Previously I gave pause to a claim by former Senator Rick Santorum that the criticism that he was one of the most corrupt members of congress the year before losing his re-election in the senate could have been trumped up. He said it was a smear job by a left wing group that just does this kind of thing to get rid of republicans they dont like. Sounds plausible. But the organization, CREW, that made the claim and Santorum said was making phony charges, appears to have more of a basis for their charge than political ideology:
During the Republican presidential debate Saturday night, Rep. Ron Paul cited CREW’s research as he focused the spotlight on former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, whose ethical lapses landed him in our 2006 Most Corrupt Members of Congress report. We also filed an ethics complaint against the senator.
Instead of addressing the charges, Mr. Santorum responded with the tried and un-true GOP talking point that CREW only targets Republicans. Fortunately, many fact-checking reporters caught onto Mr. Santorum’s trick.
- The New York Times pointed out that our 2011 Most Corrupt list is bipartisan, with four liberal House Democrats on the list of 14 lawmakers. Three more Democrats merited dishonorable mentions.
- The Washington Post noted we’ve named plenty of Democrats as corrupt.
- ABC News explained that CREW “focuses its criticism on both parties.”
Mr. Santorum should take a lesson from CREW and just stick with the facts. To us it doesn’t matter if politicians are Republicans or Democrats, only that they’ve broken the rules.
Now that he’s back in the game, maybe Mr. Santorum finally will be forced to explain his unethical conduct.
Read CREW’s 2006 Most Corrupt Members of Congress Report
Other than the ethics stuff, I only have 1 other problem with Santorum and that is the gay stuff. He’s an okay candidate running on blue collar middle class principals and blah blah blah that is just fine – except for his handling of the social conservative nonsense. To some extent, abortion, but more so the gay thing. If he were the nominee, the headlines and media coverage would be about nothing but buttsecks and his opinion about it. What happened was that Santorum was explaining why he doesn’t think the constitution protects any and all sexual activity and that was why he opposed a Supreme Court ruling that struck down sodomy laws. Santorum claimed that the ruling opens a legal loophole that says you can do whatever you want to whatever you want with your genitals since it would be protected under the equal protection clause. The argument is a constitutional and legal one and has merit and should be debated – however, Santorum allowed himself to be a target for the issue after gay activists took his words to mean that there was some equivocation going on between being gay and raping squirrels. Santorum could have shined in response, but he didn’t. He is essentially correct on the questions raised in the argument, but handled the attacks in response to it so poorly that he should be disqualified as a candidate for that reason alone. In one of the debates he was asked what he would do if his son told him he was gay and Santorum responded that he would love him just as much as he did the second before he told him and would try to be the best father to him that he could. -A good answer, but he should have been saying that for the past 6 years when talking about the subject to crush the “you disagree with me, therefore you hate me” arguments leveled against him. Since he didn’t, he built up too much negativity that he cant fight against by just starting to now.
Santorum called the classification of his words a “jihad” by gay activists but… thats lame. and it’s a defensive argument coming way too late.
Gay activists also Google-bombed his name by linking to a website that proclaims that the word Santorum is henceforth slang for “The frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex.” Santorum himself participated in the innuendo making by making the following unintentional acronym on his website:
As far as the primary contests go:
Rick Santorum isn’t going anywhere. Despite a third place finish, he’s on his way to the Sunshine State. Newt is still speaking very kindly of Rick in public, knowing that he needs Santorum’s supporters if he does manage to turn it into a two person race with Romney, but he’s got to be annoyed.
For his part, Santorum is correct to note that he has now won exactly as many primary contests as Mitt and Newt. And as per number 4 above, he has no reason to leave. Newt may have all the momentum at the moment, but if he does trip and fall, number 2 above should tell us that there is an excellent chance that Newt’s backers will actually stampede to Rick, rather than “falling in line” behind Romney. If he can just put in another strong pair of performances at the Florida debates, he will remain well positioned to lurk in the background and wait for his opportunity.
