Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum signed a contract yesterday to become the newest Fox News Contributor. He will appear on a number of Fox's daytime shows and give his biased analysis of how Democrats are destroying this country.
Of course though, Fox News wants its contributors to do more than just analyze the news. The network encourages personal commentary. In a preview of the fringe commentary that we will soon hear from Santorum, the former Pennsylvania Senator yesterday when asked a question about the '08 GOP contenders:
“The only one I wouldn’t support is McCain,†Santorum said during an interview in his office at the Ethics andPublic Policy Center in Washington, where he is a senior fellow.
“I don’t agree with him on hardly any issues,’’ Santorum said. “Idon’t think he has the temperament and leadership ability to move thecountry in the right direction.â€
John McCain is a conservative. So then what would that make Santorum? It's really bold of Fox to hire someone that is even to the right of Sean Hannity. I wonder what Santorum has to say about Al Gore.
In none of these three polls is Pennsylvania Senate incumbent Rick Santorum even within single digits of his opponent. Democratic challenger Bob Casey is on the verge of knocking off the third-ranking Republican in the Senate. Below are the polls -- all of which were taken among "likely voters":
:
(R) Rick Santorum - 39% (D) Bob Casey - 49%
:
(R) Rick Santorum - 38% (D) Bob Casey - 53%
:
(R) Rick Santorum - 42% (D) Bob Casey - 52%
Since the race is pretty much in the books, we can talk about it in past tense. This was such a great accomplishment for the Democratic Party in Pennsylvania. We stayed on message the entire campaign season, exposing Mr. Santorum for what he really was: a rubber stamp for the White House, and another vote to prolong the spending and bloodshed in Iraq. Most importantly, because of this effort, not just for Casey but for other candidates in Pennsylvania as well, the state is trending Democrat. We are in solid shape for 2008.
The last debate between Senate incumbent Rick Santorum (R-PA) and Democratic challenger Bob Casey came and went. Much of the heated exchange focused on Iraq. The two candidates copied the same tune they have been humming throughout the campaign season. While Casey wanted a change in Iraq, and Santorum preferred to stay the course and defended the civilian leadership in the Pentagon. Those points were rehashed :
Casey reiterated his opinion that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld should be fired.
"We need new leadership when it comes to Iraq," Casey said.
Santorum defended Rumsfeld, saying, "He follows policy. He doesn't make policy."
This debate ocurred just hours after the two campaigns released their third quarter . Casey has $3.7 million left, compared to Santorum's $3.6 million. This is the that Casey has bested Santorum in the money race.
The latest Morning Call/Muhlenberg College poll shows :
Pennsylvania Senate Race
(R) Rick Santorum - 41%
(D) Bob Casey - 46%
Meanwhile, social conservatives are scrambling to raise money as this campaign enters its last throes (sorry, had to use that wording).
Happy Labor Day everyone. Here are the latest buzz-worthy political clips on the internet.
First Up: Pennsylvania Senator Santorum Spends One Month Each Year in His Pennsylvania Home. In a debate on NBC's Meet the Press between, the two Senate candidates from Pennsylvania, Republican Rick Santorum and Democrat Bob Casey, Mr. Santorum exposed himself to the voters of his state. When pressured by moderator Tim Russert, Santorum admitted that he spends only one month out of each year in his Pennsylvania home. is in Virginia.
Second in Line: Casey Takes It to Santorum. In that same NBC debate between Casey and Santorum, Casey revealed the fact that Santorum has only voted against the President 2% of the time.
Sorry there are a shortage of videos today. More tomorrow.
In his desperate attempt to follow Ken Mehlman's lead and score points with his conservative base, Pennsylvania incumbent Senator about intelligence officials leaking to the press the details of President Bush's illegal warrantless domestic wiretap program:
Those classified programs "were important for us to be able to confrontan enemy in time of war," Santorum said. "When people leak that kind ofinformation, to me, that is traitorous activity."
..."I think it is vitally important for us to understand that thecompromises that have been made of American intelligence over the lastfew months were serious and that the traitors within the intelligencecommunity who leaked that information, for whatever purposes, must bepursued aggressively," Santorum said.
Great. So is the Bush Administration official that leaked the identity of Valerie Plame to the press just as traitorous?
in from Pennsylvania, and Democrat Bob Casey leads Republican incumbent Rick Santorum in the race for U.S. Senate:
Bob Casey: 45% Rick Santorum: 39%
(Poll conducted between July 31st and August 3rd among 550 registered voters from Pennsylvania.)
