Rick Santorum seems to be ramping up the rhetoric against his two main opponents: Obama and Romney.
Lashing out on two fronts, Rick Santorum on Saturday questioned President Barack Obama’s Christian values and attacked GOP rival Mitt Romney’s Olympics leadership as he courted tea party activists and evangelical voters in Ohio, “ground zero” in the 2012 nomination fight.
Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator known for his social conservative views, said Obama’s agenda is based on “some phony theology. Not a theology based on the Bible. A different theology.” He later suggested that the president practices a different kind of Christianity.
“In the Christian church there are a lot of different stripes of Christianity,” he said. “If the president says he’s a Christian, he’s a Christian.”
As one would expect, the left side of the web is lashing out against Santorum (I read these websites so you don’t have to):
ThinkProgress proclaims:
Santorum appears to be on a mission to be a one-man Council of Trent, the 16th Century Catholic ecumenical council that defined Protestants as heretics. In a 2008 speech rediscovered this week, Santorum said Mainline Protestants — about 45 million Presbyterians, Lutherans, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Methodists and others — are “gone from the world of Christianity as I see it.”
The first problem with this statement is that it’s been selectively cut to suit their storyline. Here’s the full quote, courtesy of our own David Swindle:
“We look at the shape of mainline protestantism in this country and it is in shambles, it is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it,”
Well, I am a protestant, and I agree, it’s in shambles. There’s an old joke about a Christian stranded on a desert island for years. When he’s rescued, he offers his rescuers a short tour of the island and what he’s built. “That’s my church,” he begins, “and that’s my smokehouse, and that’s my sleeping cabin, and that’s my church,” he says.
“Wait a moment,” one of the rescuers says. “You said that was your church over there.”
“Oh, I don’t go to that church anymore,” the stranded man replies.
With the many differences of opinion, even on what seem to me to be clear-cut theological issues, amongst churches that declare themselves mainline protestant, not to mention within churches (like the Anglicans), “shambles” seems to fit the current state of affairs pretty well in my humble opinion.
MSNBC, also jumping on the anti-Santorum bandwagon, wades in with (emphasis in original):
Rick Santorum took his rhetoric to a new level, trying to attack President Barack Obama over the controversy between religious freedom and contraception.
I’ll agree that Santorum’s comments are getting stronger, as I said at the start of the piece, but let’s remember, Obama himself opened the door to a religious response with his statement that Jesus would make the rich pay more in taxes, which our own Zombie took apart earlier this month.
If you’re going to use Jesus to make the case for your statist policies, Mr. Obama, you’d better be ready for someone to suggest that you may be following a different Jesus than the one in the Bible. Santorum didn’t start this argument, Obama did. Yes, Santorum is using that — along with the contraceptive mandate — to encourage conservative Christians to vote for him, but that’s part and parcel of the game of politics: get your base motivated.
In short, as combat pilots say, “when you’re taking flak, you’re over the target.” From the reaction of the lefties, I’d say Santorum may be over a big Obama target.
Back to the original piece, Santorum hit Mitt pretty hard too:
Even as he criticized Obama, Santorum also went after one of Romney’s most promoted achievements — his leadership at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.
“One of Mitt Romney’s greatest accomplishments, one of the things he talks about most is how he heroically showed up on the scene and bailed out and resolved the problems of the Salt Lake City Olympic Games,” Santorum said. “He heroically bailed out the Salt Lake City Olympic Games by heroically going to Congress and asking them for tens of millions of dollars to bail out the Salt Lake games — in an earmark, in an earmark for the Salt Lake Olympic games.”
The Romney campaign does not dispute that congressional earmarks helped save the games. But they noted that Santorum voted for those earmarks, among many others, when he was a senator.
“Sometimes when you shoot from the hip, you end up shooting yourself in the foot,” Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said. “There is a pretty wide gulf between seeking money for post-9/11 security at the Olympics and seeking earmarks for polar bear exhibits at the Pittsburgh Zoo.”
That’s actually a fairly professional piece of spin by the Romney camp, but that’s exactly what it is: spin. The earmarks Romney got for the Olympics went far beyond security (emphasis mine).
Romney sought congressional directed funds — known as earmarks — to help build transportation systems and augment security operations for the Games and argued that such money was vital to putting on the events.
