The damage Rick Santorum did to the Republican Party in 2012 was devastating. He scolding attitude was used as club to hit the GOP over the head with. Santorum was even open to the idea of banning contraceptives. This fed the war on women narrative the Media and their Democrat lackeys were pushing. Now Rick is contemplating running in 2016.
Former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum says he is “open” to another run for president in 2016. Santorum was asked about a possible presidential campaign Monday at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
In 2012, Santorum won nearly 4 million votes and 11 GOP primary contests—the same number of states, he pointed out, Ronald Reagan won in his failed 1976 presidential bid. The nomination eventually went to Mitt Romney, whom Santorum argued did not focus on what he considered the “main issue” of the race: The role of government in the lives of Americans.
Santorum envisions some State-Family partnership. He openly advocates redistribution of wealth in the name of the family. Rick Santorum also hates Individualism and envisions a conformist society. He is not a Conservative , but a Progressive. He is a Statitist who believes the Federal Governmnet’s role is to control people’s lives.
With the possibility of Jeb Bush and now Rick Santorum, 2016 is looking like a joke on the Republican side. The Democrats are smiling at this.
I know Pawlentey is not very exciting but he would probably be the safe, reliable bet – although with Obama running again we might need someone with a bit more pizzazz. No way Huckabee or Santorum would do, and don’t even think abut picking anyone with the last name “Bush”.
by Hugh Hewitt
With Mitt Romney all but universally acknowledged as the GOP certain nominee, attention has quickly and rightly turned to speculation about the former Massachusetts governor’s running mate.
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The latter consideration is what Romney has often said will guide his deliberations, and anyone with even a passing knowledge of Romney’s earnestness accepts this as a given. There are thus three names which have to be at the top of “the list” along with the usual suspects of Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. Indeed, there are good reasons for the odds-makers to put these three atop the leader board ahead of those four.
Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty is to the 2012 GOP veepstakes what Romney himself was to 2008 competition to be John McCain’s running mate: the obvious, safe and in some important respects, a compelling choice to be the #2.
Pawlenty knows full well what the national campaign feels like and requires. His family is ready for it having embarked upon it once. His wonderful and able spouse would be a great asset to the campaign, and his circle of close advisors and supporters is talent rich and very loyal.
Pawlenty also knows how to win blue states and brings a compelling personal story, deft sense of humor and superb media skills. The nay-sayers chirp that he is dull, but dull may well be the new cool in a year in which the U.S.-as-Greece is on many voters’ minds. Minnesota is a reach, but Pawlenty has cross-border appeal in both Wisconsin and Iowa, key swing states.
And Pawlenty has a solid indeed spectacular eight years of governing under his belt, years that included crises like the collapse of the I-35W bridge and many legislative showdowns, as well as many visits to war zones and a superb record on judicial selection.
Next in line: New Jersey’s Chris Christie. In addition to his obvious flair for campaigning and message management, Christie’s issue set is in the zone for 2012: experience with massive deficits and runaway public sector costs, a brass-knuckled willingness to mix it up with the professional left and, often overlooked, a long and very successful tenure as the United States Attorney in New Jersey which would set him up to take on Eric Holder’s abysmal record at DOJ and to anticipate and prep the political battlefield for the election fraud sure to mark the Chicago Gang’s playbook. Christie also has experience prosecuting terrorists and can hold the president to account for his serial pratfalls in this area, and even if New Jersey is thought by many to be out of reach, adding Christie to the ticket instantly stretches the map to the Jersey shore and makes the Romney campaign a very serious player in the Philly media market which helps tilt the already close competition for the Keystone State towards the GOP.
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Like Pawlenty, Christie was with Romney early and all-in. Like Romney and Pawlenty he’s a family man with deep value sets that play across the country. And contrary to what the Green Room elites believe, his girth is a potential connection to ordinary Americans who can look at and listen to Christie and say “regular guy who really gets it.”
Finally, one more hard-to-fathom name for the Manhattan-Beltway media elite: former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, the man with the alleged radioactive last name, who also happens to have the most popular parents in America, a brother and sister-in-law who have the intense loyalty of tens of millions, an extraordinary record as a very successful two term governor of the most important state to the GOP, and a genuine connection with the emerging Latino electorate that no one else who isn’t himself or herself Latino can claim.
And ready to be president if called upon? Is there anyone else in America more prepared for that job on a minute’s notice?
There are many more names on the VP list, from relative long-shots such as New Hampshire Senator Kelly Ayotte, Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers, New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley to former Romney rivals Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum.
But these trio of governors with long records of executive experience –and executive success—make the most sense from both a ready-to-be-president perspective and from the campaign manager’s much narrower view as to how to get to 270 electoral votes.
Read the rest – The short-list of three
Rick Santorum is announcing today that he is suspending his campaign. His daughter Bella was recently hospitalized, so this is probably a factor in his decision.