This comes just as Rick Santorum, knowing his political future is in trouble, announced that he is .
On the issue of energy independence, the the two candidates to explain their views. As you can see below, Santorum and Casey are from two different worlds:
AP: Please explain whether you think global warming is a problem andif so, if you think the problem is manmade? What, if anything, shouldbe done?
SANTORUM: While the EPA acknowledges that a warming trend of aboutone degree Fahrenheit has been recorded since the late 19th century,scientists have not decisively concluded the cause of this trend. Ibelieve we must be cautious in reacting to this issue because makingdrastic public policy changes could pose serious consequences to oureconomy and our quality of life. This is why I am opposed to radicalapproaches like the Kyoto Protocol, which would unfairly placeinternational regulations on our nation, killing our manufacturingsector that is so vital to areas like western Pennsylvania, whileallowing nations like China to pollute our environment withoutrecourse. Last year, I supported an amendment offered by Sen. ChuckHagel of Nebraska that called for promoting and adopting technologiesthat reduce greenhouse gas emissions by providing loan guarantees toprojects that employ advanced climate technologies. This is a reasonedapproach that doesn't squelch job creation but balances it withenvironmental concerns.
CASEY: Yes. We must take mandatory steps to slow, stop, and reduceglobal warming pollution. Waiting to do so will only make the problemworse and the solution more costly. Rick Santorum thinks that it doesnot exist.
Rick Santorum's long-winded answer is not going to cut it in today's political environment. Gas prices are near record highs, and the Middle East war and hurricane threats in the gulf are putting our energy lifeline in danger. The longer we have Senators like Rick Santorum that continue to question the scientific consensus, the longer we will continue to believe the false idea that the solution is to drill our way out of this mess.
As a strong supporter of Bob Casey, I am nervous about the upcoming three months of campaigning because the big GOP donors will be heading into Pennsylvania to shake things up. The only way we can kick the Republicans out of the majority in the Senate is if we take the initiative and get involved. If you can or for the Casey Campaign, you will help steer America towards that goal.
All of the WMD hype earlier this summer by Republican Senator Rick Santorum has seemed to have paid off. In a new , the number of Americans that still think Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction at the same time the U.S. invaded has substantially increased over the last few months:
Despite being widely reported in the media that the U.S. and other countrieshave not found any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, surprisingly; more U.S.adults (50%) think that Iraq had such weapons when the U.S. invaded Iraq. Thisis an increase from 36 percent in February 2005.
So why the sudden increase? Credit U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania Rick Santorum. In June, that such weapons have recently been found in Iraq:
"We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, chemical weapons," Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., said in a quickly called press conference late Wednesday afternoon.
Readingfrom a declassified portion of a report by the National GroundIntelligence Center, a Defense Department intelligence unit, Santorumsaid: "Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent.Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq's pre-Gulf War chemicalmunitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions areassessed to still exist."
Of course, most of us would agree that "possessing weapons of mass destruction" means actually having the capacity to cause mass destruction. But the recovered munitions that Santorum referred to were weapons more than 20 years old, and therefore unusable in a military situation.
, President Bush's good buddy whose team searched for such weapons in Iraq after the '03 invasion, the munitions that Santorum was ranting about on the news were "less toxic than most things that Americans have under their kitchen sink at this point."
The cable news channels chose to spend time covering Santorum's lie, and ignored David Kay's rebuttal. So now half the country believes the wild-eyed notion that Saddam was fully loaded when America invaded.
Yesterday on CNN, commentator Jack Cafferty analyzed the WMD notion that won't die. The video is below:
The embryonic stem cell bill, which passed the House last year and cleared the Senate yesterday, by President Bush. To this day, the President has . Many ask why the first veto of the Bush Administration has to be one against science? in the scientific community, it is like a slap in their face and a rejection of the hope that lives could be saved by embryonic stem cell treatment.
In my view, Bush's stance has even more to do with politics. Ever since 2004, the year Bush heavily pandered to the Evangelical community, I have said that Bush is a Rovean first, a supply-side big-business conservative second, and a religious man third. Try telling me that I'm wrong about that now! You find out that I am right by contrasting his policy decisions every even election year with policy decisions every odd election year. This guy must think of religious conservatives as short-term thinkers, who allow themselves to be betrayed until an election is right around the corner, and then take the President at his word when he panders to them for five straight month months. This election season, Evangelical Christians have a great opportunity to show this President that they know he is not one of them, and that one veto will not win their votes.
