Our Choice For 2012

People are constantly faced with choices in their lives. At times the choice which appears to be the correct one to make may in the long run reveal itself as not that good of a decision and the same is true vice versa. This is especially so when faced with the choice of whom to support amongst several candidates during a primary. Although some folks have become discouraged over the years when the choice they’ve selected turned out to not be as originally envisioned, it’s important to continue making decisions and choosing the candidate which appears best at the time. At other times, one choice is obviously negative and although the other option may not be perfect, it is definitely the better of the two - as explained all the way below.

Since no-one is perfect and it is impossible to agree with one’s candidate/supported official 100% of the time, even when making a correct choice it is often accompanied with many gray areas which at times overshadow the white. Prior to the 2010 elections Arlen Specter, Republican Senator of purple-blue Pennsylvania was approaching a reelection and wavered on a decision before ultimately shocking and angering Republicans when he cast his vote in favor of Obama’s stimulus plan. This was the first time he sided with the Democrats on a major bill and his action resulted in conservatives and Tea Partiers to declare war on Specter at every cost. Their mission appeared noble and correct, and Pat Toomey is now the Republican Senator of Pennsylvania after barely winning the general election with a single point in the 2010 mid-term elections; a year in which Republicans swept victories across the country. He is surely a better representative of conservative values in the Senate than Specter had been.

However, the price tag it had cost for conservatives to place Toomey in the Senate had turned out be unexpectedly sky-rocketing expensive and resulted in many to question whether the goal was worth the consequences. When Specter saw he would be unable to win the Republican Primary, he made a mad dash to save his seat, switched parties, and provided the Democrats with the 60th vote which led to the passage of their infamous Obamacare. Thus, although we now have a solid conservative in the Senate who replaced a RINO (not an outright liberal) we are now weighed down with Obamacare which threatens to overtake a sixth of the private sector and is currently awaiting judgment on its constitutionality by the Supreme Court Justices.

Incidentally, two of our current conservative Supreme Court Justices, Roberts and Alito, are currently on the bench thanks to Specter, after Senator Santorum had made the choice to support Specter for reelection in ’04 when he was challenged in a primary by Pat Toomey. At the time, Senator Santorum was faced with the difficult choice whether he should support the incumbent Senator Specter and his senior colleague who although was a less conservative choice than Toomey, was far more probable to be successful in keeping the seat red during an election where the balance on Senate was up in the air and anti-Republican emotions were thick. This surmise turned out pretty accurate since Toomey barely managed to eke out a 1% victory in 2010 when the public was outraged at Obamacare and looked favorably upon the Tea Party candidates.

Maintaining the Republican control of the Senate was by far not the only factor which Santorum focused on when making his decision. He was also strongly aware that Bush would be nominating at least two and possibly three justices for the Supreme Court and that Specter who headed the judiciary committee would be extremely influential whether Bush’s proponents would ultimately be approved by the Senate. Santorum therefore opted to support Specter after receiving his word that he would support the conservative candidates for the Supreme Court which Bush would propose, something which will influence U.S. history for years to come as is visible now with the Obamacare hearings.

Santorum’s support of Specter indeed resulted in two strong conservatives on the bench, although it may have likely cost him the nomination in the current GOP presidential primary. In addition to having been hammered for supporting Specter in’04 for actions taken years later and were impossible to foretell six years earlier, his act resulted in Specter’s former opponent and the current Conservative Senator of Pennsylvania and Santorum’s home-state, Pat Toomey, to act favorably towards Santorum’s opponent – the author of Romneycare. In fact, immediately after Santorum announced he was suspending his campaign yesterday, Toomey released an official endorsement endorsing Romney, causing many to speculate whether the endorsement would occur regardless prior to Pennsylvania’s primary and whether it was one of the causes which led to the Santorum campaign suspension.

The above two examples clearly illustrate how when one makes a choice which appears to be good, it isn’t necessarily all good as is later revealed. It shouldn’t however leave us disheartened for ultimately many good also emerged from those choices. Additionally, many decisions are pretty clear-cut where one option is definitely bad. Even if the other one doesn’t necessarily turn out to be all that good, we still know it is better than the alternative.

