Posted on 12/07/2010 11:27:00 AM PST by Moseley
Will the real Rick Santorum please stand up?
BEFORE the November 2, election, Rick Santorum defended Christine O’Donnell in her US Senate race in Delaware (though trying to have it both ways to some extent).
Now, AFTER the election, Rick Santroum is now trying to jump on the bandwagon and attack the GOP’s losing candidates. Goal: NOT win elections, NOT learn how to win elections, but simply for personal aggrandizement by Rick Santorum.
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On September 21, 2010, Rick Santorum defended Christine O’Donnell as a candidate on Greta Van Sustren’s “On the Record” Rick Santorum
Santorum — famous for dumping Pat Toomey overboard in 2006 in favor of Arlen Specter — was clearly trying to have it both ways in Greta Van Sustren’s interview. But pressed by Greta, Rick Santorum was forced to line up behind Christine O’Donnell shortly after Christine O’Donnell’s September 14, 2010, primary victory.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOMK8dJVmvE
RICK SANTORUM SAID ON SEPTEMBER 21, 2010:
o Santorum started to praise Christine O’Donnell’s qualifications and abilities saying “LOOK, I’VE KNOWN CHRISTINE O’DONNELL FOR YEARS…” (before Greta interrupted) clearly with a tone of praising Christine’s abilities and qualifications.
o Santorum said that Christine’s challenge in the US Senate race in Delaware was:
“So, the question is whether Christine O’Donnell in a very compressed window — Sharon Angle had MONTHS, Christine O’Donnell has WEEKS — can she do the same thing [as Sharon Angle]?
o Santorum said that Sharon Angle had SEVERAL MONTHS in which to convince and win over voters.
o Santorum said that Christine faced a difficult challenge of “a very compressed window” and “Christine O’Donnell has WEEKS” (only) to accomplish what other candidates had MONTHS to do in other States.
o Santorum said that Christine’s challenge in the election was Republicans not supporting the Republican nominee
o Santorum implicitly endorsed Christine O’Donnell as qualified, while discussing Greta’s question “What does it mean to be qualified?” Santorum explained Christine O’Donnell is qualified if the voters believe she is qualified…. it is up to the voters.
o Santorum said that Christine O’Donnell’s challenge was that “They are trying to discredit her.“
And: “If you look at what they’ve done to Christine. They have put her outside of that. They’ve said no, she’s a … she’s a, you know, she’s a whacko. She’s someone who is out there on the extreme. She’s NOT. And people will find that out.”
In response to those precise criticisms, Santorum said “SHE’s NOT. And people will find that out.”
o Santorum said: “If she is given the opportunity to do it, which she will be.” Greta interrupts: “She may.” “I think she will [turn it around]. And tonight’s interview from everything I’ve heard [interrupted]“
o So Rick Santorum predicted that Christine O”Donnell would be able to turn it around and overcome the negative attacks against her, and Rick Santorum predicted that Christine O’Donnell would “turn it around.”
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Apparently there are two theories on elections in the Republican Party:
(a) Hard work, application of mental and physical effort the old fashioned way to win over supporters and do work
(b) DO NOTHING, sit back, and then fight over the credit for the winners and throw stones at the losers.
Choice (b) is dangerous because it FAILS to actually win elections. Republican elites are not interested in doing the hard work of rolling up their sleeves and running election campaigns. They simply want to posture for the maximum personal benefit.
Republican elites have abandoned the task of running successful election campaigns and instead are simply sitting back and throwing stones at their own candidates, and attacking those with the courage to go into the arena and fight for what we believe.
While this hypocrisy among Republicans is wrong and unfair to those who valiantly try to take power from liberals, it is also destructive to the Republican party because the elites are abandoning the efforts needed to actually win at the ballot box.
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o Sharon Angle took on the Senate Majority leader — the most powerful Democrat in the country besides the President. For any Republican to unseat the incumbent Senate Majority Leader was the longest of long shots. The fact that the tea party movement (even before Sharon Angle’s nomination) made Harry Reid unpopular and brought Sharon Angle close to winning is incredible.
o Christine O’Donnell ran for US Senate in Delaware with 110,000 more Democrat than Republican registered voters. GOP elites in Delaware sat on their hands while the Democrat party increased Democrat voter registration by a stunning 11% from 2008 to 2010. While people note that Christine O’Donnell has run before without success, Christine O’Donnell took on JOE BIDEN in 2008 — an almost impossible target.
In 2010, Christine O’Donnell again sought to win the last 4 years of Joe Biden’s 6 year terms won in 2008 in a special election on November 2, 2010. Joe Biden is the Vice President of the United States, and it was his seat in his home state that Christine O”Donnell was seeking. Why did the IRS issue an erroneous tax lien, and then promptly admit they were wrong and withdraw it — but damage done? Why did the national news media come down so hard on Delaware? Having the Vice President of the United States potentially embarrassed in his own home State had nothing to do with this?
