Today’s shameless hypocrite: Rick Santorum
- Posted by Beth on January 26th, 2008 filed in 2008 election, Candidates, General, John McCain, Journalism, Politics, Stupid, WTF hypocrites
After a while I got up to go get something from the cafĂ© cart, and it turns out the guy sitting behind me was Rick Santorum, which makes it all the more fun and all the more interesting. So pretty much the whole trip this guy is working his cell phone, talking to people about how anyone is better than McCain and Giuliani would be better than McCain because then at least he wouldn’t betray the conservative movement… yeah, Giuliani is bad on some issues like abortion, but at least he would stand with the conservative movement. He was saying that there are people like Susan Collins who vote moderate sometimes, but at least she is a team player who always plays with the team and never plays against the conservative side even if she has to give the liberals a vote because she’s from Maine. But McCain will sometimes go against the team even when he doesn’t have to. Anyway, he’s just calling person after person after person on his list, trying to rally them against McCain to give money against him, be uncommitted to the national convention- apparently he was talking to some committed delegates- and he was thinking the best thing for the conservative movement would be a brokered convention, because then at least the conservatives would still have enough pull to pick the nominee.
Call after call after call, speaking in a relatively loud voice, trashing his party’s likely nominee, he says, I probably shouldn’t talk about that on a train, I’ll call you later on that topic. And it really made me wonder how bad the topic could be. At some point I started feeling a little guilty about hearing all this stuff so I turned around, introduced myself, and said “Hey, I’m in politics, I’m on the other side, I’m a Democrat,” in part to see if he would keep doing the phone calls trashing McCain given that a Democratic activist was sitting in front of him. And he did keep doing them, call after call. Apparently, it didn’t bother him at all that a Democrat was listening in as he kept trashing McCain.
There’s more there, of course.
And why does it make me so sick? As Stephen Hayes points out at The Weekly Standard, it’s probably not McCain who should be called “disloyal.”
Although many others have been as critical of McCain, perhaps no one has been as hypocritical. In 2006, when Santorum was running for reelection, he asked McCain to come to Pennsylvania to campaign on his behalf. When McCain obliged, Santorum put the video on his campaign website, listing it first among “key events” of the year. That’s gratitude, Santorum-style.
You know, I’m really sorry I ever sent a dime to that loser’s failed re-election campaign. Obviously it wasn’t only wasted on a losing candidate, it was wasted on a real asshole.
Oh, and before I forget–Mark Levin is a lying fool.
Mark Levin, a longtime confidant of both Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity who now hosts his own increasingly popular talk show, took the anti-McCain argument a step further on his show last Wednesday. “At this point, anybody who supports John McCain and claims to be a conservative, let me be blunt: You’re not a conservative.”
Which came as a surprise to Jack Kemp, the ardent supply-sider who was the conservative alternative to George H.W. Bush in 1988. “That’s just so preposterous,” said Kemp. “I don’t agree with McCain on several things. He’s gotten right on the economy. He’s right on foreign policy. And he’s right on the war on terror.”
And no doubt a surprise also to Phil Gramm (lifetime ACU rating of 95), whose presidential campaign was endorsed by National Review in 1996. And to Sam Brownback, a stalwart conservative and one of the most outspoken pro-life politicians in America today. And to Tom Coburn from Oklahoma, arguably the most conservative member of the Senate.
“John McCain and I have stood side by side on many issues,” Coburn said in endorsing McCain last week. The most important, he added, are “fiscal responsibility” and the “sanctity of human life.”
It comes as a surprise to me, too. I had no idea that Mark Levin was the arbiter of what being a conservative means! And to think, for all these years I’ve been called a conservative! Oh, wait, maybe I’m not. Maybe I’m supposed to be a dishonest, hysterical, thought-police fool like Mark Levin instead!
And I’m still going to vote for John McCain anyway, whether conservative talk radio hosts and others like Ann freakin’ Coulter like it or not. They don’t speak for all conservatives, no matter how many “no true Scotsman” fallacies they throw out there.
Lord Bitememan says:
Santorum thinks you shouldn’t be allowed to break party line if you’re a Republican. I guess he didn’t learn too much from his own defeat. Santorum was defeated by Bob Casey Jr., an ardent pro-life Democrat. Casey supports overturning Roe v. Wade and opposes embryonic stem cell research. This latter point is most amusing since at the same time the Dems were using Casey to beat Santorum, they used opposition to stem cells to beat Jim Talent in Missouri. I guess breaking with party line is unacceptable to people who want to lose elections.
Beth says:
Yep, LB, more hypocrisy from Saint Santorum. What a douchebag.
TC says:
All I have to say about McPain is Dr. Juan Hernandez.
PaulW says:
Can this be verified that Santorum was doing this?! I’d like independent confirmation, hopefully from someone Santorum was calling, ’cause I’m wary of one-source info (and it’s horrifying how many MSM ‘reporters’ and even bloggers just go with one source…).