Supporting a candidate doesn’t necessarily mean that one agrees with all they’ve done or stand for, although a candidate usually will have some supporters who do identify with them to an extreme. Many supporters of a specific candidate usually support the candidate because they identify with them on a single issue while many others don’t even have that. They simply support a certain candidate because he’s the better choice than the alternative. This was visible numerous times amongst this primary and is very typical. After Palin chose not to run, a majority of her supporter split between Cain and Newt. After Bachmann, Cain, and Perry exited the race, their supporters too turned to find a second or third ro fourth choice amongst the remaining candidates. This led to the momentum to shift from Perry to Cain to Newt to Santorum as voters were forced to reevaluate the field once it was clear the person they supported wasn’t running at all or any longer. I too have first supported Palin, and when she announced she wasn’t running though long and hard until turning to support Santorum approximately a month prior to the Iowa caucuses.

With Santorum now having suspended his campaign, the primary is sort of wrapped up despite the many voters including myself who haven’t yet received the opportunity to cast their ballots. Unlike the primary where the choices were plentiful - at least at the start, the general will boil down to two choices; four more years for Barack Obama or Mitt Romney. Obama has already been in office long enough for everyone with an open mind to recognize the damage he’s wrought upon this country. Obama is clearly not only the bad choice but an utter disaster for this country. Any alternative will be far better and less to the left than the Marxist Obama.

Romney’s Attorney General will not be someone like Eric Holder who looks the other way when the Black Panther sets a price-tag of a million dollars on Zimmerman’s head and refuses to take responsibility or even answer basic questions regarding Fast & Furious. Nor will Romney chose the dopey Kathleen Sebelius as Secretary of Health and Human Services, the unqualified leftist Janet Napolitano as his Secretary of Homeland Security, and so on and so forth.

The choice now has boiled down between two people; Obama and Romney and it is time to unite under the better of the two – Mitt Romney. There are many who have announced that they refuse to vote for Romney and are planning to sit out the 2012 election, all the while talking of setting him up with a conservative in 2016. It is okay to talk of 2016, but only after the 2012 elections have taken place and giving Romney a chance at the presidency, if he reaches it. He may or may not make a good president but he’s not a definite Obama, and if conservatives will dislike him so greatly we can challenge him in 2016 just as we would put out a conservative against Obama.

We conservatives have proven our power the last couple of years by successfully challenging lots of incumbents in primaries and Romney is aware of it.. He won’t want to face a primary from his own party and will probably go along with whatever conservatives in Congress present him. Obama, on the other hand, is aware it’ll be his last term and will have no need to appease to any voters except for his leftist base who will replace Karl Marx with Barack Obama. If we thought he was radical in his first term, a second Obama term will be so much more disastrous it defies description. I plead with you fellow conservatives, w can look ahead to the future but at the same time we MUST REMEMBER THE HERE AND NOW AND MAKE THE RIGHT CHOICE FOR 2012. WE MUST SAY NO TO OBAMA AND THUS SAY YES TO MITT ROMNEY.

Rick Santorum, A Traditional Conservative Republican

Rick Santorum had served Pennsylvania for a total of sixteen years; four years in the house, followed by twelve years in the Senate. In the last two years of his Senate career, he had an average Club For Growth rating of 77%, compared to an average of 73% for all Senate Republicans over that same time period. In the previous thirteen years before the Club had a scorecard, Santorum had accumulated an average score of 76% on the National Taxpayers Union scorecard, a non-partisan group that advocates for limited government. This compares to a 71% average among all Republicans.

Santorum is your typical pro-life, traditional marriage, conservative who staunchly opposed the raising of taxes and most big government ideas as evidenced in his votes for a balanced budget amendment and line-item veto power in 1995. I think of him as a traditional conservative and not only in regard to social issues. He hasn’t fought the party or stood up against Bush but voted along with a majority of Republicans for some big spending bills like the “No Child Left Behind Act” and Bush’s Medicare Prescription Drug Act. These votes, which were in support of the Republican president, were the expected behavior of conservatives at the time, thus giving a new definition to the term “traditional conservatives.” These traditional conservatives generally behave in a conservative manner except when party norms demand otherwise.

