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An adviser to President Barack Obama's re-election campaign says GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum went "well over the line" when he questioned Obama's Christian values. Robert Gibbs tells ABC's "This Week" that it's time "to get rid of this mindset in our politics that, if we disagree, we have to question character and faith."

In 2008 when my wife, Gena, and I were on the campaign trail backing former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee for president, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum was fighting to get former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney elected. Just three years ago in his interview with radio host and conservative commentator Laura Ingraham, Santorum also emphatically told millions of listening Americans: “If you’re a conservative, if you’re a Republican, there is only one place to go, and that’s Mitt Romney. Yet Santorum now admits that Romney “bragged he’s even more liberal than Ted Kennedy on social issues.” And the question that keeps...

Earlier this week, news erupted about how Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Ron Paul had decided to ditch the last regularly scheduled debate prior to Super Tuesday on March 1st, which was to take place in Georgia. Never mind the fact that over 20 debates have taken place, not including one that will still take place with all four candidates in Arizona this Wednesday. Many supporters of Gingrich were quick to jump out with the claim that Rick Santorum was “chicken” for skipping the last debate. We had references to “Brave Sir Rick (MPatHG) and accusations that if Rick is...

Latest MA GOP Primary Poll: Romney 64% Santorum 16%, Paul 7%, Newt 6% Details at http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/elections/

Right must take stand vs. left’s cultural war By Starr Parker Last Modified: Feb 19, 2012 02:31AM Asuccession of high-profile left-wing decisions and initiatives in recent weeks drives home the extent to which the left is changing the face of America. Notable among these are the decision by a federal appeals court in California to uphold a lower court’s finding of the state’s Proposition 8 — defining marriage as between a man and a woman — as unconstitutional; the Susan G. Komen foundation reversing its decision, after a tsunami of left-wing pressure, to withdraw funding from Planned Parenthood, and the...

But when running for re-election in 2006 against a tough Democratic challenger – Sen. Bob Casey, D-Penn., who ultimately beat him by 18 points – Santorum sought to portray himself as someone who worked with Democratic colleagues to get things done. In one vivid ad, Santorum stood in a pro wrestling ring to describe what politics should not be. “Too often, this is what it seems like in Washington,” narrates then-Senator Santorum over images of muscular costumed fellows beating each other. “But to get things done, you’ve got to work together.” He continued: “I teamed up with Joe Lieberman to...

An antitax advocacy group zinged Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s tax plan, giving him a grade of “D+” grade and the dubious honor of proposing what “may be the worst idea of any of the Republican candidates.” ”The good news is Santorum has gotten more specific about his tax plan since last month when we gave him a D+,” economist William McBride wrote on Thursday. “The bad news is… he’s gotten more specific.” Mr. McBride said the biggest problem with Mr. Santorum’s proposal is the sharply different corporate tax rates he would establish. Mr. Santorum would halve the corporate tax...

(CNN) – Newt Gingrich is campaigning in Michigan next week on the hopes that negative sparring between Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum will yield much-needed delegates before Super Tuesday. The former House speaker is trailing his Republican presidential opponents in the latest Michigan poll. Since he has not spent any money on advertising there like his two rival contenders, Gingrich needs to pay a visit to convince voters that he’s still in the game. In an interview Wednesday evening on FOX News, Gingrich laid out a strategy to pick up some delegates on Feb. 28, thanks to Michigan’s proportional representation,...

Rick Santorum Plays Hard To Conservative Base In Ohio He takes shots at Republican rival Mitt Romney and President Obama, and refers to public schools as 'factories.' Mitchell Landsberg and Seema Mehta February 19, 2012 — As he bounded from one cheering throng to the next in the battleground state of Ohio, Rick Santorum roused his conservative base Saturday with ideas not often heard in mainstream American politics. His audiences — Christian conservatives, tea party activists and other right-leaning Republicans — loved it. Speaking to the Ohio Christian Alliance, Santorum went so far as to refer to public schools as...