If this is true, then the Republican Party is truly screwed. If a major player like Santorum is doing this openly about McCain… the one guy in the GOP lineup that actually does better across the board in terms of electability (sp?)… the one guy who could best secure the White House against Hillary… if the GOP is trashing THEIR OWN GUY WHO HAS THE BEST CHANCE OF WINNING BACK MODERATES AND INDEPENDENT VOTERS… My God, they don’t care. The party has truly gone full-bore suicidal. They’d rather have ‘True Believers’ who can’t function or lead a nation over someone who could, they’d rather create a situation where the Clintons could reclaim the Presidency… and maybe they’d want it that way… 4 more years of partisan BS. God no… :(
Beth says:
Paul, I doubt this particular incident can be independently verified. But it’s certainly not inconsistent with what he’s doing in the media elsewhere. It’s just more shocking that he’s doing this crap on his cell phone, mostly uncensored, in full view/earshot of anyone who happens to be around. He’s said plenty in the media, but you sort of assume he’s considered his words in the media (although it wouldn’t be the first time Santorum’s said asinine shit in the media or on the floor of the Senate!).
And the phone calls–it just makes it so much more…I dunno, personal. Considering how McCain has tried to help him in the past, I am absolutely revolted by Santorum’s backstabbing, even with just the BS she’s saying in the media.
I find it interesting that all those calling McCain a “backstabber” and “disloyal” have nothing to say about Rick Santorum. Interesting. But surprising, not so much. Consistency and intellectual honesty aren’t things one finds terribly often in the blogosphere or ideological media (talk radio, columnists, etc.–on the left or right). Of course, I know I’m not telling you something you don’t already know. ;)
PaulW says:
The only good thing I can take out of this is that for every Santorum backstabbing McCain there’s about 3 more Republicans openly supporting him. My state governor Crist is backing McCain, and his popularity is good enough to give McCain at least another 5-10 percent in the numbers…
Terrye says:
Who cares about Hernandez TC? This is just a case of people like Malkin using the same kind of paranoid hysterical conspiracy nonsense to go after McCain that they used against George Bush, or perhaps I should say Jorge. I personally thought that accusing a man like Bush of selling out to Mexico was insane, but it seems there were some on the right who thought it made sense. And it was a successful enough ploy, at least in the short term that they have decided to use it on McCain too.
Guys like Santorum and Delay have some business talking about who a real Republican is anyway. One was indicted and the other one was beat.
Dave in Pgh. says:
This all sounds very familiar. I was a constituent of Rick’s since he first held office. Our local Republican Party chair (we’ll call him “Ralph”) worked to get Rick elected to Congress in 1990 and 1992, and to the Senate in 1994.
In 1996 “Ralph” ran for State Representative and lost in the Republican primary. He soon found out that Rick Santorum was making calls and garnering support on behalf of the eventual winner. Why, he wondered, was a US Senator interfering in a Pennsylvania House primary ?
That was the start of a permanent estrangement between a national political figure and a local party chairman. Pissing off the grass roots is no way to win. It got worse a couple of years back when “Ralph” ran for a county-wide office. He lost, and when he was watching the news reports on TV, he spotted Rick’s top aide Keith Schmidt at the victory party of the Democrat who won the election. Apparently this Keith guy is a real SOB who is loyal to no one but Rick.
Many other local activists who work with “Ralph” declared their opposition to Santorum months before the primary. Ironically, they were saying much the same thing about Rick that Rick is now saying about McCain. Santorum’s willingness to compromise with the other side alienated far too many Republicans for him to ever win another race in PA.
This is funny: In 2006, I attended a local party function at which Rick dropped by to give us his stump speech. “Ralph” showed up shortly before Rick did. Rick spotted “Ralph” across the room and looked like he was about to sweat blood. He obviously deliberately worked only one side of the room in order to avoid meeting up with “Ralph”. I shook his hand and wished him well when he was leaving. A part of me wanted to ask Rick why he didn’t come over and say “Hi” to “Ralph”.
I didn’t ask because I already knew the answer. A couple of months earlier, a little girl from the Santorum campaign spoke at a meeting of Republican activists led by “Ralph”. She was nice and all, but as soon as she finished he speech, “Ralph” spent the better part of an hour yelling at her about all of the problems he’d had with Rick over the previous decade. She was stunned, taken aback, and couldn’t do much more than promise to share “Ralph’s” concerns with the Senator. Let’s hope he got the message.
Beth says:
What an asshole! No wonder his approval ratings among PA voters was so low! I saw something the other day that in ‘06, he had the worst approval ratings of any Senator among his own constituents–I wish I could find it again.
He claims to be for the conservative agenda, but it’s obvious the only agenda he has is his own. If he were for “the conservative agenda,” he wouldn’t have done everything he could to defeat Pat Toomey against Arlen Specter, as well. He campaigned for Arlen Specter, but says John McCain isn’t conservative?
beth says:
McCain’s been around long enough and is straigh forward enough that I’m willing to bet more than a few Senators and Congressmen have felt his sting a time or two.
I admire that in a person.
One of my favorite Winston Churchill quotes:
Is Conservatism Dying or Dead? | MY Vast Right Wing Conspiracy says:
[...] conservative. Coulter, Malkin, Levin, Rush, Hannity, Hewitt, the Corner (save for Jonah Goldberg), Rick Santorum and the others with McCain Derangement Syndrome are the real Deciders, and they’ve apparently [...]