Ron Paul Is Trying To Steal The GOP Nomination

May 2, 2012 99 Comments

The Ron Paul supporters, known affectionately around here as Ronulans, are an interesting bunch. You’ll never meet people more committed to a candidate or case, you’ll also never meet people more delusional about their chances of winning. It is true Paul was able to fill a lot of college gyms for campaign events and it’s true that Paul’s passionate supporters will turn out in droves for every single internet poll. But that doesn’t translate into actual votes, something Paul’s largely young following doesn’t seem to understand. Unable to get more than 15% of the Republican vote, now the Ronulans believes he can out maneuver everyone and win the delegate count at the GOP Convention. It is the height of lunacy.

Ron Paul isn’t going to be able to pull off a stunning delegate victory, no matter how much his supports fantasize about it. Mitt Romney is the nominee. While a good 60% of the party didn’t vote for him, 90% or more are prepared to vote for him in the November election. Moreover 90% of the party views him as the legitimate GOP nominee. He won fair and square.That the Ronulans want to pretend like there’s any shot at winning in Tampa is the height of absurdity. That they think Paul can win with an underhanded and illegitimate stealth delegate campaign shows where these people are coming from.

Let’s go into Ronulan fantasy land and pretend that Paul pulls off the stealth delegate maneuver and walks out of Tampa with the nomination. He will not be viewed as the legitimate GOP nominee. It won’t just be the establishment that views matters this way, the rank and file will as well. None of Romney’s primary voters will vote for Paul, ensuring his absolute defeat to Obama. A good portion of non-Romney primary voters will also be turned off by Paul’s underhanded steal of the nomination. At this point a Ron Paul stealth victory ensures that Obama is re-elected. Romney has at least a 33% chance of winning, Paul has a 0% chance.

A Paul stealth victory would be a disaster for the conservative cause. Right now conservatives are in the middle of the GOP, with the establishment to their left and the libertarians to their right. The establishment and the libertarians tend to balance one another, particularly when it comes to Congressional and other local campaigns and issues such as the GOP platform. If Paul pulls off the stealth win, the balance of power in the GOP will be fundamentally and forever altered. The establishment will purge the libertarians from the GOP, this shifting the balance of power left. Make no mistake this will happen. The end result is bad for conservatives and it’s bad for libertarians as well. Whether the libertarians want to admit it or not, their only hope of advancing their cause is in the GOP. Simply put, the overwhelming majority of the country will not vote for the libertarians should they be relegated exclusively to meaningless third parties.

Most of us aren’t particularly happy about Romney’s nomination. He’s a Massachusetts moderate, the worst kind of establishment Republican. Like it or not, he’s the nominee. He’s won most of the state primaries and caucuses. He earned his victory. Libertarians will do nothing for their cause by trying to create a convention battle. They’ll turn most Republicans, who at their base have a sense of fairness about them, against the libertarians. Nothing will bother the rank and file more than Ron Paul seemingly trying to cheat his way into the nomination. Such a move will reflect poorly not only on Paul but on libertarians as well. They will never be trusted again by the very people libertarians need to recruit if they should ever want to make a serious run at the Republican nomination in the future.

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Mitt Romney Is The GOP Nominee

April 25, 2012 2 Comments

Mitt Romney secured the GOP nomination last night. He declared in his victory speech that a “better America begins tonight.” His speech was excellent, it did everything a Republican would hope a speech like that would do. This was Romney’s first official speech as the GOP nominee. Rather than becoming Mr. Etch-a-Sketch and moving to the middle, Romney gave a conservative speech from beginning to end. If this is what Romney intends on doing from now until November, he’ll inspire his base and gain the trust of independents. His ability to highlight the differences between himself and Obama (while conveniently ignoring all the similarities) proves him to be a much better candidate than John McCain was.

Romney’s speech channeled Reagan circa 1980. He highlighted all of Obama’s failures, from growing government to the terrible economic situation our country faces. In doing so, he painted Obama’s America as a down time for the nation while presenting the Romney vision as one of star spangled optimism. Perhaps the most important point he made, a point that no one in the GOP primary ever brought up, is that freedom will bring this country back. Romney didn’t just present a positive outlook based on basic conservative ideology, he based it on freedom.While he didn’t say it, it was clear he was contrasting his vision of freedom bringing the economy back with Obama’s state slavery and debt slavery.

