All posts in GOP Primary Election

For Santorum

by Admin on January 30, 2012 in GOP Primary Election, Michelle Malkin, Rick Santorum with No comments

Via: MichelleMalkin.com, By Michelle Malkin

Rick Santorum opposed TARP.

He didn’t cave when Chicken Littles in Washington invoked a manufactured crisis in 2008. He didn’t follow the pro-bailout GOP crowd — including Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich — and he didn’t have to obfuscate or rationalize his position then or now, like Rick Perry and Herman Cain did. He also opposed the auto bailout, Freddie and Fannie bailout, and porkulus bills.

Santorum opposed individual health care mandates — clearly and forcefully — as far back as his 1994 U.S. Senate run. He has launched the most cogent, forceful fusillade against both Romney and Gingrich for their muddied, pro-individual health care mandate waters.

He voted against cap and trade in 2003, voted yes to drilling in ANWR, and unlike Romney and Gingrich, Santorum has never dabbled with eco-radicals like John Holdren, Al Gore and Nancy Pelosi. He hasn’t written any “Contracts with the Earth.”

Santorum is strong on border security, national security, and defense. Mitt the Flip-Flopper and Open Borders-Pandering Newt have been far less trustworthy on immigration enforcement.

Santorum is an eloquent spokesperson for the culture of life. He has been savaged and ridiculed by leftist elites for upholding traditional family values — not just in word, but in deed.

He won Iowa through hard work and competent campaign management. Santorum has improved in every GOP debate and gave his strongest performance last week in Florida, wherein he both dismantled Romneycare and popped the Newt bubble by directly challenging the front-runners’ character and candor without resorting to their petty tactics.

He rose above the fray by sticking to issues.

Most commendably, he refused to join Gingrich and Perry in indulging in the contemptible Occupier rhetoric against Romney. Character and honor matter. Santorum has it.

Of course, Santorum is not perfect. As I’ve said all along, every election cycle is a Pageant of the Imperfects. He lost his Senate re-election bid in 2006, an abysmal year for conservatives. He was a go-along, get-along Big Government Republican in the Bush era. He supported No Child Left Behind, the prescription drug benefit entitlement, steel tariffs, and earmarks and outraged us movement conservatives by endorsing RINO Arlen Specter over stalwart conservative Pat Toomey.

I have no illusions about Rick Santorum. I wish he were as rock-solid on core economic issues as Ron Paul.

And I wish Ron Paul was not the far-out, Alex Jones-panderer on foreign policy, defense, and national security that he is.

If Ron Paul talked more like his son, Rand Paul, about the need for common-sense profiling of jihadists at our State Department consular offices overseas and if he talked more about the need for strengthened visa screening and airport security scrutiny of international flight manifests, I might have more than a kernel of confidence that he would take post-9/11 precautions to guard against jihadi threats and protect us from our enemies foreign and domestic. But he doesn’t, so I can’t support Ron Paul.

Mitt Romney has the backing of many solid conservatives whom I will always hold in high esteem — including Kansas Secretary of State and immigration enforcement stalwart Kris Kobach, former U.N. ambassacor John Bolton, and GOP Govs. Nikki Haley and Bob McDonnell. With such conservative advisers in his camp, Romney would be better than Obama. And a GOP Congress with a staunch Tea Party-backed contingent of fresh-blood leaders in the House and Senate will help keep any GOP president in line. Romney’s private-sector experience and achievements are the best things he’s got going. Only recently has he risen to defend himself effectively. But between his health care debacle, eco-nitwittery, and expedient and unconvincing political metamorphosis, Mitt Romney had way too much ideological baggage for me in 2008 to earn an endorsement — and it still hasn’t changed for me in 2012.

Then there’s Newt, who has long made a career out of trashing progressive Saul Alinsky while employing his tactics at every turn. I’ve been making this point for years and have chronicled his dalliances with leftists as long as anyone in the conservative blogosphere.

Many grass-roots conservatives were awakened to Newt’s double-talk and double-dealing during the NY-23 race. Inconvenient truth: Newt’s transgressions are not from decades ago. It’s not ancient history. It’s here and now. Readers of this blog know the truth: It’s not just “the GOP establishment” that’s repulsed by Gingrich’s combination of moral baggage and K Street/Beltway culture of corruption. It’s the very grass-roots that Gingrich’s cheerleaders purport to represent.

Remember October 2009?

From reader Barnaby, who sent back his crossed-out Republican solicitation forms with a “NO RINOS” sticky note for Newt Gingrich:

Remember the rebuke in Dubuque? May 11, 2011:

Guy: Speaker Gingrich, what you just did to Paul Ryan is unforgivable.
Gingrich: I didn’t do anything to Paul Ryan!
Guy: Yes, you did. You undercut him and his allies in the house.
Gingrich: No, I…
Guy: You’re an embarrassment to our party.
Gingrich: I’m sorry you feel that way.
Guy: Why don’t you get out before you make a bigger fool of yourself.