Santorum Bashes Public Schools, Says They're Stuck In Factory Era By Mitchell Landsberg February 18, 2012 Reporting from Columbus, Ohio— Republican GOP hopeful Rick Santorum may be the most prominent homeschooler in America. So it might not have been surprising that, on Saturday, he told a conservative Christian audience that he intended to homeschool his children in the White House. In his remarks to the Ohio Christian Alliance, however, Santorum went further, seeming to attack the very idea of public education. In the nation’s past, he said, “Most presidents homeschooled their children in the White House.… Parents educated their children...

Rick Santorum was the longest of long shots when, five years after losing his bid for reelection to the Senate by 18 points, he spent much of 2011 campaigning for president in three early-primary states. But he campaigned longer and harder - albeit with less media attention, money, and staff - than any other Republican candidate. By the time Santorum barely won Iowa (as we belatedly learned), he had held nearly 400 town-hall meetings. The rise of Santorum can be attributed to several key factors: Media coverage: Santorum's universally unforeseen sweep of the contests in Minnesota, Missouri, and Colorado last...

*Some take the surge by GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum as a convincing sign that the evangelicals are back. They tipped the scales and put George W. Bush back in the White House in 2004 and conservatives are giddy at the thought that they could have a decisive impact on the 2012 election; decisive that is for the GOP. The joy is premature. Santorum has not won a major primary in a major primary state. The Iowa, Minnesota and Missouri caucuses where arguably conservative evangelicals did help put him back on the presidential map were too narrow, limited, and skewed...

Rick Santorum drew applause from Ohio tea party voters - but perhaps raised some eyebrows, too - when he suggested Saturday that President Barack Obama leads based on a theology different from that in the Bible. It left some wondering whether he was implying that Obama subscribes to a religion other than Christianity. The comments came at an event in Columbus shortly after the former senator from Pennsylvania said efficacy and safety improvements in oil drilling technology are considered by the president to be "a dangerous technology." "It doesn't fit his pattern of trying to drive down consumption, trying to...

Santorum bashes public schools, says they're stuck in factory eraBy Mitchell Landsberg February 18, 2012, 12:51 p.m. Reporting from Columbus, Ohio— Republican GOP hopeful Rick Santorum may be the most prominent homeschooler in America. So it might not have been surprising that, on Saturday, he told a conservative Christian audience that he intended to homeschool his children in the White House. In his remarks to the Ohio Christian Alliance, however, Santorum went further, seeming to attack the very idea of public education. In the nation’s past, he said, “Most presidents homeschooled their children in the White House.… Parents educated their...

(Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum challenged President Barack Obama's Christian beliefs on Saturday, saying White House policies were motivated by a "different theology." A devout Roman Catholic who has risen to the top of Republican polls in recent days, Santorum said the Obama administration had failed to prevent gas prices rising and was using "political science" in the debate about climate change. Obama's agenda is "not about you. It's not about your quality of life. It's not about your jobs. It's about some phony ideal. Some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible. A different...

One of the things that needs to be removed from the discussion of Ron Paul's views of foreign policy is a false equivalence that has become something of a meme in these discussions. It is a false equivalence, not because there could never be an equivalence, but rather because it is being assumed to be an automatic equivalence. Read more...

http://twitter.com/#!/ppppolls Latest Tweets Santorum still up about 10 points on Romney in Washington state through 2 days of our polling there The first night of our polling in Arizona was pretty much a tie between Romney and Santorum Santorum leading on the first night of our new Michigan poll, but much closer than we found there a week ago

I keep reading on FR that Rick Santorum is unelectable (although Rasmussen's latest poll has him just 6 points behind Obama in a head-to-head matchup) as they try to justify why they are supporting Newt Gingrich. Santorum is definitely less well-known than the former Speaker, but that's the problem for Newt. He is well-known and not well-liked. Talking Points Memo has a rolling track of Gingrich's favorable/unfavorable numbers in national polls. His favorables are now consistently in the 20-25% range since the Florida primary but his unfavorables have topped 60% in two of the last three polls (click link below)....

