Today’s Lesson In Progressive Politics: Rick Santorum (?!)

February 17, 2012

The Republicans are really not making it easy for conservatives like me in this election year. We don’t trust Romney, we don’t like Newt, we think Paul’s nuts. But generally speaking we like Santorum. Then he goes and gets all Progressive on us.

Rick Santorum on Internet gambling:

I’m someone who takes the opinion that gaming is not something that is beneficial, particularly having that access on the Internet. Just as we’ve seen from a lot of other things that are vices on the Internet, they tend to grow exponentially as a result of that. It’s one thing to come to Las Vegas and do gaming and participate in the shows and that kind of thing as entertainment, it’s another thing to sit in your home and have access to that it. I think it would be dangerous to our country to have that type of access to gaming on the Internet.

Freedom’s not absolute. What rights in the Constitution are absolute? There is no right to absolute freedom. There are limitations. You might want to say the same thing about a whole variety of other things that are on the Internet — “let everybody have it, let everybody do it.” No. There are certain things that actually do cost people a lot of money, cost them their lives, cost them their fortunes that we shouldn’t have and make available, to make it that easy to do.

Oh, brother…

First off, Rick, the Constitution does not grant us rights. It limits the government from infringing on the rights that are our birthright, that are given to us by God.

I’ve been pretty consistent in my support for Rick Santorum during this process, going so far as to officially endorse him on my Twitter account. But my support has also always been fairly tepid. Of the four remaining candidates, I think he’s the most conservative in his core beliefs. Romney has been saying all the right things, but he gives the impression that he’s spent the last few years with a Rosetta Stone of conservative speech. Catch Romney off the cuff and he’s liable to tell you that he believes the minimum wage should go up every year indexed to inflation, a mind-bogglingly unconservative sentiment.

Still, my tepid support for Santorum is being strained to the limit with this latest dose of Progressive inanity.

The rap against Santorum from the Left is that he is a wacko Christian Papist who wants to establish a theocracy, ban birth control, and force everyone to go to Church on Sunday. It’s a bogus charge. Santorum is a Catholic and has firmly held beliefs that are rooted in his faith. But the idea that he is getting his marching orders from Rome is as offensive today as it was when John F. Kennedy was accused of the same thing. Kennedy! A man and, indeed, an entire family that wouldn’t care about Catholic doctrine if it bit them on their collective fanny. But there is still a strain of anti-Catholicism in politics and the media, and many of the charges against Santorum are the result of it.

My main concern with Santorum has always been that he is an acolyte of George W. Bush’s “Compassionate Conservatism.” When Bush said “When people are hurting, the government’s got to move” he stuck a dagger into the hearts of conservatives everywhere. Conservatives believe that when people are hurting the government’s got to move as far away as possible. Santorum, on the other hand, sees absolutely nothing wrong with feeding Leviathan to promote conservative philosophies. The problem with that, of course, is that the first rule of conservatism is to stop feeding Leviathan.

There are a lot of reasons to be opposed to internet gambling, but Santorum’s reasoning is no different than the reasoning of NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg when he tries to ban trans-fats, or Michelle Obama when she wants school cafeterias to stop serving food kids actually like, or Barack Obama when he wants to the government to provide health care for everyone. In this stance, Santorum is just another Big Government Nanny State-loving Progressive. There is, in fact, more Progressivism packed into these two paragraphs than in anything Mitt Romney has said during the campaign. Social engineering from a conservative is no less odious than it is from a Leftist, even though I may agree with the desired result.

A political philosophy that tries to dictate to the people based on what politicians believe is “for their own good” is not conservative. It speaks to the same sort of arrogance and elitism that are the hallmarks of Progressivism. Sadly, Rick Santorum has stepped through that door. If he doesn’t backtrack on this, and explain that he really meant something he didn’t say, I may end up swinging my support over to Romney. And good Lord, I don’t want to do that.

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Posted by Blaknsam

Rick, Rolling

January 6, 2012

Who would have thought, just a few short months ago, that it would be Rick Santorum and not Rick Perry that emerged triumphant from the Iowa caucus?

Not that Santorum actually won (or did he?), but finishing in second place behind the hair apparent Mitt Romney by just eight votes classifies as somewhat more than a moral victory and somewhat less than true triumph.

