The Twisted Anti-Santorum Argument Regarding Santorum’s 2008 Romney Endorsement

As The Right Scoop and many others have noted, the Romney campaign is sending around robo-calls to voters in Michigan using the single most positive sentence Santorum had said about Romney in his endorsement in 2008 without mentioning that the statement is four years old.

The act of placing a robo-call on unsuspecting Michinganders as though his current top rival had suddenly endorsed him screams of desperation and hypocrisy. Shockingly, or perhaps not so shockingly, Romney supporters don’t see anything wrong with the above robo-call. They defend the Romney campaign’s actions with the response that Romney hadn’t done anything wrong; Santorum had simply flip-flopped away from his “support” for Romney from 2008, ignoring the complete Santorum statement of the time.

Rick Santorum had clearly stated in 2008 that he hesitated over endorsing anyone since they all had very serious flaws with McCain obviously being the worst of all as even his campaign platform was loaded with liberal rhetoric. He then went on to say that while Huckabee would’ve been great as a governor of the country, he’s got national security all wrong. That left him and the entire conservative movement with the very imperfect Mitt Romney.

Although I haven’t (yet) seen the official Romney team use quotes from others who’ve supported him in ’08 (not out of support but for lack of an alternative) but refuse to do so in 2012 since there are better options, Romney supporters repeatedly cite old endorsements without specifying that they’re from four years ago and that Romney hasn’t been the recipient of their endorsements in 2012.

In 2008, amidst John McCain’s cries against the “torture” of terrorists and the need for intervention to stop global warming, McCain expressed opposition to all earmarks, glad to having identified an almost insignificant item with which he can brand himself as a conservative. It’s interesting to note that Romney too has grasped at earmarks as “proof” of his conservatism and he had indeed received McCain’s endorsement, something no one else desired.

Romney’s opposition to earmarks though, as with everything else in his current campaign, is a direct contradiction to the Romney from prior this election. The Romney who was governor of Massachusetts didn’t only support earmarks; he begged, cajoled, and pleaded for them on his hands and knees. He lobbied for federal funds to help build the Fort Dix highway in Massachusetts and turned to Uncle Sam once again when arranging the Olympics which took place in Utah and which McCain had railed against during that time as the greatest boondoggling of earmarks.

Rick Santorum like Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, and many other prominent conservatives, endorsed Romney in 2008 as the anti-McCain. Additionally, Romney is now attempting to play conservative in the second election in a row, after falling back to supporting a liberal agenda in the interim, and is fooling far less people about his lack of loyalty to the conservative movement. Mitt Romney is now the John McCain of the GOP primary and we’re lucky we’ve got a true conservative as an alternative choice, unlike in 2008.

It is clear that both the actual Romney team and Romney supporters have decided that the end justifies the means and that misleading and lying is acceptable if it will get their preferred candidate elected. It is equally clear to me and many other conservatives that such behavior is unacceptable and we will not remain silent in expressing our opposition.