Newt Gingrich has effectively called on Rick Santorum to drop out of the presidential race, yet the former Pennsylvania senator continues to poll in the double digits and shows no sign of quitting. Why are so many conservatives dissatisfied with a choice between Gingrich and Mitt Romney? Michelle Malkin’s Santorum endorsement is a good primer. [Santorum] 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. Personally, I think Santorum’s big government votes under Bush ought to be given more weight. Republicans tend to be much less fiscally conservative when they hold power or act on behalf of parochial concerns, so candidates who resist that temptation have more credibility than those who don’t. Santorum has also given little indication of having learned from the foreign policy blunders of the Bush years. That said, it is a respectable case, especially when compared to the contortions others must go through to justify supporting their preferred candidate. It’s also a reminder of why Santorum is going to continue to collect a lot of votes from conservatives uncomfortable with the frontrunners’ records.
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Michelle Malkin Endorses Rick Santorum
POW! In his typical understated New York fashion, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani went on Fox and Friends yesterday and smacked Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry for their sudden yearning for class warfare. “What the hell are you doing, Newt? I expect this from Saul Alinsky. This is what Saul Alinsky taught Barack Obama, and what you’re saying is part of the reason we’re in so much trouble right now,” said a furious and frustrated America’s mayor. Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal reports there are now second thoughts in the Gingrich camp about identifying a man who repeatedly identifies himself as a “Reagan conservative” with a 28-minute documentary attacking Mitt Romney as a big bad capitalist. Good thinking. One has to wonder: What in the world is Gingrich SuperPAC honcho Rick Tyler smoking? In a clip of an interview with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, played on air by Rush Limbaugh, Tyler responds to Mitchell’s question of whether or not the anti-Romney approach taken by the Gingrich campaign is not causing Gingrich himself problems — with Republican voters. To which Tyler answers by saying that Obama’s David Axelrod knows infinitely more about Romney’s Bain Capital than the Gingrich camp and will let fly if Romney is the nominee. So therefore, was the implication, the attacks on Romney over Bain by the Gingrich campaign are as nothing… and necessary to boot. To say the least, we’ve been critical of Governor Romney in this space. He is a nice guy but not a conservative. In fact, the one thing Newt is doing right is identifying Romney as a “Massachusetts moderate.” True. Absolutely. Romney is a 21st century Rockefeller Republican, just another card-carrying GOP moderate of the type that has routinely lost presidential elections or turned in historically disappointing presidencies that are nothing if not just more status quo. We’ve taken flack from the anti-Newt side of the corral and others for thinking of Speaker Gingrich from our experience with him in his days as a young Reaganite leader of the Conservative Opportunity Society in the House. Newt, it has been insisted to us, is not a conservative at all but a liberal… an opportunist… a man unable to stop shooting himself in the foot etc., etc. Suffice to say, this was certainly not the impression he gave in repeated dealings with him as an energetic Reaganite House leader carrying the war straight to the liberal likes of Tip O’Neill and Jim Wright. But what Mr. Tyler is saying… plus the disgraceful Romney-attack ads coming from the Gingrich SuperPAC now being played on conservative talk radio… can not only deepen that impression of the anti-Newts, it can have the end result of self-sabotaging the Gingrich campaign and his reputation beyond as a Reagan conservative. Lending the distinct and to some alarming impression that in a fit of fury at Romney (justified) the ex-Speaker is switching from being a leader of the Conservative Opportunity Society to what might be called the Gingrich/Perry Conservative Resentment Society. There are 1,000 and one ways to go after Romney’s record as a “Massachusetts moderate.” Flip-flopping, abortion, planned parenthood, the anti-Reagan streak when convenient, the “I was an independent and I’m not a partisan” shtick used to run for office in Massachusetts. Even under attack on Bain, Governor Romney seems too timid to make a full throated defense of economic freedom and capitalism. Indeed, Romney’s very timidity in defending both himself and the core principle of conservatism that is economic freedom should serve as yet another fire bell in the night as to the lack of boldness inherent in a potential Romney administration. One of the other points Mayor Giuliani made is perhaps key to the entire campaign — the emotional desire of both Rudy Giuliani and millions of grassroots Republicans/conservatives to raise the Reagan conservative banner. Newt was making progress on this path. But in an apparent — and understandable — desire to even the score with Romney over all those Iowa commercials, Gingrich himself or his advisers (that means you, Rick Tyler) are using an influx of cash to the end result of effectively trashing the Reagan legacy, not to mention the ex-Speaker’s credibility as a Reagan conservative. This baloney — and that is what it is — should stop. The offensive Gingrich radio ads being run on conservative