The race for the Republican nomination is considerably narrowed now. It’s really down to four: Romney, Santorum, Gingrich, and Perry. Perry and Gingrich are hanging on like Sergeant Snorkel hanging off a cliff-side tree branch. There’s no visible way up, but down is a very real possibility. Perry has all but given up on New Hampshire, and clearly staked out South Carolina as his Alamo. He will be victorious in South Carolina, or he will be gone. Gingrich is liable to stay in the race as long as his money, ego, and love of television cameras allows him to do so. His ego and autagonistophilia (there’s a $10 word I thought I’d never use!) are inexhaustible, but his money is distinctly finite. It’s likely that unless he somehow pulls off a victory in either New Hampshire or South Carolina, he’ll probably be gone by Super Bowl Sunday. Gingrich’s only chance is that he can so dominate future debates, and so thrill the conservative base with a steady diet of red meat, that voters will overlook his many foibles in their lust to see Gingrich and Obama go mano-a-mano.

The current resident of 2nd place in the New Hampshire polls is Ron Paul. I don’t count Ron Paul as a serious candidate. I like to joke that I agree with Ron Paul 97% of the time…95% on domestic policy and 2% on foreign policy. I am the conservative base, and would vote for Ron Paul over Obama. But I’d vote for Jon Huntsman over Ron Paul in the primaries. That’s how noxious I find Paul’s foreign policy views: a vomitous stew of blame-America-firstism, trutherism, and conspiracy nut musings. His foreign policy views are considerably farther to the Left than even Barack Obama’s…the guy who wants to decimate the U.S. military. Ron Paul has no chance of winning the primaries. None. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Bupkis. Fugghedaboudit.

I eagerly await the hate mail, but in your heart you know I’m right that there will never, ever, ever be a President Ron Paul. Nor should there be.

What all of this means is that at this moment there’s a two-man race going on between Mitt Romney and, surprise, Rick Santorum. Which means the time has come for Republicans to decide who is the best candidate of those two men to defeat Barack Obama in November. William F. Buckley’s rule of thumb was to support the most conservative candidate who was electable. In choosing between Romney and Santorum, the choice at first appears clear: Romney is the less conservative of the two, but is a polished debater, smooth talking, quick on his feet, the frontrunner with lots of name recognition, a former Republican governor of one of the bluest states in the country. Surely it’s Romney. Virtually every media talking head assures us that Romney is the only Republican who stands a snowball’s chance in Hell of defeating the suave, debonair, charming President. Even the conservative media is beating this drum. My friends The Gormogons posted a wickedly sharp treatise by Ghettoputer that called Romney “the turd in the punchbowl that is the Republican 2012 presidential primary field with the best chance of beating President Obama in the general election.” But is ‘Puter right?

Mitt Romney has been running for election for nearly 20 years, starting with a Senate bid in 1994. During that time he managed one win: governor of Massachusetts in 2002. He didn’t run for reelection in 2006 so that he could concentrate fully on a 2008 Presidential run. Had he run in 2006, he almost certainly would have lost. Romney’s failure to break out of the pack of Republican candidates this year is indicative of just how little emotion he stirs in the base. In the 2008 campaign, he lost to John McCain…the least inspiring Presidential candidate since Bob Dole stammered his way to slaughter in 1996. That’s right: Romney inspired the base less than John McCain, a man who infuriates Republicans on a daily basis.

Republicans need to ask: if Romney is so electable, then why doesn’t anybody want to elect him to anything?

Then there’s Rick Santorum, a man who the enlightened assure us is not electable. The intelligentsia present this assertion as if it were an indisputable fact, with the proof being that in his last race (Senate, 2006) Santorum lost by an 18% margin. Surely, they say, anyone this unpopular could never be elected President. But Santorum has won more electoral victories than Romney has. In a blue state with red tinting, he campaigned as a hardline conservative and won…first as a two-term Representative, then twice more as Senator. The 2006 election that is being held over his head was something of an anomaly: he was campaigning against a blue dog Democrat who shared a name and family heritage with a former, well-liked, governor, Bob Casey. The 2006 election was also the first election suffering from Bush fatigue, and a powerful anti-incumbent sentiment. It was a wave election, carrying the Democrats into power (they gained 30 House seats and 6 Senate seats). Santorum had also deflated the base with his endorsement in 2004 of the wretched and loathsome reptile that is Arlen Specter. To conservatives, this was akin to watching Harry Potter putting a “Vote for Voldemort” sign on his front lawn.