“No matter how well we did cutting costs and raising revenue, we couldn’t have Games without the support of the federal government,” Romney wrote in his first book, Turnaround: Crisis, Leadership and the Olympic Games.
The federal government pumped more than $340 million into Utah in advance of the 2002 Games, funding about 18 percent of the cost, including funds for buses, light-rail construction and a host of security-related projects, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office. If costs for rebuilding Interstate 15 and all of the light-rail expenses are added, the federal sum zooms to $1.3 billion.
Seems both candidates are vulnerable on earmarks, but Romney’s trying to get a pass on his, and he shouldn’t. If he thinks they were reasonable, he can explain that to the American voters and let them decide, not try to spin them.
Maybe Rick Santorum could pick up Ron Paul’s support by arguing for a return to the pre-1964 silver standard. He could run on the slogan, “Santorum Silver—because now is a great time to go silver!” He could get the precious-metal crowd and the vitamin-popping aging Baby Boomers.
Personally, I’d like to dump all 4 of ‘em and start over, but that’s not a viable option, alas.
“If you’re going to use Jesus to make the case for your statist policies, Mr. Obama, you’d better be ready for someone to suggest that you may be following a different Jesus than the one in the Bible. Santorum didn’t start this argument, Obama did.”
The problem with this argument is that Santorum didn’t make his statement in response to what Obama said about taxes. And Santorum wasn’t even talking about taxes.
Ed Morrissey made the same stretch to defend Santorum. But it’s not going to end here. Rick seems bound and determined to open his mouth and insert his foot. If the GOP makes the gargantual mistake of nominating him, the campaign will be all about his extreme social positions, not Obama or the economy. He’ll lose in a landslide and probably take the House majority down with him.
“gargantual” = “gargantuan.”
I really need to take the time to proofread once in awhile.
I’m not 100% certain of that.
If the religion angle was a net loser for Santorum, the lefties would be sitting quietly and letting him shoot himself in the foot.
Instead, they’re desperately trying to spin it.
Between claiming Jesus would support tax-the-rich and the contraceptive mandate, Obama’s done a lot of damage to himself with Christians of all stripes, so if Santorum can pick up those voters, he’s all the stronger.
Note, I am not saying that Santorum will pick up those votes, just saying that it’s to his benefit if he can.
No one has to spin Santorum’s preaching and pronouncements to make him look extreme or out of touch. He does a fabulous job of that all on his own. He WOULD be right at home in the 16th century.
The Republican base–women included–may turn out for a hardline Catholic who would like to use his religious beliefs to bring about cultural change, but in a national election women will decisively reject St. Rick. PA women voted against him in his last senate race by 22 points.
And he can hit Romney for his Olympics or business experience all he wants, but I’d like to know exactly what kind of executive experience Rick has. His resume is alarmingly blank in that regard.
We already have an incompent loser of a president with no management bonafides. You know what they say the definition of insanity is.
I prefer the prospect of four years with Poppin’ Fresh in a grey Beatle wig to the prospect of four years of being preached at by Mr. Pocket Protector.
“The Romney campaign does not dispute that congressional earmarks helped save the games. But they noted that Santorum voted for those earmarks, among many others, when he was a Senator.”
This is outright dishonesty. By definition, one does not vote for earmarks. They are simply attached to a bill WITHOUT A VOTE, and there is really nothing one can do about them. The bill could be otherwise sterling, and something truly to vote for, and someone like Romney can dishonestly demagogue what you did by claiming you voted for an earmark.
I like that Santorum is going hard after the other side without being fundamentally dishonest. Romney’s camp often uses the most dishonest means. I want hard-hitting, but above the belt. Romney’s a below-the-belt kind of guy.
When you look at the Santorum’s entire statement, its clear that his “theology” statement really refers to the “religion” of liberalism or leftwing ideology. Ann Coulter’s book Godless is but one source that makes this point. Saying that believers in leftist ideology have made a religion of their political views doesn’t necessarilly mean that they don’t have some other religion as well (but in case of conflict, who wins? See Bart Stupack). Santorum’s point is that the President puts his left wing ideology before the needs of ordinary Americans. When the President said he wants energy prices to “skyrocket,” he is really saying that he wants to make every American poorer, as that is the result when energy prices skyrocket. Santorum needs to make this point, but do so in a more effective manner.