Lest we forget, this election is not about choosing a showboat candidate to run against John King or Juan Williams or Wolf Blitzer.

It’s not about “raging against” some arbitrarily defined GOP “machine.”

For many grass-roots conservatives across the country, Romney and Gingrich are the machine.

And at this point in the game, Rick Santorum represents the most conservative candidate still standing who can articulate both fiscal and social conservative values — and live them.

***

Side note: Unlike many bloggers and pundits weighing in on GOP 2012, I have zero connections to any of the final four GOP candidates’ campaigns. I have neither received a single penny from, nor donated a single penny, to any of their campaigns.

have not served as any kind of consultant or adviser to any of the campaigns. I have not written any speeches or talking points or briefing papers for any of their campaigns. I have not organized any blogger calls or social media efforts for any of their campaigns. I have not spoken to Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich since interviewing them for Hot Air at CPAC in 2006, and as far as I can recall, I have not communicated directly with either Santorum or Paul. My first and only contact with Santorum’s campaign came last week when a spokesman called to assure me that Santorum was not withdrawing from the Florida primary or the race in general and was in it for the long haul.

So much for my “establishment” credentials, eh?

***
Santorum is headed to Colorado, Minnesota, Missouri, and Nevada.

“The Rick Santorum for President Campaign will expand nationally this week with campaign stops in Colorado, Minnesota, Missouri, and Nevada in the coming days,” a spokesman MAtt Beynon said in a statement.

Santorum is slated to make several stops in battleground states over the next few days, but did not appear to be heading back to Florida, where Republicans go to the polls on Tuesday.

Santorum is expected be in Las Vegas, Nevada on Tuesday when the Florida results are known.

After winning Iowa — the first state to chose which Republican they want to face Obama in November — Santorum’s campaign has struggled to catch fire.

In Florida — a winner-takes-all race — the former senator has not appeared much and is barely avoiding a vote share in single digits according to polls, putting him in third place behing Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich.

Nevada will vote just four days after Florida, while Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri all vote on February 7th.
Santorum had put campaigning in Florida on hold Sunday, as his daughter, Bella, was hospitalized just days before a key primary vote.

Two days before Florida’s winner-takes-all primary, Santorum spent the day in Pennsylvania, where his three year-old was admitted to a Philadelphia children’s hospital.

***

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Sarah Palin: Cannibals in GOP Establishment Employ Tactics of the Left

by Admin on January 28, 2012 in GOP, GOP Primary Election, Political Propaganda, RINO's, Sarah Palin with 1 Comment

 Via: The Right Scoop

Read to the end on this one. This is Sarah Palin doing what she does best, ripping into the establishment:

We have witnessed something very disturbing this week. The Republican establishment which fought Ronald Reagan in the 1970s and which continues to fight the grassroots Tea Party movement today has adopted the tactics of the left in using the media and the politics of personal destruction to attack an opponent.

We will look back on this week and realize that something changed. I have given numerous interviews wherein I espoused the benefits of thorough vetting during aggressive contested primary elections, but this week’s tactics aren’t what I meant. Those who claim allegiance to Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment should stop and think about where we are today.

Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater, the fathers of the modern conservative movement, would be ashamed of us in this primary. Let me make clear that I have no problem with the routine rough and tumble of a heated campaign. As I said at the first Tea Party convention two years ago, I am in favor of contested primaries and healthy, pointed debate. They help focus candidates and the electorate. I have fought in tough and heated contested primaries myself. But what we have seen in Florida this week is beyond the pale. It was unprecedented in GOP primaries. I’ve seen it before – heck, I lived it before – but not in a GOP primary race.

I am sadly too familiar with these tactics because they were used against the GOP ticket in 2008. The left seeks to single someone out and destroy his or her record and reputation and family using the media as a channel to dump handpicked and half-baked campaign opposition research on the public. The difference in 2008 was that I was largely unknown to the American public, so they had no way of differentiating between the lies and the truth. All of it came at them at once as “facts” about me. But Newt Gingrich is known to us – both the good and the bad.

We know that Newt fought in the trenches during the Reagan Revolution. As Rush Limbaugh pointed out, Newt was among a handful of Republican Congressman who would regularly take to the House floor to defend Reagan at a time when conservatives didn’t have Fox News or talk radio or conservative blogs to give any balance to the liberal mainstream media. Newt actually came at Reagan’s administration “from the right” to remind Americans that freer markets and tougher national defense would win our future. But this week a few handpicked and selectively edited comments which Newt made during his 40-year career were used to claim that Newt was somehow anti-Reagan, and isn’t conservative enough to go against the accepted moderate in the primary race. (I know, it makes no sense, and the GOP establishment hopes you won’t stop and think about this nonsense. Mark Levin and others have shown the ridiculousness of this.)

