Perry and Santorum may have a chance. We conservatives need to decide which one now.
Gov. Perry (as a former Tx AG Commissioner, 10th Amendment advocate and a farmer) told the farmers NO subsidies for ethanol, or oil or gas, or wind. CUT regulations and let the market place decide – If states want to invest, fine, but keep the feds out of it.
Presidential Candidate [Perry] Holds Agriculture Conference Call
Newt Gingrich supports federal ethanol subsidies.
Giant ethanol maker among Newt Gingrich’s top campaign donors
SO HERE ARE the grades given the candidates:
“Iowa Farmer Today” Decision time draws near - December 29, 2011:
....."The Iowa Corn Growers Association sent questionnaires to the Republicans involved in this year’s caucuses, then issued grades on how it judged those candidates as part of its Iowa Corn Caucus.
...........“We call that our town-hall conference call,” explains Mark Jackson, ISA president-elect. “We want to give people the opportunity to hear the candidates talk about agricultural issues.”
The first of those calls came in early December with former Georgia congressman Newt Gingrich. More than 3,000 people listened in.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry was the subject of another call.
The report cards issued by the corn growers spotlighted the differences between some of the candidates.
For example, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, earned a “D” from the group, and U.S. Rep. Michelle Bachmann, R-Minn., earned a “D+” while Gingrich earned an “A” and Rick Santorum earned an “A-.”
President Barack Obama earned a “B” as did former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Perry earned a “C-.” Herman Cain, who has since dropped out of the race, earned a “D.”
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Oh, by the way, ethanol subsidies are dead. Details here and here: the short version is that the Senate back in June kicked off opposition to continued ethanol subsidies via a bipartisan amendment: it didn’t pass, but Congress has just let both the ethanol subsidy and a restrictive foreign tariff (on Brazilian sugar-cane ethanol) lapse. Given that the Iowa caucuses will be finished by the time Congress reconvenes – and given that the House of Representatives is currently chock-heavy with people who spit at the very phrase ‘ethanol subsidy’ – getting back either is going to be a problem for the domestic ethanol industry. Mind you, there are still mandates for using ethanol in place, but note again the ending of the tariff; I’m not a businessman, but effectively lowering the price of Brazilian ethanol by 54 cents/gallon while simultaneously effectively raising the price of domestic ethanol by 45 cents/gallon sounds to me like it would at least raise some intriguing alternatives.
Why?
Iowa’s moronic conservatives have tossed this to Romney and Paul out of some myopic quest to find the most boring but ideologically pure guy.
Its not the rest of our jobs to take the crap sandwich from them.
Any vote for Newt is a vote fir mitt.
Finally, we have conservative alternative to the two rinos.
It is Santorum or Romney.
This thing is over, and your group of geniuses made it happen. Congratulations! Get used to saying Romney by the way, you deserve it.
“Perry and Santorum may have a chance. We conservatives need to decide which one now.”
Maybe this will help:
Rick Santorum, Earmarxists, and the Pro-Life Statist
http://www.redstate.com/erick/2011/12/29/rick-santorum-earmarxists-and-the-pro-life-statist/
by Erick Erickson
Thursday, December 29th at 7:23PM EST
A number of people read my post yesterday -— http://www.redstate.com/erick/2011/12/28/no-surprise-iowa-social-conservatives-are-about-to-shoot-us-all-in-the-foot-again/ -— about Rick Santorum and still are scratching their heads.
In my book RedState Uprising I spent a bit of time dealing with “pro-life statists” who will be the death of the conservative movement if we do not start standing up to them.
Rick Santorum is a pro-life statist.
My friend Ned Ryun introduced me to the term and his post on pro-life statists written in the wake of Congressman Mark Souder’s resignation sums up every issue I have with Rick Santorum:
“A hard-line conservative, Souder recently survived a tough GOP primary in the Hoosier State, edging two opponents who held him under 50 percent. Souder’s Republican rivals criticized Souder over his support for the Troubled Asset Relief Program and Cash for Clunkers programs.”
I take exception to that description: no real conservative would have voted for TARP or Cash for Clunkers. The mistake made is the assumption that because someone is pro-life means he or she is a conservative. Someone who is pro-life, but votes to expand the state and state spending, is in fact not a conservative, but a pro-life statist.
As someone who is deeply pro-life, and became even more so when my daughter was born four months premature, I absolutely believe in the sanctity of life. But I have a problem with many elected officials who call themselves social conservatives, as though that were all that mattered, and then go and vote for more government and more government spending.
The bigger government becomes, the more invasive it becomes, the more it becomes the enemy of life and freedom. So these pro-life statists show a deep ignorance of government and freedom: the greatest freedom is economic freedom. I say that because if you are an economic ward of the state, you can neither be politically or religiously free. Exhibit A: China. The invasive state dictates how many children you may have, the free flow of information, and political freedom is not even worth really discussing.
I believe one of the reasons that we have gotten to this stage as a country, with the massive growth of government, is because some have thought only one or two social issues are all that matter, and willingly give a pass on pretty much everything else. To those people I would say enough, stop living under an illusion. You must become more comprehensive in your conservatism.