Rick Santorum Questions Obama's Christian Values By STEVE PEOPLES — White House candidate Rick Santorum on Saturday questioned President Barack Obama's Christian values and attacked GOP rival Mitt Romney's Olympics leadership as he courted tea party activists and evangelical voters in Ohio, "ground zero" in the 2012 nomination fight. Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator known for his social conservative policies, said that Obama's agenda is "not about you. It's not about your quality of life. It's not about your jobs. It's about some phony ideal. Some phony theology. Not a theology based on the Bible. A different theology." Trailing Romney...

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhY4oeNgAv_ldElMZmVQSnhTQ09VWDMzLThTTC1sVFE Bottom Line Numbers or Projection of the Number of Delegates prior to the RNC Convention based on the rules of all State Primary/Caucus contests: Romney 971/42% Santorum 823/36% Gingrich 279/12% Paul 95/4% Unbound/Unccommitted: 117 Based on Current polling and projections, I’ve reviewed every state’s primary rules and simulated each contest based upon them. From what I have determined, it is highly likely that NO candidate will get to 1,144 by convention time unless something drastically happens (someone drops out, scandal, etc) For Mitt Romney, even if all the remaining unbound/uncommitted Superdelegates endorse him, he will still fall about 54...

In his circuitous path to the top of the primary polls, Rick Santorum has presented himself as the pure conservative alternative to Mitt Romney. But an extensive review of newspaper archives and interviews with officials involved in his successful 1990 congressional race against Rep. Doug Walgren (D-Pa.) suggests that Santorum was cut from a similar GOP cloth as his current adversary. Rick Santorum Used to Cast Himself As Progressive Conservative and Non Reaganite In His First Campaign In his circuitous path to the top of the primary polls, Santorum has presented himself as the pure conservative alternative to Romney. But...

Complete breakdown at link....

An Open Letter to Rick Santorum: Dear Senator: As a strong, common-sense Conservative, I have a favor to ask of you. Could you please consider not answering, off the cuff, every question thrown at you? Would you please engage your brain before putting your mouth in gear? I’m beginning to see now, how, as an incumbent, you lost your Senate seat by 18 pecentage points to the brain-dead Bob Casey. Women vote Senator; and, they vote in large numbers. Now, please consider this common-sense observation from a Conservative male: Women have been in combat for years now. Women have used...

On Friday's Mark Levin Show: Mark defends Rick Santorum’s stance on income inequality in America. Democrats want everyone on the same level so that they will have more control over them. They believe that liberty is immoral unless it brings about equality, not realizing that there always has and always will be income inequality. The conservative wants to create rights and individuality using a vibrant and vigorous economy that creates more opportunity.

Rick Santorum’s surprising momentum at a critical stage in the presidential race has forced the Obama campaign to reassess its reelection strategy, which for months has revolved around the likelihood that Mitt Romney would end up as the president’s Republican rival. Obama’s Chicago-based reelection team has begun digging into Santorum’s background, diverting opposition researchers who thus far had been focused on Romney. They also blasted an e-mail to supporters in Pennsylvania, asking them to submit their most damning recollections of Santorum, a former senator from the state. Though campaign officials still view Romney as the likely nominee, they have begun...

Obama, Santorum argued, “sees America as groups of folks; interest groups; to pit one against the other.” He contended that Obama has weakened America’s relationships with its major allies, including the United Kingdom, which is “a little honked off at us.” He seized on comments made by Obama last year that France is America’s “best ally in the world.” And he argued that Obama is trying to “unilaterally disarm America.” “Look at what he’s doing with the nuclear Iran threat — nothing,” Santorum said. Santorum then skewered Obama’s handling of the economy, arguing that the White House’s newly-unveiled fiscal year...