This is the type of candidate we’ve looked for and accepted in the past, unlike the “conservative reformer” we currently seek. Santorum's record is not that of one who has consistently fought corruption and he hasn’t taken on the role of the “sudden and relentless reformer” we so desperately seek in order to root out the corruption and cronyism Washington is currently infested with. However, the same is true of the rest of the field. (See Update below)

On the flip side, Santorum can't be described as the “bipartisan” guy who voted with a majority of Democrats against his party, a basher of conservatism, or someone who has praised the Obama agenda. The same can’t be said of Huntsman who has joined the Obama administration, or of Romney who had expressed great pride in running to the left of Kennedy, or of Newt who promoted Obama’s education agenda. Santorum has never done anything which comes close to such action.

Is Santorum the greatest conservative who will bring about “sudden and relentless reform”? Probably not. Can he be trusted to implement stick to his promises of basic reform such as overturning Obamacare and cutting down the size of the federal government? It definitely seems to be so.

Santorum’s strong stance for social issues, which has always been a top priority for many conservatives, is usually the first (and for some the only) thing which comes to mind, thanks in part to his repeated vocal support, and partly thanks to the media’s ability to focus only on the social sentences which emerge from his mouth. As a pro-lifer, I consider his being a social conservative as an important bonus which doesn’t contradict or minimize his promises to repeal Obamacare or his proposed economic plans which include the elimination of the corporate income tax for manufacturers.

Individual mandates, which greatly expand the power of the government and limit individual choice, is guaranteed to remain a hot topic throughout the campaign especially since the Supreme Court will take on the case prior to the elections. Three of the candidates, including the two current frontrunners, have supported individual mandates at some point during their political career: Perry wished to enforce mandates for the Gardasil vaccine, while Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney endorsed health-insurance mandates. All three have expressed great opposition to Obamacare and vow to repeal the federal health care mandate, and we can hope they will keep their word regarding Obamacare. The knowledge, though, that they’ve supported similar ideas in the past, indicates a greater possibility of them turning to big-government solutions when forced to deal with other issues throughout their presidency. 

Santorum, on the other hand, hasn’t actively engaged in promoting greater government control or turned to government as the solution to any and every situation on hand. Although Santorum has never really gone against the flow and has voted for several big-government bills such as Bush’s Prescription Plan, he stood together with conservatives in the opposition against Obamacare, Cap & Trade, and other bills destructive to American economy and American freedom.

Throughout his years in public service Santorum has taken an active role and had sponsored/co-sponsored many bills. His leadership was also visible in his endorsement of Doug Hoffman, the Tea Party candidate of NY-23 who ran against RINO party-backed Scozzafava. Santorum was the second conservative (Governor Palin was the very first) to throw their support behind Hoffman, who was unknown at the time.

Santorum’s biggest detraction is his inability to garner more than a couple of point in the polls which leads to people wary of supporting someone so low in the polls. He’s not the cool and calm guy as Obama had been in 2008, and his imperfect debates performances where he came across to many as whiny has not helped his image. Although he has adopted a somewhat better tone, he still needs additional improvement.

Santorum’s endorsement of his fellow Pennsylvanian Arlen Spector in 2004 - five years prior to Specter’s defection to the Democrats - is not that difficult to understand when taking into consideration that Specter was chairman of the Republican Conference in the Senate, and as such, was expected to support an incumbent senator’s reelection campaign.

Similarly, his massive defeat in 2006 where he lost with seventeen points may be a perfect bumper slogan although it was simply the results of a tough year for many conservatives who faced reelection due to the intense anti-Bush sentiments. Many respected conservatives in red states barely won with a small margin while quite a few seats went blue. George Allen, a conservative Senator who was up for reelection in the conservative state of Virginia lost his reelection bid in 2006 to Democrat Jim Webb. Santorum’s loss in Pennsylvania, which is a blue-leaning state and had gone for the Democrats during the last five presidential elections, is thus not that eyebrow-raising. Even with the Tea Party momentum and anti-Obama sentiments in 2010, Toomey won the senatorial race in PA with a mere two percent.

In addition to the anti-Republican emotions which ran extremely high, Santorum was smeared by many liberal groups such as the Trial Lawyers of America PAC who ran misleading television ads against him because of his attempts to pass tort reform.

You can see additional specific details of Santorum’s record, both negative and positive, at Club For Growth.

