Rick Santorum
Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum raised the example of his grandfather who fled Europe to escape the rise of Mussolini to make the case for why President Barack Obama should not be re-elected.
Mr. Santorum said that his grandfather was nearly killed on the Russian front fighting for the Hapsburg Empire, and that after the war, “he went to work and was raising his family and then he saw another emperor coming on the scene–Mussolini. And he said, ‘No more. I am not going to have my children live in the service of emperor and sacrifice for an emperor. I am going to live in a country that believes in me, that I can I provide for myself and I don’t have to serve some sovereign.’ Ladies and gentlemen, we don’t serve sovereigns in America.”
He added, “The government works for you to preserve your liberties. That is its principle function. Not to take your money and distribute it around. “
Mr. Santorum made the remarks to about 100 or so supporters and members of the media outside the Homestead Grocery and Deli in Amherst, NH. The former PA senator has vaulted into the top tier of presidential contenders after a surprising near victory in the Iowa caucuses.
He warned that if President Obama is re-elected, that “We will be the generation that has lost faith with the principles of America.”
At an earlier event however, Mr. Santorum seemed to be stealing from the President Obama’s playbook. He told the audience at a forum on the economy, “I also talk about the importance of hope. The importane that you still believe America is the land of opportunity. That you can rise in our society and that there are better jobs out there for you.”
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People who are capable of reasoning can see that Rick Santorum’s campaign statements are the product of bad judgment. That should disqualify him from being elected president, but only time will tell whether the voters will be smart enough to say no to candidates who use bad judgment. The voters haven’t been too reliable about that in the past.
That’s like Hitler bashing Mussolini supporters.
Rick should enter the priesthood and church politics.
What on Earth is Santorum talking about? How are we “serving” Obama? Can he come up with one single example?
If he’s talking about health care reform, can he seriously argue that those in Europe, Canada, Australia, and our other peer nations are somehow no longer free? Surely we must take up arms and liberate them!
(When Medicare was being debated in the 60s, Ronald Reagan warned that we would tell our children what it was once like to be free. Let’s say that prediction didn’t exactly pan out either.)
If he’s talking about raising income taxes on the wealthy, how is it serving the “sovereign” to put the top brackets where they were under Clinton? Were we serving Eisenhower when the top marginal rates were far, far higher than they are today?
But hey, don’t let the facts get in the way of a truly warped world view, right?