Those willing to hunt the big game in blue states deserve our greatest honor and utmost respect. Those who aimed for the easy victories in Republican-leaning States are heros, too. But no one deserves greater honor and greater respect than Christine O’Donnell and Sharon Angle who charged the beach at Normandy. While others picked off easy victories, Angle and O’Donnell stormed the “enemy” at their strongest points and put pressure on the Democrats on their home turf.
I don’t think she violated any laws. I think those stories were overblown opposition attacks. I just think she was a poor candidate. I don’t think she was a crook.
There are legal ways a candidate can live off campaign contributions — for example, she could announce a run for the other senate seat, and then pay herself a salary for the campaign, up to the amount she would make if she WON the election.
My GUESS is that she will use the money in support of other candidates. At least, that’s what she SHOULD do, and it is a legal way to use the money. She can also return the money if she wants.
Sorry, while I agree with your assertion that a party is responsible for defending candidates, in the end getting elected in the personal responsibility of the candidate.
And if we are going to have a tea party, and it is going to challenge the establishment, and push candidates that will oppose the establishment, we have to get candidates who can win election without much help from the establishment.
You can rail against the establishment all you want, and complain that they didn’t help us topple them out of power, but I believe it is absurd to expect entrenched political powers to help us decapitate them. We either play with them and get the best candidate they can support, or we rise up against them, in which case we need candidates that can make it with our help alone.
IN this specific case, there was nothing the delaware establishment could have done to save O’Donnell. They might have made the race closer, but it is absurd to think that even a perfect republican committee can rescue a fatally flawed candidate in a state that is 2/1 democrat.
If it was that easy, we’d never win elections.
Christine O’Donnell proved herself to be a fairly principled conservative on issues, and a failure as a candidate getting her message out and making it appeal to the voters of Delaware.
She had $6 million, and only got 5% more of the vote in this election (against a placeholder democrat candidate in a wildly republican year) than she did in 2008 against Joe Biden, in a year she had no money.
If she had lost by a few points, like Sharon Angle, I think you could argue that a full-court blitz of support, AND a quick endorsement by the other primary candidate, might have been enough to swing the election.
But this was a rout, it was always going to be a rout, and that is because the candidate was a poor choice.
It’s a pretty bizarre world where what is “wrong with politics” is people who see a candidate lose by 16 points, and after the loss point out that they were a lousy candidate.
I sent her money, even though I knew she couldn’t win. I would like to have had her win. I don’t think she would have been a bad senator, and she was mostly right on issues (I was always nervous with her love affair for Hillary Clinton though). But it was easy to see she had no chance of winning. General elections aren’t primaries, where the electorate is your base.
That is the lesson the tea party movement has learned in this election, and they are already working around the county to vet and pick better candidates to support.
I believe the evidence is very clear--if she didn't violate the laws, then there must be some odd explanation. She should share that explanation if she wants to concince anyone that what her filings show is in line with the law and FEC regs. But look how she has dealt with issues over and over--red herrings. She evades the question and if pinned down just denies things without giving any evidence why we should believe her.
Maybe I'm letting other information and her repeated dishonesty bias my look at this issue, but in any case, if she were a Dem, nobody here would give her a pass on things half as bad.
There are legal ways a candidate can live off campaign contributions [...]
Heaven forbid she actually goes out and gets (and keeps) a real job, gaining some experience that might help her be competent at something like dogcatcher.
A good start might be to get a job where she could pick up some tips on managing money, if she wants to have a job that affects the finances of all Americans.
But I think that CREW's accounting of her violations is wrong--I think they missed that she made a few minor paybacks on the rent/utilities issue, for example.
I am not a witch....great campaign strategy./s
Why did she not file those reimbursements, or are you claiming they aren’t shown on the publically available files?
Or are you claiming that her reimbursements consisted of a small portion of the rent/util?
All candidates should expect criticism. Unfortunately, Miss O’Donnell didn’t face it, but just lied or misrepresented or misdirected.
If she had been upfront, I would have had respect for her.
A fact not at all contradicted by my statement. She used to work, but then found that mooching off others was more to her taste, I suppose.
She claimed that her income was so low because of volunteering...well, I would love to live off others and just volunteer, but some of us feel an old-fashioned thing called "responsibility"...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJYjGAGPZHc -- "something happened between 2008 and 2010"
Yes...people got to know her. So she dropped from tied to losing by 16 points. She got fewer votes than previous elections despite having $6 million available. You'd think that by spending over $4 million they would have successfully kept people from getting to know her so she could have at least gotten as many votes as before.
And I have to say, "WOW! Didn't that guy get together a lawsuit for her, claiming she turned down working on TPotC for ICON, but now he credits her for working on it? Or was it that she worked on it on ISI time but then said she didn't? Or what?"
And actually, the name is "Grifter"...people think of her when that word is said.
http://www.supportchristine.com/2008biography.pdf
Supports my point. Thank you.
Show me the repayments. They don’t match her words and I have gone through both the images and the spreadsheets.
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