Now that Romney has won the nomination, it’s time for him to go into hiding for a couple months. He needs to spend his time fund raising and preparing his strategy for the November election. The public doesn’t need to see much of him at this point. Most of the public won’t begin to pay attention until the conventions. Romney’s speech last night was excellent, it is the template for the speech he can give in every town this fall and win the election. But he can’t give that speech every day from now until the election. The public will get bored of it and by the time November rolls around it won’t matter anymore. It’s good to come out swinging like he did last night. He made his base happy and he caught the attention of independents. But now it’s time to stifle it.

This election is going to be a nasty fight. Romney has already shown himself to be nasty, we know Obama will be. It’s never a fair fight for the Republican as we don’t have the media in the bag for us. But if Romney focuses almost exclusively on the economy, contrasting Obama’s failures with his vision for future economic success, Romney has a shot. People aren’t better off than they were four years ago. Most of the country is sick of the Obama malaise. But they don’t trust Romney yet, they don’t know him and if they do know him they view him as a rich guy who chances his views to suit his audience. Never mind that John Kerry is worth $100 million plus more than Romney which never bothered the Democrats.

Romney’s real problem is trust and he can only build trust by not being an Etch-a-Sketch candidate in the fall. If Romney is going to win he needs to stick to conservative values and a conservative message. He cannot win by moving to the middle. Moving to the middle only means moving over to the left where Obama already is. Given the choice between an authentic liberal Democrat and an inauthentic Republican moderate, the country has always chosen the authentic liberal. Romney cannot win as the moderate, he can win as the conservative. If October rolls around and he’s giving terrific speeches like last night’s and his campaign plays their cards right, he could be called Mr. President come January.

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Romney Has Won, Had Best Not Be An Etch A Sketch Candidate

March 22, 2012 4 Comments

Mitt Romney is the Republican nominee. He has nearly half the delegates required to win, no one is within 300 of him at this point. Beginning in April all of the states are winner take all. With California and New York clearly in the Romney camp, no one else has a chance. Santorum would have to win 70% of the remaining delegates, he just doesn’t have the money or organization to pull that off. It’s time for Santorum and Newt to drop out of the race. It doesn’t matter whether Ron Paul drops or not, he was never relevant.

Now we in the Republican Party must now resign ourselves to the fact that we’ve nominated someone who we know nothing about. Sure, we know that a decade ago he ran as a progressive Republican in Massachusetts. We know that today he says he’s a conservative. His speech in Illinois the other night was excellent, it makes one think that Romney might actually have a conservative vision. Unfortunately, it still isn’t clear what his vision is. What will Romney do as President? What will he cut, who will he nominate to the Supreme Court? What big government programs will he cut, or worse what new big government programs will he create? We don’t know, because he hasn’t told  us.

Romney spent this entire campaign telling us that his opponents were conservative heretics. He trotted out random votes Santorum and Gingrich made and called them liberals and heretics with the millions in campaign money he had. Romney outspent all of his Republican rivals combined. There’s nothing wrong with it, but the way Romney’s campaign has been run tells us why the GOP has been slow to embrace him. Everyone else is a liberal but we don’t know what Romney is, we don’t know his vision. All we were told by his camp is that Obama is bad and Rick and Newt are almost as bad. That doesn’t inspire passion in Republican voters.

Now we conservatives are seeing our greatest fear come to light. Top Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom declared on CNN that Romney can become a moderate during the general election. He said “It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all of over again.” So now Romney is an Etch A Sketch, who isn’t a conservative and will tell voters whatever they want to hear. To be charitable, it isn’t Romney who said this. But what in the world is Fehrnstrom thinking saying such a thing on CNN? What would possess him to say this? Romney can show real leadership by firing Fehrnstrom. It’s the only way to calm the storm brewing on the right.

We now have two important events to look forward to with Romney, both of which will tell us the course of his fall campaign. First up will be selecting a Vice Presidential nominee. Romney needs to make a big splash with a nominee that will appease conservatives. Marco Rubio is one such person, Allen West is another. Romney has to pick someone that will excite his base, just a hint but Chris Christie isn’t that guy. Second will be Romney’s nomination speech at the GOP Convention. He’ll have an oppertunity to lay out his vision for the nation and if he wants conservatives to stay on board it had best be conservative. If Romney shows us to be a real Etch A Sketch candidate, he will lose in a landslide.

