Rick Santorum has suspended his presidential campaign, leaving Mitt Romney the sure Republican nominee. Sorry, Newt Gingrich, you never had a chance anyway.
But far more important than the GOP race now becoming the foregone conclusion which it really already was, in reality if not in actual fact, is the reason Santorum is dropping out. His young daughter Bella has been having health issues, and he wants to be able to see to them.
It is exactly that sort of fatherly compassion which has set him apart from Romney and Gingrich. Santorum is the kind of conservative who cares about the whole person, even in areas where some person would say his concerns are not part of their personal vision. It came out in his speeches and campaign appearances, and it resonated with right wing Republicans in ways which Gingrich's bravado and Romney's slickness did not. Gingrich may be one of us, but he's too brash and divisive. Romney is probably not one of us, appealing to conservative values only to win a nomination. But Rick Santorum was the real deal, not unlike the great Ronald Reagan. Conservatives saw and could relate to that.
The cynics will say that the decision was prompted by recent poll numbers suggesting Santorum was headed towards defeat in his home state of Pennsylvania, whose primary is upcoming. Let them say it. They are the kind of people you cannot influence anyway. As to the rest of us, we owe Mr. Santorum thanks for allowing us to believe that a real Republican could express conservative passionately and literately, and to see that there is still hope for American even today. Even though the election has now become between Obama and Obama lite.
Good luck and Godspeed for your family and your future, Senator.
Showing posts with label Rick Santorum. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rick Santorum. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Monday, March 5, 2012
Rural Areas Vote Better
If it isn't too late to comment on the Michigan Primary, and we don't see that it is, it appears to us that one fact jumps out which may be more important than any other. It is in how, by and large, Rick Santorum won the rural areas while Mitt Romney tended to carry the urban ones. The results are not hard and fast as there certainly was a mix. Santorum carried the new 13th District which meanders in and around Detroit, while Romney won several counties in the northern lower peninsula. Still, the pattern was there.
A similar pattern can found in the 2008 Presidential election. Looking at a map of which counties Barack Obama and John McCain won respectively shows that rural support for McCain was overwhelming while the President's votes tended to come from urban areas. What this obviously tells us is that rural voters tend to be more conservative while city folk are more liberal.
But that in itself speaks volumes. It tells us that country folk are more independent and less concerned with government. Indeed, that on the whole they don't want government in their lives. They feel they can do just fine without it.
In short, our rural neighbors whether right here in Michigan or elsewhere on the fruited plain are the ones closer to the ideal of American government than the urban dwellers who in so many more ways live and die by government. Unfortunately, they're in the minority, and that's sad. It means the cities are intent to take the country folk with them down the kitchen drain. Majority rules, after all.
All that means is that a scant majority can make everyone else do what they want. It hardly seems fair. Especially when our great nation as a whole is on the slippery slope to dictatorship. It began when Washington gained its power through ballot box as it has. We'll have no one to blame but ourselves when we take the good down with the bad.
A similar pattern can found in the 2008 Presidential election. Looking at a map of which counties Barack Obama and John McCain won respectively shows that rural support for McCain was overwhelming while the President's votes tended to come from urban areas. What this obviously tells us is that rural voters tend to be more conservative while city folk are more liberal.
But that in itself speaks volumes. It tells us that country folk are more independent and less concerned with government. Indeed, that on the whole they don't want government in their lives. They feel they can do just fine without it.
In short, our rural neighbors whether right here in Michigan or elsewhere on the fruited plain are the ones closer to the ideal of American government than the urban dwellers who in so many more ways live and die by government. Unfortunately, they're in the minority, and that's sad. It means the cities are intent to take the country folk with them down the kitchen drain. Majority rules, after all.
All that means is that a scant majority can make everyone else do what they want. It hardly seems fair. Especially when our great nation as a whole is on the slippery slope to dictatorship. It began when Washington gained its power through ballot box as it has. We'll have no one to blame but ourselves when we take the good down with the bad.
Friday, February 10, 2012
Santorum Takes off the Gloves
Does he smell blood? Is he beginning to sense the potential swell of conservative sentiment more than willing to support someone like him? Is someone finally getting the message that Mitt Romney is shallow and weak, and starting to go on the offensive? It is beginning to look as though, if that guy exists, it's Rick Santorum.
Hydrofracking is the process of breaking rocks and what not as a means of forcing oil and gas from them. Santorum called the environmental hue and cry against it a 'boogeyman' and asserted that no ill will come from the process. He even went so far as to openly mock the environmentalists as fear mongers who politicize science. This after he told a crowd in Colorado that he never bought into the global warming hoax.
