In his concession speech from Mars, Pennsylvania on Tuesday night, Rick Santorum gave President Obama a brief, perfunctory razzing before launching into a diatribe against his chief rival, Mitt Romney. Santorum justified his continued involvement in the Republican nomination process by arguing that there isn’t enough of a difference between Mitt Romney and President Obama, comparing his own campaign to Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign in 1976. “We don't win by moving to the middle,” Santorum said. “We win by getting people in the middle to move to us.” Santorum cast himself as Reagan, the principled, far right conservative, and Romney as Gerald Ford, the compromising, weak centrist who won the 1976 nomination but lost the presidency to Jimmy Carter.
In reality, though, there is no Reagan in this race. In his proposed tax plan, Romney would slash taxes on the mega-rich, providing cuts averaging $150,000 for each top-one-percent earner. What would Reagan do? Well, after cutting taxes in 1981, the next year he implemented the single largest peacetime tax increase in American history. Romney has criticized Rick Santorum’s votes to raise the debt ceiling as a member of Congress but Reagan personally raised the debt ceiling 18 times during his time in office. Romney has "evolved" into an adamantly pro-life candidate, even vetoing the expansion of access to emergency contraception in Massachusetts because he believes that it "terminates life after conception". Reagan, as governor, signed the Therapeutic Abortion Act, which widely expanded access to abortions for hundreds of thousands of California women.
Santorum also finds himself to Reagan’s right. While Reagan once said, “Church and state are, and must remain, separate,” Santorum said in February that he doesn’t “believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute.” Santorum has also been a staunch opponent of gun control – opposing the Federal Assault Weapons Ban and Brady Bill. Meanwhile, Ronald Reagan became an outspoken advocate of expanded gun control at the state and federal level, endorsing a federal seven-day waiting period for the purchase of handguns.
All of this Reagan-centric posturing is notwithstanding the fact that Reagan himself, for all intents and purposes, wasn't even a particularly great president. Apart from the fact that his deification occurred a decade after he left office – Gallup polls show his approval rating jumping over 20 points between 1992 and ’99 – under Reagan the national debt skyrocketed to $3 trillion. Reagan publicly opposed the Civil Rights Act, threatened the Voting Rights Act and even vetoed sanctions against the apartheid regime of South Africa. After it was discovered that he illegally sold weapons to Iran, and then lied about it, one-third of the country wanted Reagan to resign.
Santorum’s rationale for his continued presence in this race, despite the growing odds against him, is that he is the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney, that he is the “principled” Reagan to Romney's vulnerable Ford. However, it's clear that both candidates are far to Reagan's right, a man whose presidency is not the best subject for analogy anyway. The main difference between the candidates now, with Romney encroaching upon Santorum's ideological niche, may be that only one of them, with delegate math in his favor, is nearly halfway to securing the Republican nomination.
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The Republican Party not only has become the "party of no." It has become the political home for anti-Americanism, for defeatist rhetoric, for visceral hate, and for those evil individuals that believe the best days of America are long gone and we should simply clamp down with full-on austerity and cut off all but the rich from existence. Working Americans are enemies of the state in the mind of the GOP. The Republican Party offers no positive vision for this country's future and instead happily watches as their corporate benefactors ship every last American job to China for greater profit.
Skimming quickly the portion of this phrase that grabbed me was "In his concession speech from Mars, … Rick Santorum..."
Made me chuckle.
Who were the Hesians and why was Washington chasing them away?
are you asking seriously, or are you pretending that you are from California, where "no American History courses are taught?" ;)
Seriously, because Santoram hesitated before he said this. I'm sure I learned about this but, the old memory ain't what it used to be. History wasn't one of my favorite subjects. Now it is.
Yes, but The One they worship today is "not your father's
BuickRonald Reagan."(Just as their Jesus is not the one found in the Bible. . .)
The only difference between Santorum and Romney is that Santorum wants a short detour past the religious right to damn our free thinking before continuing to the poor house.
Again and again and again... Belief is more important to today's repukes than facts or science or un-reinvented history. They believe that Saint Ronald of Rayguns was what they now believe he was so actual historical information is irrelevant!
Why do you keep getting confused about why repukes believe what they believe just because history and facts and science say otherwise?
Because FACTS are stubborn and won't go away. Because WE live in the real world. Because when you visit the monkeys in the zoo, its okay to mimic their facial expressions - you just don't want to "open the lock" on their cages so that they can get out. So can WE put these crazies back behind the gates where they belong?
Reagan wouldn't even have been invited to today's Republican Party.
I think the reason that Santorum and Romney keep invoking his name is because Reagan was really the first modern President to prove that truth and facts weren't important -that it was only the STORY that counted. Trouble is, Santorum and Romney have taken Reagan's looseness with the truth to the extreme!!
Those Regan facts would make a great Obama commercial. And after pointing out how far to the right and out sight of Regan both Mitt and Rick are, it would be a nice closure to point out that they are even to the right of Bush and ask what ever happened to him by the way. And I absolutely love DAY-3905329's observation. Why not end the commerical with a comparison of the current wing nut crowd with their Jesus and highlight how they are even out of sync with him? That commercial should make their heads explode with rage.
You are too kind, friend! And your commercial is indeed an "exploding head" concept!
I love that analogy about exploding heads. I witnessed that once when I said to a fellow christian and a conservative acquaintance, I hate to say this but Jesus was a liberal. That conversation got heated very quickly. I thought he might actually have a stroke.
So the GOP are failing history, science and math, they are only auditing religion so no grade is given. I guess they are majoring in 'Loopholes in the Ten Commandments.'
You're forgetting one really big thing. 1976 was just after the Watergate debacle and Nixon's resignation. Republicans had a REALLY BAD reputation. Santorum seems to make the assumption that Reagan could have won the presidency had he been the nominee. However, in 1976, I don't think that ANY Republican could have been elected, even if the almighty himself were the nominee.