(CNN) - Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum will announce he will suspend his campaign on Tuesday at an event in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, a senior adviser to the campaign told CNN.
Santorum spoke to GOP presidential front-runner Mitt Romney prior to his expected announcement, according to a Republican source.
This leaves Mitt Romney virtually unopposed for the Republican Party. This sets up a fall match-up of Liberal Rockefeller Republican Mitt Romney vs. 3rd World Liberation Democrat Barack Hussein Obama. This is a terrible choice for this nation and either way we are doomed.
As I have said many times, we are seeing the fruit of the disasters of the anti Bush/Republican backlash of 2006 and 2008 with the pathetic crop of candidates we have now. We have a phony (Romney), a whiny, religious nut (Santorum) , and a has-been, back stabbing over the hill hack (Newtie).
by Noemie Emery
There are many flaws among the current Republican candidates and they are all too well known. Romney is too close to the center and all of the others are much too eccentric.
They can’t reach the base, or they can’t reach beyond it. Romney’s too bland and Santorum and Gingrich are all too exciting — in fact, they seem borderline nuts.
No one addresses the big, urgent problems. Romney has problems closing the deal, but his rivals can’t close their cases against him. This is a field out of phase with the party around it, caught on the wrong side of time.
The Republican Party as it exists in the moment is the product of three different things: the fiscal implosion of 2008, Obama’s wide and expensive expansion of government, and the sudden collapse of the welfare state culture of Europe.
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In 2009, the Tea Party movement began the resistance, flowed into and through the Republican Party, and pulled off a series of stunning electoral triumphs, starting early with Chris Christie, Bob McDonnell and Scott Brown, and cresting in 2010 with a bumper crop of insurgents dedicated to cutting entitlements, curbing unions and helping small businesses thrive.
These are outsiders who are now the establishment, who appeal to the base and to independents, and have been winning the battle against Obama whenever they take to the field.
These are the people who ought to be running, but time is against them: the first class, like McDonnell and Christie, have little more than two years now as national figures; and the second wave — Marco Rubio, Kelly Ayotte and Susana Martinez — have even a year less than that.
They are too new to run, and their esprit is not found in our current contenders, who have nothing to do with our more recent battles, and quite clearly are blasts from the past.
Gingrich scored his big coup in the 1994 midterms, lost power in 1998, and since then has passed time having Breakfast at Tiffany’s while churning out mountains of books.
Rick Santorum came to the Senate in 1994, lost by 18 points a dozen years later, and since then has concerned himself with Satan’s grip on the country, and JFK’s failure to spend his tenure as president spreading the creed of his church far and wide.
Romney, who lost his first race in 1994, and left the one office he has held six years ago, has been endorsed by McDonnell, Christie and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, whose campaign he backed in its earliest stages and has secondhand Tea Party cred.
But he is running the campaign he ran four years earlier, largely stressing his business experience, with no sign of additional urgency and few indications that too much has changed.
Still, he’s more in touch than Santorum or Gingrich, who are pushing a rigid and retro conservative vision that appeals to only a slice of the country, and disdains independents who swung back from Obama, and elected impure reformers like Christie and Brown.
There is a chasm between the GOP of 2012, revved up by the wins of the 2009-2010 cycles, and its candidates of the 1994-2006 vintage, who don’t understand and can’t harness its energies.
You call can it the Retreads’ Revenge.
Read the rest – The curse of the Republican retreads
This is a thread to discuss the results of today’s Illinois. n.
Here are the results.
Discuss anything you want on this thread.
Update: Here are the exit polls.
Update II: Illinois has been called for Mitt Romney.
With America’s middle calls getting left behind, Oil prices high and our debt out of control, Rick Santorum has other concerns. He has stated that if he’s elected, he will go after Porn. That’s right, he wants to go after porn!
Internet pornography could conceivably become a thing of the past if Rick Santorum is elected president.
The unapologetic social conservative, currently in second place behind Mitt Romney for the GOP nomination, has promised to crack down on the distribution of pornography if elected.
Santorum says in a statement posted to his website, “The Obama Administration has turned a blind eye to those who wish to preserve our culture from the scourge of pornography and has refused to enforce obscenity laws.”
If elected, he promises to “vigorously” enforce laws that “prohibit distribution of hardcore (obscene) pornography on the Internet, on cable/satellite TV, on hotel/motel TV, in retail shops and through the mail or by common carrier.”
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Santorum’s administration could take American-based porn distributors to court for violating obscenity laws, said Volokh, and have them shuttered. But that would leave foreign-based sites untouched.
To black out foreign sites, Santorum would likely need legislative action requiring Internet service providers to use “a mandatory filter set up by the government or by the service providers,” said Volokh.
But the government could also prosecute individual citizens who view porn, and already has the legal authority to do it.
2 States had primaries today; Alabama and Mississippi. Hawaii is holding a caucus voted today.
Results for Mississippi.
Results Alabama.
Results for Hawaii.
The Diary of Daedalus
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