Rick Santorum vs. the Tea Party & Liberty

If republican voters want to continue the endless growth of big government, Santorum and Romney are excellent choices. Otherwise, it's time to get behind Ron Paul, the only candidate that can really challenge Romney for the nomination at this point. Send the GOP a message, we're tired of business as usual! We want to actually shrink the federal government!

Santorum is just creepy.

Here is a partial list of Rick Santorum's voting record, Erick Erickson correctly calls him a "big government conservative" and a "statist".

What A Big Government Conservative Looks Like | RedState

Whoa. That is no conservative.

How is he getting TEA party support anywhere??????

He rode a perfectly timed surge to tie for a win in Iowa, apparently the voters forgot to look at his record. It's really concerning that so many people go with the crowd without doing at least some research. I hoped that the tea party would be less prone to do this.

When I opened your article I almost thought it was mine ... I started one with the exact same video and captions and nearly the same comments and questions. Never finished it ... I might even have deleted it. No time. Glad you posted it.

I'm certainly not voting for Obama, and goodness knows I'm not staying home or starting or voting third party; so yeah, this is another one I'll vote for if I have to ...

Interesting!! Thanks!

...and this too will pass my friend...

Thanks for sharing this video with us in ...

Artistic Minds®.

Although you know WE are truly interested in ARTS, GRAPHICS, PHOTOGRAPHY, POETRY, AUTHORS, WRITERS, INNOVATION, CREATIVE ENDEAVORS, and the like over here...

Do tell us Matthew -- what would you like to SEE happening in 2012 with regard to our political landscape. We're looking for a very ARTISTIC and INNOVATIVE frame of thought coming from you ~ of course...

With a SPIRITUALLY AWAKENED MIND ~

Your Friend,
René

The last word was "balogna". So what did he say after that? What did he say before and after any of his comments? The video is just clips of selected thoughts to make him look bad. No one should look at an out of context video and make a decision for or against a candidate.

Valid point. I don't have the context, would like to if anyone knows where it is. Still, some clips are long enough to be useful; not to mention the other video linked in the caption, and the link in the above comment to his voting record.

It may not be enough information to make a decision, but hopefully it will give pause to those who are tempted to jump aboard without doing more research.

True, but I think that this is just an example-set of his most outrageous commentary against fiscal conservatism. He is, I expect, significantly more focused on social conservatism for his primary platform. He doesn't seem to care much about tax reform and the like except as it applies to social policy.

That is my take on him, too AJ. I think by far he is the ultra right social conservative. That is the reason I cannot support him. I think he CANNOT pull the middle for this reason. There just aren't enough social conservatives to win against Obama on social conservative principles alone. He isn't fiscally conservative enough to pull independents who see the debt and the economy as the number one issue. Nobody doubts this is continuously seen as number one nationwide. For this reason, even Romney is more mature, and more fiscally astute than Santorum, IMHO.s

Mr Santorum comes from virtually the opposite side of the Republican Party from Mr Paul. Mr Santorum is strongly focused on social issues including abortion and same sex marriage and would prefer the party fixate less on taxation issues and the like because it detracts air-time from his primary points of concern. Additionally, a government pared down like Mr Paul would prefer, would have no means or interest in intervening in the social issues that are Mr Santorum's bread and butter. This is the essential contest within the party, and why, in my opinion, Mr Romney will get the nomination. While the party is busily arguing within itself whether social or fiscal conservatism are the primary platforms, Romney can claim to be for both (as he will claim to be for anything that gets him sufficient votes) and gain votes from both categories. The fact that he isn't really a proponent for either subset is, of course, besides the point.

Indeed; they come from very opposite sides. While both are social conservatives Santorum wants to impose his agenda on others while Paul wants to persuade. One economic matters I doubt Santorum can be considered conservative at all.

Libertarianism and neoconservatism are more different than the GOP and the Democrats.

I will acknowledge that I believe Mr Paul is personally very conservative with respect to social issues, but I think his libertarianism trumps this with respect to his, how do you express it, 'proselytization'. It appears that his political views with respect towards the implementation of that conservatism are 'hands off first'. This appears in direct contrast to Mr Santorum's often heated pleas for direct intervention of government into things like birth control and abortion.

I agree.

I read this yesterday, Matthew, and I thought you might find it an interesting article too.

Excellent article, I read it a few hours ago (I'm subscribed to Tom Mullen's blog). Highly recommend his writings.

How did this video jump to 536 views... pleasantly surprised, that explains all the points

I have 1322 views showing - yeah I was gonna ask, how did you do that Matt? Like the woman in that Meg Ryan movie, I want some of what he's having. LOL

Well, I have been promoting it on Twitter, but that does not account for all the views. Some other site(s) must have picked up the link. Same thing is happening with this post. It has nearly 21,000 views and I have done virtually nothing to make that happen.

Wish I knew how to make it happen more often, the points really soar when you get hundreds of views, especially on videos.

This is exactly why I have been suspicious of Santorum since day one. This and some negative things I have heard about his position on the Second Amendment.

I do not find the snippeting of the short video very serious, he says what he means clearly, context would not seem to matter much. If Santorum would find it hard to work with the Libertarians in the Tea Party, he and all of us are in trouble.

I agree, the shortened video is less useful, but combine it with the other video linked in the caption, and the Red State link in the third comment, and you have a good bit of information to start with. It's pretty clear he has a big government record, lucky for him he was out of office during the bailouts, so he can say he didn't support them. But I suspect he would have; he strongly supported Bush's unconstitutional big government agenda when he was in office.

He is sometimes great on the debate stage; but the way he has expressly come out to reject the principles of liberty, the role he sees for government, and the fact that he doesn't seem to be much of a flip-flopper, I've already concluded I could not support him in the general election, let alone the primary.