To add insult to injury, this “anti-Reagan” claim was made by a candidate who admitted to not even supporting or voting for Reagan. He actually was against the Reagan movement, donated to liberal candidates, and said he didn’t want to go back to the Reagan days. You can’t change history. We know that Newt Gingrich brought the Reagan Revolution into the 1990s. We know it because none other than Nancy Reagan herself announced this when she presented Newt with an award, telling us, “The dramatic movement of 1995 is an outgrowth of a much earlier crusade that goes back half a century.  Barry Goldwater handed the torch to Ronnie, and in turn Ronnie turned that torch over to Newt and the Republican members of Congress to keep that dream alive.” As Rush and others pointed out, if Nancy Reagan had ever thought that Newt was in any way an opponent of her beloved husband, she would never have even appeared on a stage with him, let alone presented him with an award and said such kind things about him. Nor would Reagan’s son, Michael Reagan, have chosen to endorse Newt in this primary race. There are no two greater keepers of the Reagan legacy than Nancy and Michael Reagan. What we saw with this ridiculous opposition dump on Newt was nothing short of Stanlin-esque re-writing of history. It was Alinsky tactics at their worst.

But this whole thing isn’t really about Newt Gingrich vs. Mitt Romney. It is about the GOP establishment vs. the Tea Party grassroots and independent Americans who are sick of the politics of personal destruction used now by both parties’ operatives with a complicit media egging it on. In fact, the establishment has been just as dismissive of Ron Paul and Rick Santorum. Newt is an imperfect vessel for Tea Party support, but in South Carolina the Tea Party chose to get behind him instead of the old guard’s choice. In response, the GOP establishment voices denounced South Carolinian voters with the same vitriol we usually see from the left when they spew hatred at everyday Americans “bitterly clinging” to their faith and their Second Amendment rights.

The Tea Party was once again told to sit down and shut up and listen to the “wisdom” of their betters. We were reminded of the litany of Tea Party endorsed candidates in 2010 that didn’t win. Well, here’s a little newsflash to the establishment: without the Tea Party there would have been no historic 2010 victory at all.

I spoke up before the South Carolina primary to urge voters there to keep this primary going because I have great concern about the GOP establishment trying to anoint a candidate without the blessing of the grassroots and all the needed energy and resources we as commonsense constitutional conservatives could bring to the general election in order to defeat President Obama.

Now, I respect Governor Romney and his success. But there are serious concerns about his record and whether as a politician he consistently applied conservative principles and how this impacts the agenda moving forward. The questions need answers now. That is why this primary should not be rushed to an end. We need to vet this. Pundits in the Beltway are gleefully proclaiming that this primary race is over after Florida, despite 46 states still not having chimed in. Well, perhaps it’s possible that it will come to a speedy end in just four days; but with these questions left unanswered, it will not have come to a satisfactory conclusion. Without this necessary vetting process, the unanswered question of Governor Romney’s conservative bona fides and the unanswered and false attacks on Newt Gingrich will hang in the air to demoralize many in the electorate.

The Tea Party grassroots will certainly feel disenfranchised and disenchanted with the perceived orchestrated outcome from self-proclaimed movers and shakers trying to sew this all up. And, trust me, during the general election, Governor Romney’s statements and record in the private sector will be relentlessly parsed over by the opposition in excruciating detail to frighten off swing voters. This is why we need a fair primary that is not prematurely cut short by the GOP establishment using Alinsky tactics to kneecap Governor Romney’s chief rival.

As I said in my speech in Iowa last September, the challenge of this election is not simply to replace President Obama. The real challenge is who and what we will replace him with. It’s not enough to just change up the uniform. If we don’t change the team and the game plan, we won’t save our country. We truly need sudden and relentless reform in Washington to defend our republic, though it’s becoming clearer that the old guard wants anything but that. That is why we should all be concerned by the tactics employed by the establishment this week. We will not save our country by becoming like the left. And I question whether the GOP establishment would ever employ the same harsh tactics they used on Newt against Obama. I didn’t see it in 2008. Many of these same characters sat on their thumbs in ‘08 and let Obama escape unvetted. Oddly, they’re now using every available microscope and endoscope – along with rewriting history – in attempts to character assassinate anyone challenging their chosen one in their own party’s primary. So, one must ask, who are they really running against?