Wow. What is not to like when a conservative shoots from the lip like this? Especially as he's right on the money: global warming is bad science, indeed little more than a variation on the perpetual doomsday scenarios the fringes have spouted since the dawn of man. It's time to call it what it is.
Santorum certainly did that with his recent assertion that the left, the liberals, want to control you. They want to shame you into a false concern and childlike fear which will only keep them in power. It's all politics, aimed at keeping liberals in power and you and your liberty in check. It isn't about the environment. It's about them keeping you in place by keeping theirs.
We're really, really, starting to like Rick Santorum.
Hydrofracking is the process of breaking rocks and what not as a means of forcing oil and gas from them. Santorum called the environmental hue and cry against it a 'boogeyman' and asserted that no ill will come from the process. He even went so far as to openly mock the environmentalists as fear mongers who politicize science. This after he told a crowd in Colorado that he never bought into the global warming hoax.
Wow. What is not to like when a conservative shoots from the lip like this? Especially as he's right on the money: global warming is bad science, indeed little more than a variation on the perpetual doomsday scenarios the fringes have spouted since the dawn of man. It's time to call it what it is.
Santorum certainly did that with his recent assertion that the left, the liberals, want to control you. They want to shame you into a false concern and childlike fear which will only keep them in power. It's all politics, aimed at keeping liberals in power and you and your liberty in check. It isn't about the environment. It's about them keeping you in place by keeping theirs.
We're really, really, starting to like Rick Santorum.
Monday, January 23, 2012
Detroit Districts and the Michigan Primary
The first maps for the seven City Council districts which must now be set up in Detroit according to the City Charter revisions which were approved last November, have been released. Once everyone has had their say, they almost surely will not be the final map. But the real problems with Detroit will not be solved by political gerrymandering. They will be solved when the people elect good representatives. Draw all the lines you want, but remember, a rose by any other name...
Newt Gingrich has won South Carolina. Now we have had three Republican contests, and three Republican winners now that Rick Santorum has proven the actual winner of the Iowa Caucuses. We can now safely discount the Romney win in New Hampshire: it was in his backyard and everyone figured he'd win it anyway. We shouldn't put too much faith in Gingrich's win Saturday either. Sure, since 1980 the Republican who won South Carolina has been the eventual nominee, but that really doesn't mean anything. It as likely as not is just a statistical anomaly.
It is probably safe to count Ron Paul out. Yes, he could shock the GOP, but our money isn't on it. The occasional surprise notwithstanding, he'll poll his 10-15 percent and that's all he'll poll. But having said all that, where does this leave the Republican Party?
Apparently with a more wide open race than it anticipated. It may even be such that the Michigan Republican Primary, slated for February 28th, might actually be in play. The Michigan vote might matter. Farther down the line, there's even talk of the first real convention battle since Ford and Reagan in 1976.
It's all just talk right now, but still, the primary election season may be worth watching after all. Stay tuned.
Newt Gingrich has won South Carolina. Now we have had three Republican contests, and three Republican winners now that Rick Santorum has proven the actual winner of the Iowa Caucuses. We can now safely discount the Romney win in New Hampshire: it was in his backyard and everyone figured he'd win it anyway. We shouldn't put too much faith in Gingrich's win Saturday either. Sure, since 1980 the Republican who won South Carolina has been the eventual nominee, but that really doesn't mean anything. It as likely as not is just a statistical anomaly.
It is probably safe to count Ron Paul out. Yes, he could shock the GOP, but our money isn't on it. The occasional surprise notwithstanding, he'll poll his 10-15 percent and that's all he'll poll. But having said all that, where does this leave the Republican Party?
Apparently with a more wide open race than it anticipated. It may even be such that the Michigan Republican Primary, slated for February 28th, might actually be in play. The Michigan vote might matter. Farther down the line, there's even talk of the first real convention battle since Ford and Reagan in 1976.
It's all just talk right now, but still, the primary election season may be worth watching after all. Stay tuned.
Sunday, January 8, 2012
The Fork in the Road
"Ron, I'm a conservative. I'm not a libertarian. I believe in some government."
- Rick Santorum, from the GOP debate 1.7.2012
As though the direction of such a quote isn't obvious enough to anyone with even the vaguest knowledge of current American politics, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum shot that barb towards the decidedly libertarian Ron Paul. It perhaps best explains, concisely, anyway, the difference between right wingers and libertarians. Conservatives believe in some government.
It reminds us of James Madison's famous, "If men were angels, no government would be necessary." It is precisely the sort of ideal which libertarians often forget. Of course, as so many of them don't believe in God or religion, the comment likely falls on deaf ears.
