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To: Clara Lou
So, you’ve decided to skip the “lies,” and focus on minor details. Not convincing.

I'm not here trying to "convince" you. I don't care what you think about this "thing" that was written as if it is some kind of thunderclap. It has the word "confession" in the title but the guy is not someone that is on the inside of anything that I can see. His views are external to his subject. He does not "confess" anything other than what one might read in some response to a google inquiry. Even he says he is an "observer". Well, I have observed the Pope but I can't "confess" a darn thing to you about him. My point is that this is a lighweight piece with not much to get excited about. Just some stuff stitched together then he speaks in a very serious manner. LOL!

Again, I don't care about Santorum. Frankly, I find him kind of creepy. So that is my "confession". I declare Santorum creepy after observing him. Maybe I should write a piece about that and send it to Forbes because it seems they need any kind of content filler they can get...

33 posted on 04/05/2012 9:35:30 AM PDT by isthisnickcool (Sharia? No thanks!)
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To: isthisnickcool

Well, I guess what I’m doing is begging someone to prove to me that there is a candidate for me to vote for— to prove to me that one or the other should be Obama’s opponent.

I’ll hold my nose and vote for the Obama’s opposition, and I don’t think that will be Santorum. But, if it is, I’ll vote for him.


35 posted on 04/05/2012 9:53:47 AM PDT by Clara Lou (ABO! ABO! ABO!)
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To: caww; All; Lazlo in PA; cripplecreek; Antoninus; AmericanInTokyo; writer33; napscoordinator
I wrote this over on another thread when this article showed up the first time.

I then added some very inappropriate comments about the OP’s motives for which I have apologized. CAWW has since made clear that he agrees Romney needs to be stopped; beyond that, I don't want to speak for him and run the risk of saying things he would not say.

Bottom line — the Santorum campaign **MUST** respond to this. The article is damaging. I believe it can be responded to, but I'm the wrong person because I don't know Pennsylvania politics, and in any event, I'm not in any way formally connected with the Santorum campaign and Santorum’s people, not just his supporters, need to respond to an article capable of causing this magnitude of damage.

_____

59 posted on Wed Apr 04 2012 13:06:55 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time) by caww: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jerrybowyer/2012/04/04/problems-with-the-truth-confessions-of-a-22-year-rick-santorum-observer/
I've been around politics long enough to know that something like the article caww cited didn't come out of nowhere. It's virtually tailor-made to damage Rick Santorum in his home state with his core constituency of conservative Christians. While I am not going to criticize the motives of the author and am inclined to take him at his word about his reasons for writing and maybe even his own timing, the timing of the article's prominent appearance in a major conservative magazine like Forbes is pretty likely intended by the Romney campaign to attack Santorum and is likely part of an effort to knock Santorum out of the race by wrecking his polling numbers in Pennsylvania.

I know nothing about the author or his background as an Christian broadcaster or his credibility in Pennsylvania. I also don't know local issues. What I do know is this article has to be rebutted by the Santorum campaign, and rebutted quickly.

I see at least two potential problems with the article. There may well be others which I have not noticed because I don't know Pennsylvania politics, and what I write here is tentative. Somebody from the Santorum campaign needs to write a much better response.

First, the article uses the “lie” word in ways which are questionable at best. That is a very, very serious charge. That word needs to be used very rarely and only when it can be proved that someone has deliberately stated things he knew to be false with an intent to deceive. Most statements by political figures are made carefully enough that they can't be caught in a deliberate lie, so even if I think an elected official lied, I usually can't prove it, and if I can't prove it I'm not going to make the accusation.

In this specific article, while I think some of the accusations (i.e., the charitable giving) are potentially capable of being proved to be deliberate lies, I'm not at all convinced the article has proved that Santorum lied even about that, and much less so the other accusations. I don't recall any case where I have accused Gingrich or even Romney of lying, and the evidence the author cites is weak in at least some of the situations he cites. I'm not saying it's wrong, only that the evidence isn't there.

Second, I am not at all convinced that Santorum backing a proposal to use government funding to keep professional sports teams is a good example of his supposed “big government” views. Do I like such things? No, but the reality is that I live in an area where the entire future of our community depends on Department of Defense spending, and where things like TIFs and CIDs and NIDs and other things of that type are standard engines of economic growth which the broadcaster dismisses as Keynesian economics.

I think it's clear that Pennsylvania is far from the only area where governments have spent tens of millions of dollars to keep a professional sports team in town, or to provide some other incentive to a private business to keep its owners in town or convince its owners to move to town or expand an existing operation. We can say Santorum was wrong to do that, and that's fine, but blaming Santorum for doing what his constituents wanted, especially when what they wanted has become standard practice in economic development, is asking Santorum to be the sort of elected official who probably can't get re-elected in a moderate-to-liberal state.

If that's the worst example the author can come up with of Santorum’s supposed “big government” views, I think the author is proving only that Santorum is from a northern “rustbelt” state where the government has been involved in providing incentives to business for at least a century. I also think it wouldn't be too hard to find lots of conservative Southerners who support the same or similar incentives to business. Feel free to disagree — that's a fair question — but those who disagree would have been in a very small minority of people in government until the current economic crisis in which lots of people agree staving off bankruptcy needs to be the key priority.

36 posted on 04/05/2012 9:54:06 AM PDT by darrellmaurina
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