Posted on 02/11/2012 10:17:00 AM PST by Engraved-on-His-hands
Rick Santorum is running ahead of his rivals in Tennessee, a stronghold of evangelical Christians that votes on March 6, Super Tuesday.
Thirty four percent of likely Republican primary voters said they were backing Santorum, while 27% named Mitt Romney, 16% backed Newt Gingrich and 13% picked Ron Paul. The poll was taken by American Research Group February 8-9, when voters would have known about Santorum's sweep of voting contests in Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado.
(Excerpt) Read more at politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com ...
Not true. Santorum was our Senator in PA (I am only a recent transplant to GA). There is no doubt he is a Big Government Conservative, but (unlike the fraud from Mass) he is who he says he is.
On a personal level I would prefer Newt, and have donated to his campaign. That being said, Newt has not done well since his win in SC. At some point we need to get behind a single Conservative or Romney will win by default.
As far as the election defeat ... Santorum ran against the son of a Conservative (Pro Life) Democrat Governor. In addition 2006 was a terrible year for any Conservative. Anyone who understands PA politics knows that Santorum lost in 2006 because he was too far right, and his opponent had high (and positive) name recognition.
I hope not. Some people will vote just on abortion alone. Just because the media tags RS with the christian label should not be reason enough for these people to go out and vote for RS. Not sure Newt now saying he is a Catholic is going to help him with evangelicals. What a web the good ole GOP has given us all. I’m still with Newt.He offers the most change and is addressing the issues.
To the contrary, in 2006, Schumer was the head of the DSCC and Santorum was his number #1 target. Teams of opposition researchers went full bore for Santorum for over a year preceding the election, and the best they came up with was some questionable residency issue regarding his property taxes and his kid's attendance of a cyber school.
Rick and his family have been a primary target of the demonic homo and pro-death contingents of the left for the better part of two decades and have come up with very little in their efforts to destroy him.
You may not agree with everything Rick says. You may not like his sweater vests or his high school yearbook photo. You may object to his quiet competence and lack of flash. But to say he's not been vetted, attacked or slimed is simply either a reflection of ignorance or a deliberate lie.
What is RS going to do to help the country ? Not trying to be smart, but he is for Big Gov’t which lets face it, he is a liberal. Like Bush, McCain, Romney. People like this are the reason the country is in terrible shape right now. They offer no alternative to the democrats. They are enablers of Big gov’t democrats. Is he going to slash spending, what is he going to do or I should say would he do ? The answer I suspect, is nothing.
Meanwhile, Newt has LAID OUT A CONCRETE PLAN of his course of action to accomplish specific things in office. In the past, once he figured out things on the Global Warming Hoax, he went to bat and argued ELOQUENTLY to stop cap-and-trade regulation. And like the conservative Heritage Institute, he once thought that individual mandates might work ... until it became obvious that the unintended consequences were enough to make it patently wrong. Your "principles" probably tell you it's okay to forget those inconvenient truths about Gingrich, the same as they tell you it's okay to overlook Santorum's extensive Big Government voting record.
Your idea of "priciples" is being lucky enough to have married wisely and being sanctimonious enough to harshly judge the "principles" of those whose marital challenges you have ZERO CLUE of comprehending.
"Principles" like yours now threaten to pay off with BIGGER DADDY-STATE GOVERNMENT, which is what Santorum's actual voting record confirms.
Gingrich ain't perfect, but he's better qualified, has better vision for REDUCING GOVERNMENT, and a lot more demonstrable experience doing it than Santorum. Santorum is demonstrably a socially conservative big government Republican, a lot like Dubya.
Godspeed Newt Gingrich.
Anyone who knows PA politics understands this is because Casey is the son of a popular Pro-Life Democrat ex-Governor. 2006 was a lousy year for any Republican, but running against a socially Conservative Democrat in an anti-Republican year strips Santorum of any advantages he may have had in Western PA.
4-years later Toomey wins the state ... that is just how PA works. Philadelphia and the (liberal) suburbs are very hard to beat except when folks are upset. Then the state goes Red. You can not use that as a measure of how Santorum would run in 2012.
What is RS going to do to help the country ? Not trying to be smart, but he is for Big Gov’t which lets face it, he is a liberal. Like Bush, McCain, Romney. People like this are the reason the country is in terrible shape right now. They offer no alternative to the democrats. They are enablers of Big gov’t democrats. Is he going to slash spending, what is he going to do or I should say would he do ? The answer I suspect, is nothing. We know that he is very weak on illegals. RS is not the answer, if you want a real change, go for Newt.
