The Real Rick Santorum

With the implosion of everyone else, Rick Santorum is now being given his turn to run as the anti-Romney. And many conservatives are jumping on Ricky’s bandwagon with the idea that he’s more conservative than Romney. Don’t believe it. Let’s talk about Ricky.

● “Conservative” Rick: Rick claims to be an all-around, genuine, dyed-in-the-wool conservative. But would a conservative do this?

● Rick voted to create the Medicare prescription drug benefit entitlement.
● Rick opposes even the voluntary use of eVerify, which would keep illegal aliens from getting jobs.
● Rick voted for Ted Kennedy’s No Child Left Behind.
● Rick voted to force states to let convicted felons vote.
● Rick voted to give $1 billion to bailout the steel industry.
● Rick voted for the ban on “assault weapons.”
● Rick voted to make it illegal to sell guns without a secure storage or safety device.
● Rick voted to fund anti-gun education programs in schools.
● Rick voted against the National Right To Work Act, which allows non-union shops.
● Rick twice voted against repealing the Davis-Bacon Act, which is how the federal government supports union labor through government contracts.
● Rick twice voted to make it easier for unions to unionize FedEx. This bill was created by UPS and the Teamsters, and is essentially what Obama has done to Boeing, except it was done at the behest of a competitor.
● Rick voted to fund the legal services corporation, which pursues left-wing litigation around the country, e.g. suing cities to increase benefits or suing landlords to stop evictions.
● Rick voted to make fuel price gouging a federal crime.
● Rick opposed creating an independent Board of Governors to investigate IRS abuses.
● Rick voted to require a union representative be placed on the IRS oversight board, and then voted to exempt the IRS union representative from criminal ethics laws.
● Rick opposed cutting funding for the National Endowment for the Arts.
● Rick supported a large number of liberal nominees including Sonia Sotomayor to the Circuit Court, Richard Holbrooke to be UN Ambassador, and Alexis Herman to be Secretary of Labor.
● In 2004, Rick endorsed Arlen Specter over Pat Toomey and cut an ad telling voters “Specter is with us on the votes that matter.”
● In 2006, Rick ran campaign ads playing up his bipartisan work with Hillary Clinton and Barbara Boxer: “Because it makes more sense to wrestle with America’s problems than with each other.”

● “Fiscal Conservative” Rick: Rick claims to be a fiscal conservative. Yet. . .

● Rick supported every budget during the Bush years, despite their then-record spending and then-record deficits.
● Rick now claims he opposes earmarks, but he previously said: “The idea that earmarks are the problem in Washington, D.C., is just ridiculous.” He also sought more than a billion dollars in earmarks, including such ridiculous things as $300,000 for a bilingual health care study, $250,000 for an “African-American cultural center” in Pittsburgh, $96 million to build a light rail system into Pittsburgh, $2 million to renovate the Vulcan Monument in Alabama, funding of museums in Nebraska and Seattle, the Stand Up for Animals Project in Rhode Island, etc.
● Rick voted for the Bridge to Nowhere.
● Rick voted for mandatory federal child care funding.
● Rick voted to increase funding for the Department of Education by $3.1 billion.
● Rick voted to provide $2 billion in home heating subsidies.
● Rick voted to increase social services block grants from $1 billion to $2 billion.
● Rick voted to give taxpayers $100 rebates on gas prices.
● Rick voted to create a $140 billion asbestos compensation fund, and voted against requiring uniform medical requirements to ensure claims were legitimate. Think “Pigford.”
● Rick voted to give $18 billion to the IMF.
● Rick opposed food stamp reform.
● Rick opposed Medicaid reform.
● Rick voted to divert gas taxes to pay for Amtrak.
● Rick voted to increase Amtrak funding by $550 million.
● Rick voted to increase spending on social programs by $7 billion.
● Rick voted to increase community development programs by $2 billion.

● Rick opposed the flat tax.
● Rick voted twice for internet taxes.
● Rick voted four times to raise tobacco taxes to fund Medicare prescription drugs, to pay $8 billion in child health insurance, to increase NIH funding, and to provide health insurance subsidies to small business.
● Rick voted to raise taxes by $9.4 billion to increase student loans.
● Rick opposed repealing Clinton’s gas tax increase.

● Super Hawk Rick: Rick claims everyone else is weak on defense and he specifically attacks Obama for not doing enough about terrorist states like Iran and Syria. So why did Rick do this?

● Rick voted for the Chemical Weapons Convention and then voted against forcing the President to certify that Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, North Korea and China have joined before the CWC would become effective.
● Rick voted to allow the sale of supercomputers to China.
● Rick voted to give North Korea $25 million in foreign aid.
● Rick voted to ban landmines.
● Rick voted for the START II Treaty.
● Rick voted against requiring President Clinton to get Congress’s authorization for military action in Bosnia.

● Ricky the Lobbyist: While Rick claims to be an outsider, he served 16 years in the House and Senate. What’s more he is deeply immersed in lobbying culture and has traded influence:

● In 2006, Rick received the most contributions from lobbyists of any Senator.
● After Rick lost to Bob Casey in 2006, he became a lobbyist for multiple groups. One group was United Health Services. Rick sponsored two Medicare-reform bills while he was in the Senate which would have aided UHS. Rick also joined the board of directors of American Continental Group, a lobbying company. As a Senator, Rick got earmarks for many of ACG’s clients.
● Rick voted to require broadcasters to provide discounted broadcast rates to politicians.

Rick is not a fiscal conservative, not even close. In fact, he’s closer to Obama than Bush and Bush was anything but a fiscal conservative. Rick’s also no foreign policy conservative. Nor is he averse to influence peddling.

And when it comes to social policy, he’s either a moron or a cynic. He will often contradict himself on issues like gay marriage where he speaks in circles about states’ rights, and he’ll make vague pronouncements like his belief in “marriage,” which he treats as a policy but provides no details. Moreover, the things he does propose, like passing constitutional amendments, are non-starters because they simply can’t be passed. So what is he actually promising? It sounds like he’s more concerned with pandering than he is in achieving anything.

Moreover, his stridency about his social conservatism is a disaster waiting to happen. Of all the candidates left, Santorum is the only one who is guaranteed to attract 0.0% of the moderate vote. He will even turn off many conservatives as well because, to borrow a line from Ghostbusters II, “he scares the straights.”

Think twice before you decide this man is the conservative alternative to Romney.


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