Georgia Turns Into Shaky Ground for Gingrich By TRIP GABRIEL February 18, 2012 ATLANTA — If Newt Gingrich has any hope of a comeback, it must begin here, in the state he represented for 20 years as a congressman and where the haul of delegates to the Republican National Convention is the biggest prize of the Super Tuesday contests next month. Yet when asked about the once-unthinkable possibility that he might lose the primary in Georgia, where Rick Santorum is surging just as he is nationally, Mr. Gingrich offered a shrug. “Given this kind of a year, who knows?” he...

The respected Dem firm Democracy Corps has just published an important polling memo that gets right to the heart of why the birth control battle could matter so much in this year’s elections. The firm’s poll finds that one of the most important factors powering Obama’s gains against likely GOP nominee Mitt Romney has been the President’s improving numbers among unmarried women, a key pillar of the present and future Democratic coalition. Among this group, Obama now leads Romney by 65-30 — and there’s been a net 18-point swing towards the President among them: Larger version here. After unmarried women...

Poll: Santorum Crushing Romney In Michigan: New PPP Poll Shows Santorum up 15 percent in Romney's home state The wave of momentum Rick Santorum is riding after his victories in Colorado, Minnesotta, and Missouri last week is carrying him into Michigan. Public Policy Polling released a poll Monday showing Santorum is leading in the Great Lakes State, which is set to hold its primary on Feb. 28. In the new poll, Santorum is up 15 points on Mitt Romney, with 39 percent of those polled saying they would vote for the former Pennsylvania Senator while 24 percent support Romney. Ron...

The 10 most remarkable or telling polling stats from the past week: 1) From the CNN national poll of contenders Rick Santorum leads Mitt Romney in the South 32% to 30% with Newt Gingrich at 17%. It is thought by many pundits that the South is Gingrich's stronghold or strong suit. If these numbers are accurate, Super Tuesday may not go the way Gingrich wants it to go. There is a good chance Newt could lose both Tennessee and Oklahoma. If he lost his home state of Georgia as well, that would spell disaster. 2)PEW Research Approval/disapproval of Obama from...

February 17, 2012 Santorum’s Surge Holds Steady So Far By NATE SILVER Ten days after Rick Santorum’s surprisingly strong wins in the Minnesota and Colorado caucuses, there is no sign yet that his surge in the polls is abating. In the Gallup national tracking poll, for instance, Mr. Santorum’s position has continued to improve slightly, while other national polls suggest that Mr. Santorum’s position is holding steady at worst. Interpretation is rendered more difficult, however, by the fact that methodological differences among the polls seem to be producing different results. Traditional telephone polls using live interviewers have tended to show...

DeWine: 'Abundantly Clear' Romney Would Lose to Obama FEB 17, 2012 • BY MICHAEL WARREN Why did Mike DeWine, Ohio’s Republican attorney general and a former U.S. senator, shift his endorsement from Mitt Romney to Rick Santorum? “When I endorsed Governor Romney, I thought he was the best candidate to beat Barack Obama. As this campaign has played out, it is abundantly clear he is not, and I believe he [would] lose in November,” DeWine told THE WEEKLY STANDARD in a phone interview. “It’s abundantly clear that Governor Romney’s campaign is no better than it was four years ago.” DeWine...

In a campaign defined by Republican reluctance to embrace Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum has emerged as the latest not-Romney candidate to surge ahead. While it's impossible to predict what will happen in this volatile election season, the data suggests that Santorum might be more of a challenge for Romney than earlier flavors of the month. The latest Rasmussen Reports poll of the GOP race shows that Rick Santorum leads Mitt Romney by 12 points, 39 percent to 27 percent. Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul are far behind. In and of itself, that's nothing new. The man from Massachusetts has at...

