Thread: The Faux Conservatism Of Rick Santorum

The Faux Conservatism Of Rick Santorum

January 6, 2012 by Bob Livingston

UPI

Rick Santorum trailed Mitt Romney by eight votes in the Iowa Caucus.

Fresh off his stunning (a possible ill-gotten) second-place finish in Iowa, former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania is trying to claim the mantle of the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney.
Such a claim would spark belly laughs and derisive hoots and catcalls in a sane world. But in our present-day non-reality of doublespeak it’s simply sad because so many deluded Republicans are glomming on to this lie.
I wrote a complete profile on Santorum last fall that can be read here. But here’s a little reminder to refresh your memory on just who Santorum really is:

• In 2004, he joined George W. Bush to help re-elect Senator Arlen Specter over Pat Toomey. Santorum says no one is more pro-life than he, yet he backed pro-choice Specter over pro-life — and later to become 2010 Tea Party favorite — Toomey in a Republican primary. And by the way, the very liberal Specter later defected to the Democratic Party, giving Obama the filibuster-proof majority he needed to pass Obamacare.
• Santorum championed No Child Left Behind.
• Santorum helped Bush push through a new and wildly expensive entitlement, the Medicare prescription drug bill.
• He voted for the USA Patriot Act, then voted to renew it four years later.
• Santorum voted in favor of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, which established the Department of Homeland Security.
• Santorum voted for the 2005 highway bill that included thousands of wasteful earmarks, including the Bridge to Nowhere; and he supported every Pennsylvania pork-laden bill that came up.
• Santorum believes it’s the government’s job to legislate morality and has no concept of what the 10^th Amendment means.
• Santorum is no friend of the 2^nd Amendment either. In the 1990s, he voted for the Lautenberg Gun Ban, which stripped for life the rights of people to own guns if they spanked their children or grabbed their spouse’s wrist. In 1999, he voted for a bill that required Federal background checks at gun shows. In 2005, he voted to mandate locks on handguns. He has campaigned for anti-gun zealots like Specter and New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman. He has refused to return his Gun Rights Presidential Survey to the National Association for Gun Rights and his Gun Owners of America Presidential Survey.
• He backed the Iraq war and has advocated bombing Iran.
• Santorum is the ultimate Washington insider. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington named him among the three most corrupt Senators in 2005 and 2006 for using his office to financially benefit those who had contributed to his campaign.
• Within weeks of leaving Congress, Santorum had a job on K-Street as a lobbyist and his 2010 income of more than $1 million included payments from a lobbying firm, an energy company engaged in controversial “hydrofracking” and a hospital conglomerate that was sued for allegedly defrauding the Federal government.

Santorum is the type of RINO that Tea Partiers would have worked to defeat in 2010. Yet now some of those same Tea Partiers and war-loving neocons are supporting him as the anti-Romney, falsely believing Santorum would stand a chance in an election against President Barack Obama.

They’re forgetting that Santorum is no longer in the Senate because, despite (or because of) 12 years of incumbency, he couldn’t even carry his own State in 2006, losing to Bob Casey Jr. 58.6 percent to 41.3 percent.

http://www.personalliberty.com/conse...santorum/?eiid=

RELATED

Gary Bauer endorses Santorum High profile pro-family leader Gary Bauer is endorsing Rick Santorum for the GOP presidential nomination.

Bauer says that although he had intended to avoid endorsing any particular candidate at this stage of the campaign, he changed his mind in recent days because of the obvious deep division within the GOP electorate over who should lead the GOP fight against Barack Obama. Bauer says he has been receiving "an increasing number of questions from our grassroots supporters around the country seeking guidance on which candidate they should support. I felt it was imperative that I take the lead now."