But honestly, I think Bush's tactic may work. The Democrats have done much more of a poor job exposing the Republicans this week on the stem cell issue than they did one month ago when they were at the top of their game on issues like gay marriage, flag burning and the estate tax. Maybe it has something to do with all the Middle East coverage.
In any event, for almost every Republican leader, it is political. Bill Frist probably thinks that by this embryonic stem cell bill all of us will forget when he runs for president about his back in 2005.
President Bush is vetoing the bill because Karl Rove is betting on more showing up to vote on election day than affluent conservatives who support embryonic stem cell research.
Rick Santorum is probably the most political of them all. by a long shot, Santorum voted against the embryonic bill, but wrote his own bill, which passed, that allows basically every other kind of stem cell funding. In other words, he is now able to take credit for authoring a stem cell bill even though he voted against the one that really mattered.
It's all politics with these guys, and no solutions for tomorrow. Is this the party you want running Congress?
Just as money can’t always buy happiness, it can’t necessarily buy you an election either. Still, Republican incumbent Rick Santorum is not giving up hope that he still can. The U.S. Senator set the all-time Pennsylvania fundraising record over the weekend. The that Santorum has raised so far tops the previous state record that was set back in 2004 by Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania’s other Republican U.S. Senator.
Even with this fundraising record, Santorum trails Democratic challenger Bob Casey according to the latest Rasmussen Poll. He is even doing more poorly in his home district near Pittsburgh -- down .
Meanwhile, Santorum is under fire for his hypocritical stance on medical malpractice reform. He claims to be an opponent of these lawsuits, even though he and his wife were in a malpractice suit against their chiropractor.
The Pennsylvania Republican Senator is also taking fire over his that he had found evidence that Saddam did indeed possess weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invasion began. The weapons turned out to be chemical munition shells from the 1980s when the U.S. helped fund Saddam’s arsenal as his authoritarian regime battled Iran. And because the weapons were so outdated, they would not harm anyone today. According to , who headed Bush's WMD hunting team in Iraq following the 2003 invasion, the munition shells found were "less toxic than most things that Americans have under their kitchen sink."
So even though Rick Santorum is good at convincing the Republican establishment in Washington to help him beg for campaign money, he does not resonate and lacks credibility -- which is why he trails in the polls.
If you are sick of Rick's Washingtonesque tactics like I am, lend a helping hand to the . Giving $50, $20, or even $5 would go towards dethroning Santorum and bring the Democrats one step closer to a majority in the Senate. And remember this: majority = subpoena power. --------------------------------------------------------- Other blogs writing about Rick Santorum: , , , , , , , , , , .
Conservative blogs have been drooling all over the place ever since a report surfaced that 500 munitions of mustard and sarin nerve agents were found in Iraq. Pennsylvania Republican Senator Rick Santorum presented the finding to the Senate this week, at the same time as polls indicate that he continues to . The Pennsylvania Republican because he and his fellow party members could prove once and for all that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq:
"We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, chemical weapons," said U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa.
Of course, Santorum left it at that and chose not to admit the fact that the weapons were from the 1980s, a time when no one would dispute that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Secondly, , the munitions were so old that Saddam could not use them even if he had intended:
...intelligence officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity becauseof the subject's sensitive nature, said the weapons were producedbefore the 1991 Gulf War and there is no evidence to date of chemicalmunitions manufactured since then. They said an assessment of theweapons concluded they are so degraded that they couldn't now be usedas designed.
They probably would have been intended for chemical attacks during the Iran-Iraq War, said David Kay, who headed the U.S. weapons-hunting team in Iraq from 2003 until early 2004.
He said experts on Iraq's chemical weapons are in "almost 100percent agreement" that sarin nerve agent produced from the 1980s wouldno longer be dangerous.
"It is less toxic than most things that Americans have under their kitchen sink at this point," Kay said.
Therefore, very smartly, the White House chose not to make a publicity stunt out of this non-story. As for Rick Santorum, two things are for certain: he has yet to retract his comments, and he still trails Democratic challenger with just more than four months to go before November.
Bottom line: the sanctions enacted by George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton between the end of the first Gulf War and the start of the second Gulf War worked, and Saddam was powerless. Anything else is stretching the truth -- something that we have been growing more accustomed to seeing these days. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Related news on the following blogs: , , , , ,
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