Rick Santorum participated in raiding the federal treasury as an earmarxist, perfectly happy to pork away on Pennsylvania’s behalf. He did not join conservatives who fought against No Child Left Behind. He did not join conservatives who fought against the prescription drug benefit.
Rick Santorum was part of the problem in Washington. He was one of the Republicans the public rejected in 2006. The voters in Pennsylvania rejected him in 2006 because of his and the Republicans’ profligate ways. Along with Tom DeLay, Rick Santorum led the K Street Project, which traded perks for lobbyists for money for the GOP funded with your tax dollars through earmarks and pork projects.
Sure, you can say 2006 was a bad year for Republicans, but in 2006 Rick Santorum fell 18 percentage points behind his Democratic rival and his defeat and terrible campaign can be linked to the loss of four Pennsylvania house seats.
That was not a defeat for Rick Santorum. It was punishment. He is a pro-life statist and I see nothing in his career since leaving Washington that shows he has changed his ways.
Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard coined the term “big government conservatives” in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. He wrote
IS PRESIDENT BUSH really a conservative? When that question came up this summer, the White House went into crisis mode. Bush aides summoned several of Washington’s conservative journalists to a 6:30 a.m. breakfast at the White House to press the case for the president’s adherence to conservative principles. Aides outnumbered journalists. Other conservative writers and broadcasters were invited to luncheon sessions. They heard a similar spiel.
The White House needn’t have bothered. The case for Bush’s conservatism is strong. Sure, some conservatives are upset because he has tolerated a surge in federal spending, downplayed swollen deficits, failed to use his veto, created a vast Department of Homeland Security, and fashioned an alliance of sorts with Teddy Kennedy on education and Medicare. But the real gripe is that Bush isn’t their kind of conventional conservative. Rather, he’s a big government conservative. This isn’t a description he or other prominent conservatives willingly embrace. It makes them sound as if they aren’t conservatives at all. But they are. They simply believe in using what would normally be seen as liberal means—activist government—for conservative ends. And they’re willing to spend more and increase the size of government in the process.
Being a big government conservative doesn’t bring Bush close to being a moderate, much less a liberal. On most issues, his position is standard conservative: a pro-lifer who expects to sign a ban on partial birth abortion, he’s against stem-cell research and gun control, and has drawn the line at gay marriage. His judicial nominees are so uniformly conservative that liberals are furious.
That’s Rick Santorum. He sees government as the means to conservative ends. But in using government to get conservative ends he has expanded government and set precedents for liberals to use government in the same ways for more liberal government. Rick Santorum was complicit in making Americans more dependent on government and justified it under the rubric of compassion.
Before Rick Santorum was purged from Washington for his pro-life statism, the Washington Post summed up his, George Bush’s, and the GOP’s sins in an editorial titled “Big Government Conservatism.”
Back in 1987, when Mr. Reagan applied his veto to what was generally known at the time as the highway and mass transit bill, he was offended by the 152 earmarks for pet projects favored by members of Congress. But on Wednesday Mr. Bush signed a transportation bill containing no fewer than 6,371 earmarks. Each one of these, as Mr. Reagan understood but Mr. Bush apparently doesn’t, amounts to a conscious decision to waste taxpayers’ dollars. One point of an earmark is to direct money to a project that would not receive money as a result of rational judgments based on cost-benefit analyses.
Mr. Bush, who had threatened to veto wasteful spending bills, chose instead to cave in. He did so despite the fact that in addition to a record number of earmarks the transportation bill came with a price tag that he had once called unacceptable. The bill has a declared cost of $286 billion over five years plus a concealed cost of a further $9 billion; Mr. Bush had earlier drawn a line in the sand at $256 billion, then drawn another line at $284 billion. Asked to explain the president’s capitulation, a White House spokesman pleaded that at least this law would be less costly than the 2003 Medicare reform. This is a classic case of defining deviancy down.
This is why I do not support Rick Santorum. I do not want a co-conspirator to government largess premised on the rhetoric of compassionate or big government conservatism being rewarded.
bttt
When you compare experience and accomplishments, the decision is very easy.
Perry signed tort reform legislation, preventing lawyers from filing frivilous lawsuits and thus creating a favorable business climate.
The numbers in TX are staggering. TX has 1000 people per day flocking to TX and they are finding jobs.
We only have two governors in this race--Gov. Perry and Gov. Romney.
Of the two, Gov. Perry is the one with the record I want duplicated for the rest of the country.
I think you’re right. Bachmann is only staying in because she (mistakenly) thinks she might get a veep spot with Romney if she endorses him.
Santorum is a nice enough guy but couldn’t win his own state and comes across as limp and wimpy. (Sorry)
I wish people would rally behind the man with the real chance, the real record, the money, the persistence and the organization to see this through and that’s Rick Perry.
Perry and Santorum may have a chance. We conservatives need to decide which one now.
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Either one of the Rick’s are perfectly acceptable to ME ~! Others milage may vary but those 2, I’ve been watching and waiting..........
Although when the primaries get to Ohio , maybe one of them won’t be listed ?
It’s a wait and see for me personally.