Voters who are seeking stability, substance, trustworthiness, and basic conservatism can find them all within Candidate Santorum and Senator Santorum. Although the dream candidate would be a conservative reformer, we are currently faced with compassionate conservatives, flip-flopping conservatives, conservatives in talk only, or a traditional conservative, of which the traditional version seems like the best option. 


UPDATE:

I’ve originally written “Santorum has no record of having fought corruption …” but it has been brought to my attention that I've missed the important role he’d played as a freshman still as congressman. He, together with six other highly influential Congressmen formed a group known as the “Gang of Seven” who publicly criticized what is now known as the Housing Banking Scandal. The scandal, which involved over 450 representatives who were allowed to overdraw their congressional accounts without penalty, received heavy media attention mostly due to the diligent efforts of the Gang of Seven. Santorum’s involvement with the Gang of Seven gained him a lot of notoriety early in his career as an advocate against government corruption.

Free Diapers to Stimulate the Economy! What's Next?

Mark Steyn wrote a terrific piece yesterday, raising awareness over Pennsylvania’s newest Awareness Day, “Diaper Need Awareness Day.” 

Last Thursday was officially "Diaper Need Awareness Day" in the state of Connecticut. Were you aware of it? There are so many awareness-raising days, it's hard to keep track. Maybe we could have an Awareness-Raising Day Awareness Day.

At any rate, the first annual Diaper Need Awareness Day was proclaimed by Dan Malloy, governor of the Nutmeg State, and they had a big old awareness-raising get-together in New Haven.

It's not clear yet whether they've got an official ribbon. We're running a bit low on ribbon colors these days: It's not just pink ribbons for breast cancer, but also teal for agoraphobia, periwinkle for acid reflux, pink and blue ribbons for amniotic fluid embolisms and pinstripe ribbons for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

We could use a Ribbon-Hue Awareness Day to raise awareness about how we're falling behind in the race for more ribbon colors.

If you're wondering what sentient being isn't aware of diapers, you're missing the point: Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro is raising awareness of the need for diapers in order to, as Politico reported, "push the federal government to provide free diapers to poor families."

Congresswoman DeLauro has introduced the "DIAPER" Act — that's to say, the Diaper Investment and Aid to Promote Economic Recovery Act Act. So don't worry, it's not welfare, it's "stimulus." As Fox News put it, "A U.S. congresswoman in Connecticut wants to boost the economy by offering free diapers to low-income families."

And, given that sinking bazillions of dollars into green jobs schemes to build eco-cars in Finland and a federal program to buy guns for Mexican drug cartels and all the other fascinating innovations of the Obama administration haven't worked, who's to say borrowing money from the Chinese Politburo and sticking it in your kid's diaper isn't the kind of outside-the-box thinking that won't do the trick?

 Don’t forget Cash for Clunkers, half a billion dollars to Solyndra, bank bailouts, and government takeovers amongst the many other brainy ideas Obama has implemented which haven’t yet succeeded in jump-starting the economy.

"At a million-dollar San Francisco fundraiser today, President Obama warned his recession-battered supporters that if he loses the 2012 election it could herald a new, painful era of self-reliance in America."

Oh, no! The horror!

"Self-reliance" is now a pejorative? Nice to have that clarified. And San Francisco, a city that registers more dogs than it has kids enrolled in its schools and in which adults are perforce the children they never bothered having, seems as good a place as any to make it official.

In less enlightened times, "self-reliance" was the great animating principle of the American experiment.

By the standards of the day, George III was one of the most benign, caring rulers on earth: You were his mewling charges, and he was the regal babysitter.

'Self-Reliant': A Bad Thing?

Then a bunch of settlers in small towns clinging to wilderness and thousands of miles from His Majesty The Nanny decided they didn't need him and they could stand on their own. What's the word for that? Oh, yeah: self-reliance.

Be sure to read the entire article over here.

Dan Malloy and Congressman DeLauro deserve the “most creative method to create more dependency on government” award, which is given yearly behind closed doors.

Though one can only wonder how Planned Parenthood would react to such a “stimulus” plan. One can already receive free food, free housing, free education, and free college. Adding free diapers to the list leaves one to wonder what excuse they can use to continue convincing the poor to abort their unborn babies.