The fact is that we need some government, to borrow from Mr. Santorun again, or even the rights defended by libertarians would not be rightly defended or protected. To be sure, with the exception of the ultra libertarians who don't believe in basics such as driver's licenses, the charge isn't entirely fair. We know of few libertarians against any and all types of government.
But we do know that the type of government they want is simply not wise in the modern world. The libertarian minded like to point out that George Washington warned us against entangling foreign alliances, yet do not want to concede that Washington would have never imagined rogue nations such as North Korea or Iran having the potential nuclear power which they claim to have. Indeed, and with all due respect to the great General, even at the time he gave such advice, now taken as pearls of wisdom by certain members of the libertarian and liberal intelligensia, one has to appreciate his words held irony even then: would American independence have been gained without the aid of the French, Dutch, and Spanish?
Yes, Washington has grown too large and must be reduced. It has grown far beyond the scope which the framers intended for it. But to pare it down to the level Representative Paul and his ilk would like to see is simply dangerous. The foreign affairs sphere is precisely the area where the federal government should be the largest. Conservatives understand that; libertarians do not. Yet our nation and their creed would not survive without the knowledge and rational application of so very basic a principle.
- Rick Santorum, from the GOP debate 1.7.2012
As though the direction of such a quote isn't obvious enough to anyone with even the vaguest knowledge of current American politics, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum shot that barb towards the decidedly libertarian Ron Paul. It perhaps best explains, concisely, anyway, the difference between right wingers and libertarians. Conservatives believe in some government.
It reminds us of James Madison's famous, "If men were angels, no government would be necessary." It is precisely the sort of ideal which libertarians often forget. Of course, as so many of them don't believe in God or religion, the comment likely falls on deaf ears.
The fact is that we need some government, to borrow from Mr. Santorun again, or even the rights defended by libertarians would not be rightly defended or protected. To be sure, with the exception of the ultra libertarians who don't believe in basics such as driver's licenses, the charge isn't entirely fair. We know of few libertarians against any and all types of government.
But we do know that the type of government they want is simply not wise in the modern world. The libertarian minded like to point out that George Washington warned us against entangling foreign alliances, yet do not want to concede that Washington would have never imagined rogue nations such as North Korea or Iran having the potential nuclear power which they claim to have. Indeed, and with all due respect to the great General, even at the time he gave such advice, now taken as pearls of wisdom by certain members of the libertarian and liberal intelligensia, one has to appreciate his words held irony even then: would American independence have been gained without the aid of the French, Dutch, and Spanish?
Yes, Washington has grown too large and must be reduced. It has grown far beyond the scope which the framers intended for it. But to pare it down to the level Representative Paul and his ilk would like to see is simply dangerous. The foreign affairs sphere is precisely the area where the federal government should be the largest. Conservatives understand that; libertarians do not. Yet our nation and their creed would not survive without the knowledge and rational application of so very basic a principle.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
The Razor's Edge
Iowa has come and gone, and its message, simply put, is that GOP regulars don't know what they want. When someone wins a statewide race of any type by eight votes, it is safe to say that many folks either don't like what they see or are truly confused about what they want.
Does the Republican Party want to be little more than the old style eastern establishment, vaguely moderate party? Or does it wish to be more definitely conservative, at least fiscally? To go even further off the deep end, does it want somebody who isn't Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, or Ron Paul?
Rick Santorum certainly seemed to come out of nowhere, given that he has been technically in the race since last June. That he polled so well after so many conservatives have struggled just to stay in the race for the GOP nomination is tells us that the right wing isn't happy about the prospects of a Romney Presidency. Give them someone articulate who doesn't appear too much on the fringes, and he'll get their support.
So it's on to New Hampshire, where Romney is expected to have easy pickings. Yet even there, Ron Paul Tuesday's third place finisher, has decent support, while momentum being tomorrow's starting pitcher may mean Santorum has the fuel to have a good showing there as well.
Maybe this contest won't be so short after all.
Does the Republican Party want to be little more than the old style eastern establishment, vaguely moderate party? Or does it wish to be more definitely conservative, at least fiscally? To go even further off the deep end, does it want somebody who isn't Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, or Ron Paul?
Rick Santorum certainly seemed to come out of nowhere, given that he has been technically in the race since last June. That he polled so well after so many conservatives have struggled just to stay in the race for the GOP nomination is tells us that the right wing isn't happy about the prospects of a Romney Presidency. Give them someone articulate who doesn't appear too much on the fringes, and he'll get their support.
So it's on to New Hampshire, where Romney is expected to have easy pickings. Yet even there, Ron Paul Tuesday's third place finisher, has decent support, while momentum being tomorrow's starting pitcher may mean Santorum has the fuel to have a good showing there as well.
Maybe this contest won't be so short after all.
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