Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum unexpectedly got a New Media boost Sunday when a top Tea Party blogger endorsed the former Pennsylvania senator.
“Santorum shines bright enough above the others that I am not shy about picking him as my candidate of choice,” said Peter Ingemi, the blogger and talk radio host known as “Da Tech Guy.”
Long a supporter of Herman Cain, who suspended his campaign Saturday, Da Tech Guy’s endorsement praised Santorum’s determination: “Among the current candidates he is one of the few who have not had a surge of support, nevertheless he has not stopped working hard and campaigning all out.”
Although some pundits have predicted that Cain’s erstwhile supporters would switch their support to Newt Gingrich, the former House Speaker was crossed off the list of many Tea Party activists two years ago, when Gingrich backed liberal Republican Dede Scozzafava against conservative hero Doug Hoffman in a crucial New York special election. Hoffman got a coveted endorsement by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and was also endorsed by former Texas Rep. Dick Armey, whose FreedomWorks organization has been a major supporter of the Tea Party movement. When Gingrich repeatedly appeared on TV to promote Scozzafava — denounced by many grassroots conservatives as a “RINO” (Republican In Name Only) — nationally syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin said: “Newt for 2012? No, thanks.”
Santorum “has been a forceful and unambiguous voice for both social and fiscal conservatism,” said Ingemi, a devout Catholic and outspoken pro-life activist, who noted that his values are shared by the candidate he endorsed: “Even more importantly he has been unafraid to express Catholic truth without concern for MSM’s sensibilities.”
Da Tech Guy’s endorsement, which immediately drew notice from Jazz Shaw at the popular Hot Air blog, was one of several unexpected items of good news for Santorum in recent days. On Thursday, Palin surprised many Fox News viewers when she singled out Santorum for praise during an interview with Sean Hannity. The same day, Santorum was endorsed by one of Iowa’s most prominent evangelical ministers.
Evidence of conservative resistance to Gingrich — including a denunciation of his political leadership by Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn — could mark a turning point in favor of Santorum’s campaign. Less than one month before the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, Santorum brings his “Faith, Family and Freedom Tour” to begin a three-day swing through the Hawkeye State today. The only GOP 2012 candidate to have visited all 99 of Iowa’s counties, the married father of seven has strong support among social conservatives, who are viewed as one of the state’s most important Republican constituencies.
The endorsement by Ingemi may add an extra boost for Santorum’s candidacy in New Hampshire. “Da Te Guy on Da Radio” is broadcast every Saturday on WCRN-AM, a 50,000-watt talk-radio station whose signal reaches much of the Granite State, including Manchester.
Current Republican presidential front-runner Newt Gingrich has put social issues in “the back of the bus,” his GOP rival Rick Santorum said Sunday in an appearance on ABC’s This Week.
Asked by host Christianne Amanapour about Gingrich’s stand on “social values,” Santorum said: “I think Newt has consistently put those in, let’s say, the back of the bus. He has never really been an advocate of pushing those issues. Newt is someone who likes to get issues that are 80 to 90 percent in the polls, and 80 percent in the polls are generally not necessarily conservative — strong conservative issues.”
Santorum touted his own record as he prepared to begin a three-day “Faith, Family and Freedom Tour” of Iowa, where social conservatives are a key constituency in the Republican caucuses, now less than a month away. (Full transcript below.)
“I think character is definitely an issue,” the former Pennsylvania senator said. “You know, I think they have to make a decision based upon the person’s entire record. And certainly character counts. And I think you look at — you know, I’ve been married 21 years, I have seven children, that’s a factor that people are going to look at and should look at when it comes to, you know, the person.”
Verona, PA – Republican Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum will return to northwest Iowa on Sunday, December 4th on the latest leg of his “Faith, Family and Freedom Tour.”
Open press events are noted, all times are local.
Sunday, December 4:
2:00pm CT: Senator Santorum will host a “Faith, Family and Freedom” Town Hall meeting in Sidney, IA where Senator Santorum will focus on job creation and economic growth.
Location: Sidney Senior Center
2820 Northridge Road
Sidney, IA
5:30pm CT: Senator Santorum will hold a “Faith, Family and Freedom” Rally in Council Bluffs, IA.
Location: Mid-America Center
1 Arena Way
Council Bluffs, IA
6:30pm CT: Senator Santorum will hold a media availability following his “Faith, Family and Freedom” Rally in Council Bluffs, IA.
