues at hand. On the other hand, both Santorum and Gingrich are so busy trying to gain and hold traction that they have little energy for the big picture, except from their own viewpoints.
This post and the comments in it give truth to this observation.