Time to Go, Rick. Is it time for Rick Santorum to gracefully bow out?
|
|
|||||
|
40 votes
|
|
50% | ||
|
40 votes
|
|
50% | ||
Like Newt Gingrich, he’s not going to win the nomination, and I suspect he knows it. But I get the impression that he doesn’t really care who wins in November – unless it’s him.
Where did I get an idea like that? From Rick Santorum himself.
On the campaign trail in San Antonio, he said: “You win by giving people a choice,” You win by giving people the opportunity to see a different vision for our country, not someone who’s just going to be a little different than the person in there.”
He’s got every right to take a shot at Mitt Romney. And he’s got every right to believe he’s stands a better chance of defeating President Obama than does Romney, even if he’s wrong. But what he said next was just plain petulant.
“If they’re going to be a little different,” he said, “we might as well stay with what we have instead of taking a risk of what may be the Etch A Sketch candidate for the future.” That was a reference to a Romney adviser’s comment that “everything changes” when the campaign begins in earnest in the fall. “It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch,” the adviser Eric Fehrnstrom said. “You can kind of shake it up and we start all over again.”
Usually the politically dumb statements come from Romney himself. Does this gaffe feed into the image that Romney is a waffler who will say anything that serves his political purposes at the moment? Yes. It’s Romney’s biggest weakness and for good reason: he is a waffler. But Santorum went way too far in saying Romney is no better than President Obama, prompting this entirely accurate headline in the Washington Post: Santorum says voters might as well re-elect Obama because Romney offers little difference
(Hit with a barrage of criticism from Republicans for his comment, Santorum now says the “we” in “we might as well stay with what we have …” refers to “we, the American people” — the American electorate — who he says would figure, why not stay with President Obama if Romney is the GOP nominee. ”I would never vote for Barack Obama over any Republican and to suggest otherwise is preposterous,” Santorum explained. This is how politicians walk back their mistakes. I suspect no one will buy it.)
I could never picture Rick Santorum in the Oval Office. He always struck me as the annoying goody two shoes kid in high school who you wanted to slap around simply on principle. Then when he began sharing his religious beliefs with the American people I started believing that if this guy could snap his fingers or wave his magic wand, he’d turn the United States into a theocracy. That may not be a fair characterization, of course, but that’s the impression he gave me – and I suspect it’s the impression he gave a lot of others who will decide if Mr. Obama stays or goes.
Those of us who want Barack Obama to go should now also want Mr. Santorum to go.
Top Opinion
-
Daniel 2012/03/27 12:45:42
fight, fight, fight....
brokered convention
Sounds like you're a racist...
I think you should quit assuming and calm down before you give yourself a stroke...
A credible alternative to his policies,is to vote him out and that's what's going to happen,it doesn't matter if it's Rick Santorum or whoever else.
I know it gets you upset that Obama will get beat by Santorum,if it comes down to that,you just have to accept it..
Only then will you realize,you shouldn't of believed everything Obama and Lame Stream Media blew down your earhole..
And i don't watch Foxnews,so don't come back with that old tired "Fox news" reply.
Doesn't matter who replaces him..
While the democratic viewpoint, and republican viewpoint, are themselves very different - and one cannot talk to three or four people without finding six or seven different opinions - the political candidate field does not always reflect this.
2012 has been a good year in that there have been many candidates who buck this tradition. Some to the extreme, in that they do not reflect a large enough majority of voters to sway enough votes - but overall it has been a good change. We are finally getting different voices, which is how it should be. Good leadership is not uniformity of opinion, but uniformity of direction and goal -> and the ability to take differing ideas and opinions and bounce them off of eachother, debating the pros and cons. This is one reason President Obama has not been an effective l...
While the democratic viewpoint, and republican viewpoint, are themselves very different - and one cannot talk to three or four people without finding six or seven different opinions - the political candidate field does not always reflect this.
2012 has been a good year in that there have been many candidates who buck this tradition. Some to the extreme, in that they do not reflect a large enough majority of voters to sway enough votes - but overall it has been a good change. We are finally getting different voices, which is how it should be. Good leadership is not uniformity of opinion, but uniformity of direction and goal -> and the ability to take differing ideas and opinions and bounce them off of eachother, debating the pros and cons. This is one reason President Obama has not been an effective leader; he has been too busy apologizing for America and taking America down an opposite path, rather than upholding the constitution or the ideals of freedom or free market capitalism.
Mitt Romney is, unfortunately, a candidate a bit like McCain. To add that he cannot hold up a consistent background of conservative ideals, like the other candidates, he is also a known waffler. He doesn't even hide it! This makes him insanely popular to whoever he is talking to at the moment, since he says exactly what they want to hear. There is no guarantee, however, that once outside the room, or a few months later, he may do exactly the opposite.
Even beyond his waffling, I do not personally want to end up having to choose between the lesser of two evils or the "slightly more conservative" candidate. Even Santorum agrees anyone is better than President Obama and that of course a republican is going to be a better choice, no matter who is the last one standing, than President Obama.
He is spot on in saying that Romney is not *significantly* different enough to highlight him as the candidate of choice, however. (As opposed to the other three. Even Ron Paul, who has some scary views in my book, I would consider voting for over Romney precisely because he is a) consistent in ideals, b) obviously promotes America over politics and c) significantly different than President Obama.
What our country needs right now is some diologue about what it means to be an American, to remember exactly *why* so many people immigrated to America for the freedoms America offered, and what those freedoms were. Rick Santorum has certainly shown that he can open diologues. Voting for someone like Romney who is heading down a similar path to Prresident Obama in many ways, simply much "slower", isn't much of an improvement. It might even be more dangerous, since frogs slowly boiled in water won't jump out
...
Let me remind you that every ballot has a place where you can write in the person's name you choose if they don't have their names typed as the two presidential choices.
The fact that he has no campaign finances and still ended up as a Front-runner suggests that tons of folks, including me, like the guy and he still has a chance to surpass them all. Nice try though, Mopeder.