talk radio effectively attacking free markets and economic liberty under the guise of Bain-did-bad should be halted on the spot. Designed this way or not, they are perceived as a vivid and direct Alinsky/Obama style attack on capitalism and economic freedom. In particular, to run them on the shows of the most prominent conservative talkers in the land — whose audiences are large precisely because the hosts are Reagan conservatives — is akin to running ads on evangelical radio stations attacking religion. This isn’t serious strategy. This is self-sabotage. The fact of the matter is that Newt Gingrich has made an excellent case for himself — and against Romney. Rick Perry, once filled with promise, is stumbling around out there not simply because of bad debate performances but because he gave the impression with his in-state tuition answer for the children of illegals that he was at heart a closet liberal. A perception he has doubled-down on with this “vulture capital” routine, the latter doing nothing if not reminding that Mr. Perry began his career as a Democrat supporting Al Gore. It is often said that Social Security is the “third rail” of politics. Touch it, so goes the tale, and your career will die. In the wake of the Gingrich/Perry attacks on Romney it can perhaps be added that economic freedom is the third rail of conservative politics. If one touches it — “touches” defined as being perceived as attacking economic freedom — a conservative will find their career if not dead at least impossibly scorched. Speaker Gingrich and Governor Perry are in the process of scorching themselves and killing both their campaigns and larger Reagan conservative reputations. If this continues, perhaps the best thing all around would be if someone quietly said two words to each. Get out.
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Newt, Perry: Time to Get Out?
So it seems that Al Gore is lamenting that “the climate crisis” is not an issue in the nascent 2012 campaign for the White House. Meanwhile, ClimateWire (subscription required) reaffirms the popular reportage and claim by UN aficionados and Eurocrats alike, that in December the U.S. agreed in Durban to a “pact, which mandates the creation of a legally binding climate treaty by 2015.” That is, the world believes that we legally bound ourselves to legally binding ourselves to a Kyoto II treaty by 2015. I do recall such pipe-dream political commitments by a Democratic president causing problems for a Republican successor, and the country, in the past. While on its face such UN-speak is absurd — so, we bound ourselves to be bound, which means we bound ourselves to the new treaty? May we please immediately commence Art. II Sec. 2 “advice and consent” on this? — it does beg a political debate about what in the world is going on and, while we’re at the process of discerning President Obama’s intentions, what distinctions exist between him and the Republican candidates. If any. And speaking of the latter, I have received an email under Texas’s Public Information Act, written by Newt Gingrich’s co-author Terry Maple to Texas Tech University Professor Katharine Hayhoe. It reveals that as of December 7, 2011, Newt’s co-author reaffirmed his labors cobbling together the final version of the sequel to their 2007 book, A Contract with The Earth , tentatively titled Environmental Entrepreneurs set for post-election release. More to the point, Maple was writing to reaffirm Hayhoe’s contribution of a “climate” chapter. That’s the chapter about which Newt told an Iowa voter, “That’s not going to be in the book. We didn’t know that they were doing that, and we told them to kill it.” That assertion came when Rush Limbaugh called Newt out on this apparent indicator that he is not fully cured of his couch-trip with Nancy Pelosi and dreaming of gentle bureaucratic ministrations to the earth’s temperature. An earlier email provided to the Los Angeles Times indicates had made this arrangement on Gingrich’s behalf some time ago, and we now know it was still planned for the book days before Gingrich’s claim of ignorance, implying he is of course no longer interested in such folly. Incidentally, Texas Tech curiously withheld some language about scrambling they were doing about “ethanol [REDACTED].” Hmm. Anyway, Gore is right. This should be an issue in the campaign. And just as in 2008, it likely will not be, thanks to Republican aspirants with track records on the issue making them want to avoid it at all costs. (Remember, Mitt Romney previously brought in as advisors Obama’s chief science adviser, John Holdren, and Assistant Administrator of EPA in charge of the looming Clean Air Act “train wreck” orchestrated after the failure of cap-n-trade, Gina McCarthy.) To call this dynamic a “free-ride” for the candidates would not be entirely accurate. After all, when whoever it is settles in, we are the ones who will pay for this. Which demands that someone insist these candidates clearly stake out their respective positions on the global warming policies and commitments.
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"Climate" and the Campaign
Bob Woodward says sitting next to Al Gore is “taxing, unpleasant”
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Bob Woodward says sitting next to Al Gore is “taxing, unpleasant”
MITT ROMNEY has spent the bulk of this year leading all the declared Republican presidential candidates in most national polls. Rick Perry’s announcement quickly changed that. Among many other considerations, a Texas governor is simply a better cultural fit for the GOP primary electorate than a former Massachusetts governor.
