Posted on 04/16/2015 7:10:36 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
I generally view conversions with suspicion, but accept Santorum’s to the pro-life cause as genuine since he’d have had an easier time getting elected at the statewide level as a pro-abortion Republican, eg John Heinz, Arlen Specter, Tom Ridge.
Santorum didn’t really have a “conversion”, like Mitt Romney who converted for his first presidential campaign, Santorum switched to pro-life for his first political campaign.
If you read post 10 you see where he still was years later, and then of course he still supported Specter for 2010, and of course he supported Romney for 2008.
When are these conservative candidates going to learn to tell the questioner to pound sand? This is stupid. Who cares? I sure don’t.
All the same, it seems extremely dubious to me that Santorum would’ve taken strongly pro-life positions in his Senate runs had he not been sincere, since he surely realized he could more easily win as a pro-abortion Republican.
His first offices were congressional, and why would someone so pro-life, work so devotedly for another Senator who was so passionately pro-abortion, and for presidential candidates like he did in 1996 and 2008? Why work so hard to counter your big issue, and especially after you are longer in office.
Former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum wasn’t always an ardent foe of abortion. “I was basically pro-choice until I ran for Congress,” Santorum said in a 1995 interview dug up by the Huffington Post. In a 1990 issue statement for his first campaign, he argued for exceptions for rape, incest and the mother’s health, arguing that “a sensitivity to the genuine concerns of both sides is needed.” Pennsylvania lawmakers of the time don’t remember him as pro-life.*
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