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Super Tuesday A Super Bore

March 7, 2012 Leave a comment

Super Tuesday came and went yesterday. The results were predictable. Romney is clearly going to be the GOP nominee. While Santorum won three states, he barely picked up more delegates than Romney in those states. Meanwhile Romney won substantial majorities in most of the states he won. Newt might as well drop out. He only won Georgia, though to listen to him speak last night you would think he’s about to win the nomination.

Perhaps the most interesting race yesterday was in Virginia. Santorum and Newt failed to get enough signatures to make it on the ballot, leaving only Romney and Ron Paul. Throughout this campaign we’ve heard Ronulans claim that if only the others would get out Ron Paul could beat Romney. Such hogwash! He lost 60-40 and would have lost by more hand angry Santorum and Newt supporters not voted for Paul out of protest. Can we finally put Ron Paul to rest? He cannot win in the Republican Party.

In other news yesterday Obama decided to hold a press conference. Of all the days he could have held a press conference, he chooses a major election day in the GOP primary race. He thinks he’s sticking it to Republicans, he’s trying to be cute. The fact though is that he looks petty. He said almost nothing of substance during the presser, which focused on foreign matters rather than the economy. We learned nothing and the press hardly asked anything of substance. It was nothing but a dog and pony show meant to shift focus away from the GOP.

Let’s stop and think about that for a second though. Why would Obama want to shift focus away from the GOP? The Republicans have destroyed themselves during this primary process, why wouldn’t Obama want the focus to be on them? His poll numbers have inched up as focus shifted away from him only to go down when focus shifts temporarily back to him. Obama must have thought Romney would secure the nomination last night, which shows his political ineptitude. Romney was never going to secure the nomination last night, anyone with half a political brain knew that.

Conservatives need to come to grips with the fact that we’re stuck with a Massachusetts moderate as our nominee. We’re looking at a repeat of 1996 when we foolishly nominated a moderate who got destroyed by Clinton. Rather than obsess over the White House, conservatives need to focus on Congress. We have a good shot at keeping the House and perhaps an even better shot at taking control of the Senate. In the Senate there are 13 seats which potentially could switch from the Democrats to Republicans. We need to win 4 to have an outright majority. If we’re stuck with Obama, we might as well have a Congress to obstruct him.

At this point, the sooner this primary campaign ends the better. Santorum and Newt aren’t going to make comebacks. Romney is the nominee. As a party, we’re better off getting this over with so Romney can go into hiding for a few months. He can raise money, stay out of the public eye and let Obama be the guy everyone focuses on. Nothing could be worse for Obama than having all eyes on him, his numbers always drop when he opens his mouth and people pay a slight bit of attention. It’s time for Santorum and Newt to drop out. They won’t of course, but it’s time nonetheless.

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Romney’s Uninspiring Michigan “Victory”

March 1, 2012 Leave a comment

The headlines yesterday declared that Romney won Michigan on Tuesday. Except that he didn’t. Michigan delegates are awarded by Congressional district. As such Rick Santorm will walk away with 15 delegates, the same as Romney. Romney didn’t win a single Congressional district that doesn’t at least touch a portion of metro Detroit. In other words, Romney won the liberals in the state while Santorum won the conservatives. Can anyone imagine a more uninspiring victory for a candidate in the state of their birth, where their father was Governor?

Romney will very likely be the nominee. This despite Santorum’s recent surge and the apparent reemergence of Newt in the polls. He creates as much enthusiasm in the GOP as John McCain did in 2008. In other words, not much. He isn’t particularly well liked by anyone other than the northeastern elites of the party and their country club sycophants. Sort of the same as John McCain, who the grassroots of the party never warmed up to until Sarah Palin. This is a serious problem for Romney. McCain’s biggest problem in 2008 was that he didn’t have a solid ground game like Bush did. Romney is facing the same problem.

Romney isn’t winning because voters like him. He’s winning because he’s outspending his opponents 5 to 1, largely running attack ads suggesting that Santorum and Newt aren’t conservative enough or are conservative heretics on one issue or another. Such ads share no vision of the future under a Romney administration. Perhaps more importantly the ads comically ignore Romney’s own conservative heresy and his run for Governor a mere decade ago in which he ran as a progressive.