Whether or not a candidate is electable is a difficult thing to ascertain. All candidates have their issues, both pro and con. Romney is an uninspiring flip flopper with an unfortunate, and transparent, tendency to tell audiences whatever they want to hear. The fear is that he has no core principles, and it’s a valid fear. Santorum has come across in the debates, especially the early debates, as annoyed and surly, complaining about his air time. America does not want a whiner for President. Santorum is also intent on focusing on the social side of conservatism. At a time when millions of Americans are out of work, when there is instability throughout the Middle East and Europe, when our nation is so deeply in debt that a bankrupt future looks all too possible, Santorum makes sure we know where he stands on abortion, contraception, and gay marriage. These are important issues, but I’m far more concerned about reforming Medicare than I am about contraception. Sometimes Santorum’s deeply felt Catholicism gets the best of him. He needs to talk about jobs, jobs, jobs, debt reduction, jobs, debt reduction, debt reduction, and jobs. Instead he lets a media that hates him trap him into answering questions designed to make him look like a kook (because that’s what the media thinks of devout Catholics).

Note to Rick: When some pinheaded reporter asks you if you want to ban contraception the answer is not a treatise on your faith. The answer is “That’s a ridiculous question you should be ashamed of asking. Of course not. Now can we please talk about the economy?”

I don’t know who’s more electable. That will become clearer as the primaries continue. But it’s clear to me that Romney is less of a sure-fire win than his proponents would like us to believe, and Santorum is a greater threat to Obama than his detractors would argue. Rest assured, though. The Obama campaign is rolling down the streets like Megaweapon, ready to viciously and unfairly tarnish anyone the Republicans nominate. The Republicans need a conservative champion, a Beowulf to slay Grendel (and Grendel’s mom…I’m looking at you, Axelrod!). They need a man with the rock solid principles of Rick Santorum, and the business/economy-related focus of Mitt Romney. A bit of the carnivorous style of Newt Gingrich wouldn’t hurt, either. That combination would be truly unbeatable in November.

Consider that a word of advice to all the candidates.

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Is Romney Inevitable?

October 14, 2011

Fresh from another Republican debate watched by dozens of people on the Bloomberg network, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the race is Mitt Romney’s to lose. The question is: is this a good thing for the Republican party?

I haven’t decided who to support in this campaign for the same reason as many conservatives: there are reasons to dislike or worry about all of them.