On Friday's CBS This Morning, Rick Santorum pushed back against Charlie Rose's interrogation about supporter Foster Friess's recent "bad off-color joke" on contraception, all but name-dropping former Obama pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright as an example of the media's double standard on playing "gotcha" politics with Republicans, but not Democrats. Rose initially countered, "This is not gotcha; what this is, is trying to understand exactly what Rick Santorum stands for, and what he might say or do as president." But the GOP presidential candidate wasn't having any of it: "You don't do this with President Obama...he sat in a church for...

“We have to look at the root cause of why the economy is struggling as much as it is,” Santorum said. “Government intervention. Government regulation. Government taxation. Government is crushing and destroying the American spirit and the American free enterprise system.” Santorum said that government spending was impinging on personal freedoms and ultimately chipping away at what made the country great. “When the government gets as big as it’s gotten and starts to take over more of your life, then you get smaller as the individual, you get weaker, you lose control over your lives. You lose the rights that...

First-ever Endorsement for Group in GOP Presidential Primary Washington, DC ─ Today the Susan B. Anthony List (SBA List), a national pro-life organization, announced its endorsement of Rick Santorum in the Republican presidential primary. “Among the field of strong pro-life candidates in the GOP primary, one stands out as a proven leader in this great human and civil rights cause of our time. Rick Santorum communicates the vision and has exhibited the strategic and tactical prowess the pro-life movement must have in order to succeed. Women and children deserve his leadership, grounded as it is in affirming the dignity of...

If you're a Republican in New York or another big city, you may be anxious or even terrified at the prospect that Rick Santorum, the supposedly unelectable social conservative, may win the GOP presidential nomination. Jeffrey Bell would like to set your mind at ease. Social conservatism, Mr. Bell argues in his forthcoming book, "The Case for Polarized Politics," has a winning track record for the GOP. "Social issues were nonexistent in the period 1932 to 1964," he observes. "The Republican Party won two presidential elections out of nine, and they had the Congress for all of four years in...

A retired female fighter pilot running for former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' open seat in Congress said Friday that Rick Santorum's recent remarks on women in combat make her want to "go kick him in the jimmy." Martha McSally, a retired US Air Force colonel and a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, is running in Arizona's congressional special election as a Republican. According to her Facebook page, she was the first American woman to fly in combat since the 1991 lifting of a ban on women in that role. Appearing Friday morning on FOX News Channel's "FOX & Friends," she...

When it comes to America’s first freedom, religious freedom, the Obama Administration has strong rhetoric – but its policies, regulations, and actions reveal a very different agenda. President Barack Obama recently issued a national proclamation commemorating Religious Freedom Day. With his words, he honored the aspiration of countless settlers who came to America “to practice their beliefs free from prejudice and persecution.” Last Thursday at the National Prayer Breakfast, the president, with his words, praised his “strengthened White House faith-based initiative” that has “partnered with Catholic Charities to help Americans who are struggling with poverty.” However, the President’s lofty words...

HILLSDALE, MI (WTOL) – Republican Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum will visit Hillsdale College Monday. The visit is part of the school's first presidential candidate symposium. Students have also invited the three other leading republican candidates, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich, to participate in the forum. So far, Santorum is the only candidate to accept the invitation. All four candidates are campaigning heavily in Michigan ahead of the state's Feb. 28 primary. Mitt Romney held an economic roundtable discussion in Monroe Thursday. Recent polls in Michigan show Santorum ahead of the former Massachusetts Governor, who grew up in the...

Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) described Rick Santorum, when he represented Pennsylvania in the U.S. Senate, as a senator who had "very little interest" in people who disagreed with him. "Rick is somebody that has no doubts about his position. And very little interest in the views of those who disagree with him," Conrad said in an interview scheduled to air Friday evening on Bloomberg TV. "I think that would be my take on how Sen. Santorum conducted himself with his colleagues when he was in the Senate." Conrad described Santorum, now contending for the Republican presidential nomination, as "unyielding and...

