Posted on 04/10/2012 5:26:18 PM PDT by Steelfish
Rick Santorum Was The Most Conservative, Authentic and Resilient Candidate of 2012.
Tim Stanley April 10th
Rick Santorum's struggle touched a chord with many working-class Americans
Rick Santorum said goodbye on Tuesday afternoon. It was a classic performance from the Rickster – heartfelt, overlong, a little bitter. He pledged to go on fighting for the little people but acknowledged that the race was over, brought to a close by his daughter’s illness and poor polling. To most people this means that it’s now between Romney and Obama. The only minority report on that will come from Newt Gingrich.
You can imagine him happily switching the TV off after Santorum’s speech and saying, “Callista, it’s in the bag!” [“Plop!” goes the ice into the glass as Callista fixes herself another medicinal Martini. It’s going to be a long three months...]
Love him or loathe him, Santorum was the most interesting candidate of this season. Against insurmountable odds (including a false count in Iowa) he won 11 states and more counties that all the other candidates combined. His candidacy marked the entry of mainstream conservative Catholicism into the Republican Party at a national level.
He’s the first serious Catholic Republican contender since Pat Buchanan in 1996 – and a lot more serious than that (sorry Pat!). At the root of all his politics was a strict natural law view of the world – the concept that nature is an estate of God and it contains within it the template of moral order.
He wasn’t half as obsessed with sex as the interviewers who constantly asked him about it, and if they’d dug deeper they’d discovered that it was part of an over-arching philosophy of rights and responsibilities that is at the heart of the Western Catholic tradition. If John Paul II .....
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.telegraph.co.uk ...
We are on the same side, my FRiend. I supported Santorum because I believed he was a more conservative candidate who could win.
Could Mister Gingrich win the election if nominated? Possibly, and if he were the party nominee, I'm 100% behind him. However, from my vantage, it's not there for Newt.
Romney a "traitor"? That is going too far. Mister Romney is a politician, (and that implies nothing nice), but not a traitor.
As of today, Romney is our party's likely nominee.
My hopeful expectation is that as President, he'll govern more conservatively that most believed.
My biggest worry? A third party spoiler. I cant' believe that anything could be as destructive to our fine Country as a second-term (apparent) muslim/Marxist in the WH
.
That's why I referred to definitions of "conservatism" varying depending on the time and place. For much of history, opposition to separation of church and state, laicite, and secularism were part of the "conservative" agenda.
IMO, his backing of Specter and Romney were pragmatic decisions which don't reflect his true ideals.
I'm glad you brought up his "big spending ways" and his "backing of unions." Although I think much of that is overblown, Santorum doesn't seem to be particularly enthusiastic about laissez-faire economics. For much of its history, conservatism wasn't particularly supportive of lissez-faire economics, either.
You sound like you are off your meds...or need meds.
They are often are.
You sound like you are off your meds...or need meds.
You sound like you know very little about history and politics. Do you know where the terms "right" and "left" originated?
I’m going to suspend judgment on why RS suspended his campaign, until such time as he endorses either Romney or Gingrich in the PA primary. If he does neither, I’ll take that as a Romney endorsement.
Bears repeating. If only it could be whittled down to a tagline!
Newt’s campaign is both moronic and quixotic at this stage after saying that Romney will be the likely nominee
This fits:
One proven conservative and one proven liberal remain standing in the primary. Where do YOU stand?
And Rick’s record was gone over time and time again by his supporters. However, the same arguments were brought up against Santorum anyway.
On the other hand, how often was it stated that in 1994, Newt was in support of federally paid abortions for “poor women” in cases of rape, incest, or “to protect” the life of the mother?
How many times was this link posted?
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/1995/04/10/MN66900.DTL
If you’re going to debate records, then be prepared to debate the records of ALL the candidates.
That's an odd accusation coming from someone that called "Tories" right wing even the term "Tory" predates the term "right wing" by decades...assuming you knew where the term originated in the first place. Even by using the term by it's original meaning (which of course doesn't make much sense in context of America but don't let that stop you) it's dubious to call Tories "right wing" as the "right wing" were nobles and the "Tories" were typically loyalists but not noble, and while nobles certainly wanted to maintain their own power they were not loyal monarchists by any stretch of the imagination. Still it strikes me as absurd to frame America's ideological divide with terms that were invented to describe where a bunch of Frenchies sat near 40 years after our nation was founded, especially if you insist on using the original meaning of the term.
I'm the ignorant one of course. Keep telling yourself that.
Sure, Tories were around before the French Revolution and have had a long and complex history. I was referring to the Conservatives who opposed the Liberals and later the Labour Party.
Still it strikes me as absurd to frame America's ideological divide with terms that were invented to describe where a bunch of Frenchies sat near 40 years after our nation was founded, especially if you insist on using the original meaning of the term.
That's why I referred to the fact that the meanings of labels change over time and that I was referring to the term "conservatism" in its historical context. The fact that most "conservatives" today hold many of the ideals of classical liberals does not change what the term "conservative" meant in much of its history.
I brought up these types of conservatives because that's who I see Santorum being similar to ideologically.
I'm the ignorant one of course. Keep telling yourself that.
Well, you seemed to be ignorant of history if you thought I was off my meds for saying that old-fashioned Tories or ancien regime supporters are right wing extremists. It's one thing to disagree with that view-point, but to act like it's crazy is another.
Who do you suggest are right-wing extremists then? It should be obvious that, since I mentioned Tories and the ancien regime, I was referring to politics in Western Civilization as a whole, not just America, so that should rule out strict constitutionalists. Are they anarchists? Fascists?
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