Mitt Romney is a sure fire loser in the general election. If he can’t inspire Republicans, how in the world is he going to inspire independents to vote for him? He won’t be outspent by Obama, so he can’t skate through the November election with just a bunch of attack ads. He’s going to have to present a vision for the country. Unfortunately his vision is a lot closer to Obama’s than it is to Reagan’s.

Given the choice between an authentic progressive and a Republican wannabe progressive, the American public will always choose the authentic progressive. Given the choice between an authentic progressive and an authentic conservative, the public will always choose the conservative. The GOP establishment has never learned this lesson, which is why they continue to force losers like Ford, Bush 41, Dole, McCain and Romney down our throats. Since 1980 the only Republicans to win ran as right-wing conservatives. This was Reagan’s path to victory, as well as Bush 43′s. Bush 41 ran on Reagan’s record, ran as a hardline conservative and won. Once elected he returned to being a liberal and raised taxes among other things. He promptly lost to an authentic liberal, Bill Clinton.

Mitt Romney might as well be John McCain or Bob Dole. He’s uninspiring, he shares no vision for the future and his path to victory seems to be little more than buying ads attacking his opponents and whining about his opponents doing the same things he does. (read: trying to get Democrats to vote in GOP primaries) Mitt Romney can’t even win his home state of Michigan outright.  How can he beat Obama when he can’t even inspire Republicans in his home state to overwhelmingly vote for him?

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February 22nd Republican Debate Review

February 23, 2012 Leave a comment

John King moderated what is likely the last Republican debate last night. In typical CNN fashion, it was largely a hit j0b. This time Rick Santorum was the recipient of absurd, irrelevant topics. The debate spent 15 minutes on women on the front lines, earmarks and contraception. All of these issues were highlighted to make Santorum look bad. It was as though Mitt Romney was the one asking the questions. The most important issue in the fall is going to be the economy and the debate spent less than 5 minutes on the subject.

Rick Santorum is a good example of why Senators and Congressmen shouldn’t run for President. They often have convoluted reasons for voting for or supporting various bills or proposals that make sense at the time but cannot be easily explained later. Santorum has very good reasons why he endorsed Arlen Spector but it took him over a minute to explain that Spector was Chairman of the Judiciary Committee and had promised to support Bush’s appointments. Even then, the Romney audience hemmed and hawed over it.

Santorum’s defense of earmarks was admirable. This issue has become a major boogyman, as though earmarks at 1% of the Federal budget are responsible for our debt problem. But his defense was convoluted and it seemed smarmy. Bills in Congress and sausage go hand in hand, you might like the finished product but you don’t want to see how it got there. A Senator is always going to have trouble explaining a handful of votes (unless you’re Obama and don’t have any) and Santorum just didn’t have it in him to provide concise explanations.

Romney was on the offensive all night. But he had two problems last night. First and foremost anyone who has paid attention to this race in Arizona and Michigan over the last week will realize that Romney did little more than verbatim repeat his television and radio ads when he attacked Santorum. In short, he played right into the plastic  and robot accusations.

But his second problem is perhaps worse, he came off as a hypocrite. In the never ending and largely meaningless discussion of earmarks it was pointed out that when Romney ran the Winter Olympics he had asked Congress for an earmark. In short, an earmark was ok when he wanted one but they’re evil and wasteful otherwise. That’s as hypocritical as Ron Paul putting earmarks into bills that he then makes a show of voting against.

Newt did a masterful job last night. He is by far the best debater. His problem though is that the party is tired of him. Conservatives have gravitated towards Santorum because Newt has to much baggage. In fact, at this point Newt is the difference between a Santorum victory and a Romney victory. Newt has stayed in the race, likely ensuring a Romney win after Santorum’s mediocre performance last night.

Ron Paul is so trusting of personal liberty, as he defines it, that he really believes that Iran wouldn’t use a nuclear weapon and would behave largely as the Soviet’s did. In his Iran comments he displays a complete lack of fundamental knowledge of the Muslim faith the Iranians have. The Soviets were atheists, this life is all they thought they had so it makes sense that they really didn’t want to kill themselves via a nuclear war. Iran not only believes they’ll get themselves 72 virgins for dying for Allah, they believe they can bring about a return of the 12th imam by creating chaos in the world. It doesn’t matter that they’re crazy, they really believe this stuff. Paul doesn’t get it and is unfit for the Presidency.