LOL
that was hilarious
First of all I didn’t say a word about Newt so why are you? I was talking about your nasty comments that Santorum has not been vetted and I just mentioned about how everyone bashed him over the death of his son. Now you added more Santorum bashing. So is you job around here just to bash Santorum or to up lift Newt? Either way you are poor in your duties.
I saw all the candidate speeches, although I turned the sound off when Willard was speaking (he looked like he was in panic mode). Santorum’s speech was demonstrative of sharp contrast vs. the pastel platitudes of the other choices. Newt’s...more empty promises that did nothing but put me to sleep. The mono-tone professor was not the least bit inspiring and will throw everything out there to win over the gullible and easily duped.
I wouldn’t count Newt out in Tennessee. Freepers are much better informed than most voters, but even here I see a lot of running back and forth between candidates. Polls don’t change the substance of the issues we are facing, and we currently have only one candidate proposing real solutions on those issues and that’s Newt Gingrich.
Once the spotlight heats up on Rick, we may see a swing back to Gingrich. Santorum will not be our best candidate against Obama and the country can’t withstand another shallow American Idol Contest.
>>If Rick Santorum ends up as our nominee, we are going to lose the election by 10+ points. Sorry, Santorum lost his home state by 18 the last time around - he’d be destroyed by Obama.<<
I used to feel the same way about his loss in 2006. How do you lose that badly? I no longer do, however. It was a weird year, PA was leaning Democrat, and his opponent was respected and ran as both pro-life, and pro-gun, hardly traditional Democrat stances.
As for his beating Democrats, this is how he got started in 1990 (from Wikipedia): In 1990, at age 32, Santorum was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives to represent Pennsylvania’s 18th congressional district, located in the eastern suburbs of Pittsburgh. He scored a significant upset in the heavily Democratic district, defeating seven-term Democratic incumbent Doug Walgren by a 51%-49% margin. During his campaign Santorum repeatedly criticized Walgren for living outside the district for most of the year. Although the 18th District was redrawn for the 1992 elections, and the new district had a 3:1 ratio of registered Democrats to Republicans, Santorum still won re-election with 61% of the vote.
Looks like he’s capable of winning Independents to me.
As for his support for Spector, Wikipedia reports: “ Reporters have observed that though Santorum and Specter differed on social policy, Specter provided him with key political staff for his successful run in 1994.”
That was when he won his Senate seat, beating a Democrat incumbent, something that’s usually very difficult to accomplish.
In short, I have no trouble thinking that Santorum can beat Obama. He certainly won’t lose by 10 points in the current environment.
I see Rick as a Rino establishment candidate. I guess we’ll see what happens, but I just think phony when I look at him. Not about christianity but about being a conservative.
Santorum is a big government Conservative, but have no doubt he is Conservative.
Newt is a great Conservative, but I think we need to be realistic about his negatives. They are through the roof. That may not be fair or even based on fact (although he is no saint), but it is politics.
Here is an idea though, rather then tearing down the competition, how about explaining how Newt wins the nomination? I like him and will happily vote for him if he shows an ounce of life. Do you honestly believe he can turn around his very high negatives? Right now he looks like dead man walking to me.
seems to me the conservatives are winning.
This Tennessean is voting for Gingrich. Day one in the Oval Office is just what this nation needs.
Huckabee won here in TN in 2008
McClain was 2nd
Romney was 3rd
I could see Santorum winning here this time...
or Newt...
You mean all two dozen people that actually saw it?
You seriously think one speech that 99% of the electorate never watches matters?
Wow. I don’t know. I’ve never heard Newt give a “monotone” speech. I remember during the whole “Drill here, drill now” thing he had the nation on fire. I saw him live as a speaker at a state political convention and he electrified the place.
OTH, I kept wondering how he balanced that position against his earlier pandering for lack of a better word (sorry Gingrich people) on global warming.
Santorum has been steady and the same for all these years. I like him and I will support him as long as he is in the race. I wouldn’t early on because I thought he was too boring and I have always held his Specter endorsement against him a bit. I have since seen that he can deliver and heard him explain the Specter endorsement thing adequately.
Santorum is the man. He WILL be the next president if this trend continues. (IMHO)
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