  • Rick Perry doesn’t seem like he really wants the job. I think the pressure to join the race appealed to his ego and got him thinking Big Thoughts, but his heart’s not in it. He clearly is spending no time on debate preparation and is on a neutrino-paced ride back to Austin and the job with which he’s done well.
  • Jon Huntsman has, in Jonah Goldberg’s phrase, a face that you just want to punch. He’s insufferable and arrogant, and the least conservative candidate in the field.
  • Ron Paul is right on many issues that have absolutely nothing to do with foreign policy. His foreign policy stance is a toxic stew of isolationism, blame-Americaism, and outright denial of reality.
  • Newt Gingrich is the smartest guy in the room. Also the one with the most baggage. He’s simply unelectable to high office, and suffers from some of the same sense of intellectual self-importance that makes Obama so arrogant.
  • Gary Johnson is…I don’t know who Gary Johnson is. Some dude who’s running for President and has a smaller chance than I do.
  • Michelle Bachmann is a fighter as she tells you at every single opportunity. One gets the feeling that right now she’s tracking somebody down so that she can pin him to the wall and tell him what a fighter she is. The trouble is that there may have been a lot of battles she waged in the House, but there are no victories. She’s also gaffe-prone and so doctrinaire in her beliefs that I’m not sure she’d be capable of compromising, even if it meant she got 99.9% of what she wanted. Whenever I see her talking policy I think of George Costanza talking himself and Jerry out of a deal with NBC by insisting that the show be “about nothing” despite what the network executives want. I think Bachmann is right on a lot of issues, but her campaign is unraveling at light speed (i.e., slightly slower than Perry’s).
  • Rick Santorum is where my heart lies. He’s about as solid a conservative as you can get, he’s got a good resume (a great resume includes a gubernatorial stint), he’s been good in the debates. I’d happily cast a vote for Rick Santorum in November 2012. The problem here is that I’m probably not going to get that chance. His campaign is cash poor and being run out of a camper parked on a front lawn somewhere in western Pennsylvania. He is the only candidate talking about the morality of how economics affects families, and I think that is a great issue that can be easily sold to a lot of people who are feeling the pinch. Bad economic policies do more than hurt your pocketbook, they can also tear at the societal fabric. What Santorum lacks is star power and charisma. Sadly, that’s a lot more important now than it was when, say, Grover Cleveland was running for President.
  • Herman Cain is the single most likable candidate. He’s sunny, optimistic, funny, smart, and has the best “rags-to-riches and I beat the Big C, too” backstory of any of the candidates. He’s got some problems, though. His “9-9-9” plan will not work. Period. End of sentence. It’s a lousy plan that is based on unrealistic projections. He is clueless about foreign policy and doesn’t seem inclined to learn. While he has many great lines, he’s not really a great debater. Whatever the subject of the question, he turns it back to “my 9-9-9 plan,” which has crossed the line from “talking point” to “mantra” and is likely soon to jump the shark. Also, we learned in 2008 that the presidency is not an entry-level job. His business experience, like Romney’s, is interesting but not conclusive. Government is not business, and the President is not the national CEO. It’s one thing to be CEO of a company and have your employees implement your desires. It’s another to deal with coequal branches of government.

Which brings us back to Mitt Romney, one of the most inauthentic politicians I’ve ever laid eyes on.

First it must be acknowledged that this is not the same Mitt Romney who ran in 2008. Somewhere in the past three years Romney has loosened up, become an excellent debater, and has gotten much more comfortable in his own skin. Maybe that means that the Romney we see now is the real guy, that he’s finally letting his conservative freak flag fly. Maybe he’s just been in some coaching sessions with media consultants.

But Romney is a very bitter pill for conservatives to swallow. Obamacare, the solar-powered windmill conservatives have spent two years tilting at, is not much more than a CinemaScope remake of Romneycare. Nominating Romney removes, or at least damages, that issue for Republicans. Romney also has a well-deserved reputation for flip flopping on various issues, most famously abortion. He gives the impression that he will agree with whatever the majority is telling him. In liberal Massachusetts, Romney was a liberal Republican who partnered with Ted Kennedy (as did George W. Bush and don’t think for a second I’ve forgiven him for that). Now he sounds like he’s wearing a tri-corner hat at a local Tea Party, and questions about his liberal record are deflected or treated as if they are irrelevant.

Mitt Romney is not the inevitable candidate. Yet. The Republican primary voters are still looking for, in John Podhoretz’s words, the “Not-Romney” candidate. Today it’s Herman Cain. Previous winners have included Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry. It’s possible that Cain will give way to Santorum, the only truly viable Not-Romney left, but it is most likely that when the dust settles Mitt Romney’s perfect hair, smile, and endless record of prevarication will be the only things left.

This isn’t necessarily the end of the world. As a candidate in the general election, I would support Romney. That’s an easy choice given the alternative. The key to Romney’s success as a conservative politician will be the makeup of Congress in 2013 and beyond. A conservative House passing conservative bills to a conservative Senate who passes the bills to President Romney will likely result in conservative policies being implemented. A divided Congress or, God forbid, a liberal/Progressive Congress, will co-opt Romney and he will govern from the center, much as Bush 41 and Bush 43 did.

I can live with Romney as the candidate, though he’s very far from my first choice. His candidacy does raise the stakes, though. With Romney in charge, it will be more important than ever for conservatives to maintain or increase their control of the House and to gain control, preferably filibuster-proof control, of the Senate. An “important to have” Congress under a conservative President like Santorum, Bachmann, or Cain becomes a “must have” Congress under President Romney. It would do the Tea Party well to remember this if they’re thinking about sitting out the election: Romney isn’t the only name on the ballot, and President is not the only office needing to be filled.

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Posted by Blaknsam