Romney won last night because he played a solid debate and Santorum missed opportunities to attack him. Santorum’s performance is a little concerning should he win the nomination. He lit up when he got to talk about the family but otherwise he seemed disconnected from the questions and the audience. Romney gave a typical steady eddie, plastic, robotic performance. That might not beat Obama either, he doesn’t exactly connect with people. But he makes the right moves at the right time, so he wins.

Win: Romney delivered a typical Mitt performance.

Place: Santorum did good enough for second but missed opportunities to knock out Romney.

Show: Newt is solid as ever but it really matters not.

Big loser: The conservative movement lost big last night. Santorum was our last hope to defeat the progressive Romney and he didn’t take advantage of his chance. With the political death of Santorum, so dies Reagan’s movement.

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Does Santorum Have The Guts To Win Debate Tonight?

February 22, 2012 Leave a comment

Tonight is a huge night Republican Presidential race. Arizona will be hosting what will likely be the last debate. Santorum and Romney are more or less tied in both Michigan and Arizona. Santorum has lost a couple of points here in Michigan, largely thanks to Romney’s misleading statements about Santorum’s Senate record. In Arizona Romney’s double digit lead has all but evaporated as conservatives look for someone other than Romney. Newt and Ron Paul are more or less irrelevant to the debate, which of course means they’ll be focused on the most by CNN. The real battle though is between Santorum and Romney.

Santorum has to do two things very well tonight. First, he has to put the media in its place concerning his Satan comment in 2008 and his recent use of the term theology. These are nonsense issues and Santorum needs to state that clearly and emphatically. Second, he needs to lay out a positive vision for  the future. In doing this it’s acceptable to hit Romney over Romneycare but he really needs to focus on his positive agenda should he win the White House. He needs to adopt the ‘there you go again’ mentality of Ronald Reagan in response to every attack Romney makes. The key here for Santorum is not to whine.

Romney can go one of two routes. He can go with his typical debate performance which is short on details and tall on smiles. In doing this he comes off as a “nice” guy while his surrogates massacre his opponents. It’s worked well for him. However, we’re hitting a point where a good deal of Republicans want to see more out of Romney. We want to see whether he can passionately defend conservative causes. So far, we’ve seen very little of this which is why Romney has had such a hard time breaking away from the pack.

If Santorum has a big night, he can win both states next week and he’ll be the frontrunner. As such, he’ll be injected with even more money. If he flounders tonight either Romney will end up running away with the election or conservatives will take a second look at Newt. Odds are conservatives have had enough of Newt, despite his generally terrific debate performances. The fact that he remains in the race, despite it being clear that he’s the difference between a Romney nomination and a Santorum nomination all but makes conservatives dislike him more.

The nomination rests in the hands of Rick Santorum. No matter which strategy Romney employs, he will deliver a generally good, plastic performance. He might not win a ton of voters based on his own performance but he likely won’t lose any either. It all rests on how Santorum does. If he hits a home run, he can run away with this thing. If he fouls out, it’s over. The scary thing is that Santorum’s performance may very well depend on what questions the liberals at CNN ask. It begs the question why Republicans continue to allow liberal media members to moderate our debates.

We here at Steven Birn Speaks question whether or not Santorum is ready to make the next step. We question whether he can adequately respond to absurd media attacks and Romney misleads without sounding whiney. In short, don’t get your hopes up that Santorum will rise to the occasion. For the sake of the conservative cause I hope he does, but don’t count on it.

For those interested I will be live tweeting during the debate tonight. Follow me on the twitter @stevebirnspeaks

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Romney Can’t Decide If Santorum Is Too Conservative or Too Liberal

February 20, 2012 2 Comments

The Romney camp is heading into desperation mode against Rick Santorum. These guys are afraid of losing Michigan, so they’re pulling out all the stops. Even if it means offering contradictory declarations about Sen. Santorum. In the last week we’ve heard that Santorum is of the liberal wing of the GOP when it comes to spending. Then we’re told that Santorum is too conservative to win in November. By raising doubt about Santorum, Romney hopes to win by default. One wonders how a default candidate would fair in November.

Santorum’s spending has been a much covered topic over the past week. Mostly from the Romney view. Santorum is not perfect, there are a number of spending programs he voted for that most conservatives would rather he had not. He supports earmarks, which is a boogyman in the Tea Party. But let’s look at the overall record rather than a handful of Romney selected votes. Santorum served in the Senate for a dozen years, his overall record will surely reveal more about his voting than a few hand selected votes.