MASON, Ohio - In a speech at a Lincoln Day Dinner in Ohio, one of the nation's most important battleground states, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum compared the stakes in the 2012 election to conditions leading to the Second World War and said Americans today should model themselves after the Great Generation that fought Germany and Japan in the 1940s. "Sometimes generations have to step forward, sometimes freedom is actually at stake," Santorum told the crowd of about 200 people at the dinner. "No one's asking you to put a uniform on ... What I'm asking you to do (is)...

Rick Santorum is making a play for some of the biggest upcoming Republican presidential primary contests, as he rises in the polls and pockets key endorsements following his victories earlier this month. The former Pennsylvania senator on Friday snatched away an endorsement from top rival Mitt Romney, winning the support of Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine. DeWine called Santorum the "better candidate" and expressed concern that Romney's campaign had gone too negative. He said he once felt Santorum could not overcome Romney's financial advantage but has decided he was wrong.

For anyone who doubts the legacy media are the handmaidens or the Democratic Party and its propaganda arm, Media Matters, has only to follow the story of the aspirin joke. In some convoluted logic, a joke told by a campaign contributor has become the responsibility of Rick Santorum. In typical fashion the multiple voices of the three legacy networks and major papers including the New York Times and the Washington Post are parroting in unison the identical message. It is shoddy journalism to the extreme. The joke, poorly told by Foster Friess, is most decidedly not anti contraception. Quite to...

Ads expected to attack Santorum ahead of Super Tuesday * Ad spending in Florida helped derail Gingrich campaign WASHINGTON, Feb 17 (Reuters) - Rick Santorum might be about to feel what it was like to be Newt Gingrich in Florida. Restore Our Future, the independent "Super PAC" that supports Mitt Romney for the Republican U.S. presidential nomination, appears to be ready to turn up the heat on Santorum, Romney's suddenly surging rival. The pro-Romney political action committee has bought about $7.7 million in TV ad time this week and the next two weeks, a period that includes a key contest...

The prospect of a brokered Republican convention has reared its head — with the re-emergence of conservative lightning rod Sarah Palin as a GOP savior — as the controversial Alaskan said she’d be willing to “help” if her party can’t choose a nominee ahead of the August rubber- stamp event. But even with the rollicking Republican primary roller coaster looking more like a trainwreck, political experts and players are split over the likelihood of a late-summer nailbiter. Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics.com said that if the current trend of stark regional divides continues — with Mitt Romney taking more moderate states,...

Going back to the aspirin belief, if you are determined to use it as a form of birth control, I will leave you with the following suggestion: the only way that an aspirin can prevent pregnancy is for a woman to carefully place it between her knees and HOLD it there (by keeping her knees and therefore her legs) closed. ☺

How Can someones wife of a man that believe Jesus and satan are equals expect the Catholic and Christians to support them ? That woyuld be heracy and for us to give up all we live and believe in ! Satan has no place in the white house or any where else and our job is to displace satan and take back the land he has stolen from us NOT give to him !!!!!!!!!!

The utterly predictable master of deception and dishonesty - the always biased and never professional Andrea Mitchell - is breathlessly indignant about a very mild piece of advice that has been and remains a humorous and polite way to get across the point that the only 100% effective way to prevent pregnancy and disease is to not have sex - aka to keep an aspirin between your knees. I invite readers to post all the pre-Santorum-faux-kerfuffle instances of the aspirin-between-the-knees maxim. I will start with some I found.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Most Americans don't share Rick Santorum's absolutist take on abortion. He's out of step on women in combat. He questions the values of the two-thirds of mothers who work. He's even troubled by something as commonplace as birth control - for married couples. Even among a Republican presidential field eager to please religious conservatives, Santorum's ideas stand out. A Catholic father of seven whose kids are home-schooled, Santorum may seem to wear his conservatism as comfortably as his sweater vests. But he's walked a careful path, keeping the more provocative opinions that helped sink his re-election to...