Until just a few days before the Saturday Primary, I had thought about voting for Santorum based on one issue: his history of standing against abortion.
Well, like a lightbulb in a cartoon, it dawned on me that Santorum was campaigning on a platform of self-righteousness...that he believed he is holier than the others who are running. I began to pay closer attention to the manner in which Santorum brags on himself and saw similarities to Romney’s style of boasting.
So, I voted for the candidate who was honest about having sins in his past, as do I, but has moved on. Four votes from this household for Gingrich.
“Santorum was campaigning on a platform of self-righteousness...that he believed he is holier than the others who are running.”
Fortunately we live in a country that forgives. When Santorum reaches the age Newt is, nothing he ever did or said or felt will be held against him. Holier than thou is not a sin...and maybe he is. In later years people will just say, “He’s matured.” Santorum has done nothing differently than he did when he entered the campaign. He was arrogant then and he still is. People said it was confidence. They loved him because he was passionate and respectable. My candidate was Rick Perry. Still is, even though. Most of us were loyal and stayed on the bandwagon until the end. There just werent’t enough of us. I’ll willingly vote for Newt in the general. I would have willingly voted for Cain in the general. By the time the primary starts in my state, it won’t matter. But, I’ll still wish the real deal will come along and save us from ourselves. We should have been searching for and promoting the most acceptable Republican candidate that the whole country would have liked. Instead, after the primary, we’ll be fighting within our own party, that Newt isn’t as bad as he seems. Newt’s confessed and forgiven sins are not the issue. Nobody cares about that. It’s a smoke screen. We would never have leaders if a man had to be pure. His problems will come with the legions in our party who previously abandoned him because of his power-hungry flaws. They still feel the same way about him today. I wonder, like Governor Perry, if there are enough of us.
2 Cor 10:12 "We do not dare to classify or compare ourselves with some who commend themselves. When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are not wise.
Proverbs 27:2 Let another praise you, and not your own mouth; someone else, and not your own lips.
Gingrich has my support, now.
I *like* Santorum, and I think that he's a decent, nice guy. However (and you knew this "however" was coming) I think that 2012 is going to be a bare knuckles slugfest. '08 was a nasty election, and if it starts looking like BO is going to lose, then between the ugly racial component, and the MSM cheerleading it on - this year is going to get bad, quickly. I'm worried that it's going to be 1968 all over again.
So, I think that we don't need a nice guy, at least not this year. I think that we need someone who will stick an extra couple of spikes in the baseball bat, jump down in the swamp, and start swinging. And, IMHO, Newt is that guy. He simultaneously can swap punches AND clearly articulate what the conservative position is.
YMMV. And, for what it's worth, I think that Santorum might not be a bad VP. It would be nice to have some 1st stringers waiting in the wings and getting some more experience. Bush left the GOP with nothing in '08, and look what we wound up with - McCain last time, and Romney still has a good shot this time.