When we look at Santorum’s overall record, it’s clear he’s not the wild spending liberal Romney is trying to make him out to be. In his 12 years in the Senate, Santorum received an average score of A- (3.66) from the National Taxpayers Union.  Fifty Senators served during all of Santorum’s dozen years. Their average score was a C-. Santorum ranks 5th on the list. Is it perfect? Obviously not, he didn’t get a 4.0. But he’s hardly the wild eyed liberal spender that the Romney camp is making him out to be. At Wednesday’s debate, Santorum must hammer this point home in the most non-whiney way possible.

Meanwhile over the weekend several op-ed’s and attacks were levied against Santorum declaring him too conservative to win in November. This is clearly a coordinated attack by the Romney camp, something they’ve done successfully several times against their GOP rivals. We’re apparently supposed to be very worried about Santorum’s ability to win. Why? Because he’s pro-life and talks about the subject and even though he’s voted for contraception in the past, he believes it’s been harmful to women overall.

The contraception issue is a non-starter and always has been. It’s a non-sense issue created by the Obama administration to try and win back the abortion argument that they have lost. It hasn’t worked. Speaking of abortion, half the country, including half of women, oppose abortion on demand. The notion that Santorum is too conservative on this issue is patently absurd. Especially so in light of the fact that the country recently elected George W. Bush twice and he never backed down on the abortion issue.

For some reason the GOP establishment wants conservatives to be afraid of voicing our opinions in public. We’re supposed to be afraid that independents won’t like us if they find out we’re pro-life. Half the country supports our position but for some reason our guys are unelectable as “too conservative.” The alternative? We should just settle on Mitt Romney. Which has been the theme of his campaign, everyone else isn’t good enough so just settle on me.

Settling on Mitt Romney will not win the election. Romney will lose to Obama because given the choice between an authentic liberal and liberal light, the country will always pick the the authentic liberal. Romney isn’t going to be able to attack Obama on his record alone. He has to offer a real alternative. It’s how Reagan won in 1980 and how Clinton won in 1992. The incumbent’s record is relevant but you have to get independent voters to buy into your plan. Romney doesn’t have a striking alternative to Obama, his alternative is largely more of the same.

That doesn’t mean Santorum will win in November. But he will be able to offer an alternative to Obama. He can follow the Reagan model and he may very well be successful at it. We don’t need to settle on a candidate whose surrogates can’t decide if his biggest opponent is too conservative or too liberal. We shouldn’t settle because Romney selected votes show Santorum just isn’t good enough. Most of all, we shouldn’t settle because Romney’s opponent isn’t afraid to talk about life.

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Liberal Romney Camp Claims Santorum Not Conservative Enough

February 15, 2012 2 Comments

Mitt Romney’s team has long used the Saul Alinsky playbook for attacking political opponents. They polarize, isolate and demonize their opponents. In doing so they cut off their opponents support system and destroy them. They did it to Newt Gingrich, now they’re trying to do it to Rick Santorum. All of their attacks deflect from Romney’s biggest problem in a GOP Primary: He isn’t a conservative. So how does Romney get around that? He accuses his opponents of not being conservative enough. He polarizes them, isolates them and demonize them and once they’re gone all that will be left is liberal ole Mitt.

There seems to be a two prong attack on Santorum right now. The first relates to Santorum’s endorsement of Arlen Spector in 1998 for re-election. Spector was Pennsylvania’s senor Senator, Santorum the junior Senator. Liberal Spector faced a primary challenge from a conservative, Santorum sided with Spector. This is hardly the big deal the Romney camp has made it out to be. It should surprise no one that Santorum stuck with his state’s senior Senator, especially when one considers that two years later Santorum would be up for re-election himself. Santorum acting pragmatically, he didn’t want to face Spector in a primary himself.

The second line of attack is that Santorum has supported a number of big government propositions such as the perscription drug bill and no child left behind. Over a dozen years in the Senate he got around $1 billion in earmarks for Pennsylvania. We’re to be shocked and awed at the number, but it comes out to less than $100 million a year. He also supported a minimum wage increase and Amtrak funding. For this we are to be outraged!