- Sarah Palin

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The 2012 Latino Vote Should Worry Obama, not Republicans

by Tom Tancredo on January 27, 2012 in GOP, GOP Primary Election, Latina Voters, Tom Tancredo with 3 Comments

Over the past week we have again seen a flurry of Republican kingmakers and pundits offering advice on how Republicans can “woo the Latino vote.” Such commentaries seem to appear on a regular cycle every three or four months. What we seldom see is Democrats worrying about the Latino vote. But they should.

What is missing from the speculation on the so-called Latino vote is any historical perspective or understanding of the trends of the last 40 years. Everybody knows that Obama got 67% of the Latino vote in 2008, but who remembers that Clinton got 72% of that vote in 1996? Or that Republican congressional candidates have NEVER received more than 35% of the Latino vote nationally yet somehow manage to win elections.

Considering that since the year 2000, newly naturalized Mexican nationals who register to vote have been registering 75% Democrat, and that over 60% of these new citizens are from Mexico, it should not be surprising that Democrat candidates bet 65-plus percentage of their vote.

What this means for the 2012 presidential race is that if Obama’s Latino support drops from 67% to 64%, he has probably lost the election. And that’s not the worst of it. Considering that Obama has lost support among other key groups, in reality he must expand his Latino support to 70% or more to have any hope of winning the election.

Thus, it is a mistake for republican strategists to think they must “win” or “capture” a majority of Latino voters in order to win the election. Republicans need even “recapture” the 40% that Bush won in 2004. (It was 40% not 44% as reported in some exit polls.) The Republican candidate need only hold onto the 32% they had in 2008 while also gaining ground in some other important segments.

Those numbers ought to keep the Obama strategists awake at night because Obama is losing support among Latinos at about the same pace and for the many of the same reasons he is losing support among ALL segments of the public.

Obama’s strategy over the past six months or so has been to “re-energize” the Latino vote by appeals on the immigration issue. All the evidence suggests those appeals have fallen flat.  Pollsters and pundits have been slow to see a “new reality” that is reshaping not only the immigration debate but the 2012 political landscape as well: Latino voters are not single-issue voters and the Latino vote is not for sale to the highest bidder offering amnesty for illegal aliens.

Latino-Hispanic voters, whether in Florida, North Carolina, Colorado or elsewhere, care about the same issues other Americans care about. The question for Republican strategists is — what strategy should Republicans pursue in order to outflank Obama and increase the level of Latino support in 2012?

Two of the Republican presidential candidates, Romney and Santorum, appear to understand this new reality and have made campaign statements that put the immigration issue in its proper context.  It’s one issue, not the only issue, and not even the most important issue for most Latino voters. Only Gingrich persists in pandering to Latino groups with his obsessive and misplaced concern about Latino grandmothers who have been here 25 years or longer.

If truth be told, and if the polls are to be believed, few Latino voters are worried about their grandmothers being rounded up and deported back to Mexico, Peru or Brazil. They are far more worried about their college-educated children finding jobs, how their small business will provide health care for their employees under Obamacare, and how anyone will be able to afford college if tuition rates keep growing at 8% annually.

Yes, we know that Obama will play the race card and will demagogue the immigration issue as much as he can. His problem is that it is not working given his record of failure on matters of deeper concern to Hispanic voters.

The message of the amnesty lobby is not selling well in Latino communities. Latinos as a group do not worry that Obama has failed them on immigration. They worry that he has failed them on the economy, on education, on small business taxes and regulations, on health care, and yes, on foreign policy too. Memo to the White House: Hugo Chavez may be Obama’s pal, but he is not a hero to Latino voters.

Republicans have a tremendous opportunity in 2012 if they do not squander it. What Latino voters want and need is not pandering on one issue but honest answers on a host of problems facing all Americans in the real world.

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British Baffoons attack Andrew Breitbart

by Admin on January 23, 2012 in Andrew Breitbart, Crony Capitalism, GOP Primary Election, Media Bias, Media Corruption, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich with 1 Comment

George Soros funded and NBC operatives MSNBC and CNN import British buffoons who “have no skin in the game, of American Politics” to wage war against conservatives and the American democratic Republic.

CNN PRIME TIME ANCHOR TO BREITBART: ‘YOU ARE NOTORIOUSLY EVIL’

In the midst of an otherwise straight-forward appearance on CNN, Andrew Breitbart was bizarrely addressed by host Piers Morgan as being “notoriously evil about almost everybody.” After Breitbart responded that Morgan didn’t really know him and that they had spent “maybe eight seconds together” in the past, Morgan responded “it was a long eight seconds.”

Breitbart Responds To Piers Morgan Incident

BREITBART LOOKS ‘LESS EVIL’ ON PIERS MORGAN

Andrew Breitbart appeared on the CNN show to talk about the conservative reaction to Newt’s victory in South Carolina.

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