This is where the Romney camp stops. They’ve attacked Santorum’s conservative credentials, tried to polarize and isolate him then they demonize him for not being conservative enough. Magically there are articles and op-ed’s all over the country questioning Santorum’s conservative claims. Because of course those articles and op-ed’s couldn’t possibly be coordinated with the Romney camp.

But there’s another side to this story. While Santorum was protecting himself from a 2000 primary challenge from Arlen Spector, Mitt Romney was claiming to be a pro-abortion Republican. Romney ran for Massachusetts Governor in 2002 as a pro-abortion Republican and proudly proclaimed as such. While Santorum was voting for the prescription drug bill, Romney was preparing Romneycare. While Santorum was supporting miniscule earmarks, Mitt Romney called himself a progressive!

Rick Santorum isn’t perfect. No conservative ever claimed he was. But the idea that he isn’t conservative enough is absolutely ridiculous. Those people making such claims are doing so in order to help Mitt Romney, a man who has never been a conservative. What the Romney camp is doing is demonizing Santorum in the minds of conservatives, leaving them either disillusioned enough not to vote or leaving them with no choice but Mitt. It’s straight out of the Alinsky and Democrats playbook.

Is Rick Santorum the next Ronald Reagan? Of course not. But at this point he’s the only thing between Romney and the GOP nomination. If Romney wins, we’ll have a choice in November between two progressive liberals. It won’t matter which of them wins. If Santorum can knock Romney off, we’ll have a real choice in November. Don’t fall for the ‘he’s not conservative enough’ line with Santorum. When people make such a claim ask yourself who the alternative is. The alternative is someone who ran a decade ago for Governor as a pro-abortion, progressive Republican and governed that way until he left office until 2007. With that in mind, then ask yourself who isn’t conservative enough.

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Santorum Sweeps But Does It Even Matter?

February 8, 2012 Leave a comment

Rick Santorum swept last night’s Caucuses and meaningless straw poll primary. As such we awake this morning to media declaring that Santorum has jolted the race. Conservatives are supposed to be terribly excited because Santorum is the new anti-Romney. Make no mistake, Rick Santorum is infinitely better than Mitt Romney. In the very least we know what Santorum believes and why he believes it. But why all the excitement?

Let’s take a deeper look at Santorum’s victories last night. To be upfront, his caucus wins were surprising. Romney won Minnesota in 2008 easily and Colorado usually doesn’t swing to a conservative. We can dismiss Missouri’s meaningless straw poll primary because no one campaigned there but Santorum. As surprising as Santorum’s wins are, he only picked up 8 more delegates than Romney. He’s still 81 behind the front runner. Have we conservatives become so desperate to rid ourselves of the GOP version of Obama that we’re going to rejoice in excess over an 8 delegate win?

It says a lot about how much the conservative rank and file of the GOP dislikes Romney that a meaningless gain of 8 delegates gets everyone excited. If Santorum is going to win the nomination, he needs to do more than gain a delegate here and there in Caucus states. He needs to sweep Super Tuesday, to the extent that he can considering he isn’t on the Virginia ballot. Absent a sweep, how can Santorum possibly win?

How exactly is Santorum going to be able to sweep Super Tuesday. He doesn’t have serious cash on hand so he isn’t going to be able to make massive ad buys like Romney can. He also doesn’t have a massive Super PAC aiding his cause. Santorum’s other problem is that grouchy, vindictive Newt won’t get out of the race because he hates Romney. As it typical of conservatives, we don’t see the forest through the trees. As such, our guys never get out of the race when they can’t win and thus they split our vote allowing the liberal to win. How can Santorum win with no money and Newt still in the race?

At this point I’m going to vote for Rick Santorum in Michigan’s primary on February 28th because I oppose Mitt Romney. Santorum is the most conservative candidate remaining and he deserves the votes of conservatives. As much as I would like Santorum to beat Romney, there’s little chance of that happening. Certainly not with Newt hanging around for no legitimate reason. If Newt ditches the race, maybe Santorum has an outside chance.

When Romney wins the nomination we conservatives are going to have a major choice to make. Do we vote for the socialism of Mitt Romney, which differs from Obama’s only in terms of which group of businesses and Wall Street investors the government will side with, or do we stay home on election day and allow Obama to win. We can hope for a Santorum upset but we shouldn’t be terribly excited right now. We have some serious choices to make, at this point our options are unthinkably bad.

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