Location: Mid-America Center
1 Arena Way
Council Bluffs, IA
Monday, December 5:
9:00am CT: Senator Santorum will hold a media availability prior to his “Faith, Family and Freedom” Town Hall Meeting in Sioux City, IA
Location: Stoney Creek Inn
300 3rd Street
Sioux City, IA
9:30am CT: Senator Santorum will host a “Faith, Family and Freedom” Town Hall meeting Sioux City, IA.
Location: Stoney Creek Inn
300 3rd Street
Sioux City, IA
12:30pm CT: Senator Santorum will host a “Faith, Family and Freedom” Town Hall in Le Mars, IA.
Location: 4 Brother’s Restaurant
1430 Two Rivers Boulevard
Le Mars, IA
5:30pm CT: Senator Santorum will be the featured guest at the Sanborn Winter Gala in Sanborn, IA.
Location: Jay’s Restaurant & Lounge
120 West 7th Street
Sanborn, IA
7:30pm CT: Senator Santorum will hold a “Faith, Family and Freedom” Rally in Sioux Center, IA.
Location: Dordt College Campus Center
498 4th Avenue NE
Sioux Center, IA
8:30pm CT: Senator Santorum will hold a media availability following his “Faith, Family and Freedom” Rally in Sioux Center, IA.
Location: Dordt College Campus Center
498 4th Avenue NE
Sioux Center, IA
Tuesday, December 6:
8:00am CT: Senator Santorum will hold a “Faith, Family and Freedom” Town Hall meeting in Storm Lake, IA.
Location: Lake Shore Café
1520 Lake Avenue
12:00pm CT: Senator Santorum will hold a “Faith, Family and Freedom” Town Hall meeting in Spencer, IA.
Location: Pizza Ranch
528 Grand Avenue
Spencer, IA
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up . . .
— Ecclesiastes 3:1-3 (KJV)
“There are many elaborate theories as to why American religion persists. The best answer is so obvious it’s easy to miss: The founding idea of America is a theological statement. Take away the Almighty and problems sprout like crabgrass.”
— Jeremy Lott, “One Nation Under God”
Some people believe in luck but, although I seem to be on a losing streak lately, I don’t believe in luck. Nor do I believe in accidents. When a deer destroyed my KIA last year, the insurance company called it an “accident,” but surely there was some larger purpose served by that event, although the purpose is as unknown to me as it was to the deer.
Seemingly random things happen every day that are not really as random as they seem. Why do I wear a fedora? Because Pete Da Tech Guy wears fedoras. One day in January 2010, we were on our way to cover a Scott Brown campaign event and I picked up one of Pete’s spare fedoras on our way out the door of his house in Fitchburg, Mass.
How was it, that out of all the sofas in all of Massachusetts, I spent that week on Pete’s sofa in Fitchburg? How did I come to be Pete’s friend? See, it involved this guy named Charles Johnson — maybe you’ve heard of him — and on that day in September 2009 when I swore the war oath of Clan Cameron, it touched something in Pete’s soul.
Oh, did I say “soul”? Excuse my transgression of the separation of church and blog. I merely meant to say that my friendship with Pete was no more accidental than my acquiring a blog sidekick who plays the bagpipes and knows enough Gaelic to translate the war oath of Clan Cameron.
Luck? Accident? Nope. Don’t believe in that stuff. It was neither luck nor accident that accounts for these things, nor was it luck that brought me to the intersection of 100th Street and 570th Avenue that August afternoon in Iowa. My schedule in Iowa had certain fixed dates and locations, but on that Saturday I had nothing in particular on my schedule and so . . .
Perhaps 50 voters showed up Saturday for a campaign event held in a barn on a dirt road amid cornfields near Roland, about 20 miles north of Ames. While a few dozen voters isn’t much of a crowd by Republican presidential campaign standards, the audience inside the barn was enlarged — and enlivened — by the presence of scores of children, the offspring of several Christian homeschooling families in attendance. One family brought eight kids, another brought nine, and the hosts, Scott and Susan Hurd, have seven of their own, as did the guest from Pennsylvania whose “Road to Ames Barn Bash” was the occasion of this gathering.
Rick Santorum has been campaigning across the state for months and, as he told the voters (and their numerous children) during his speech in the barn, he has visited 51 cities in Iowa by now. . . .
— The American Spectator, Aug. 8, 2011
If there was any special purpose to that trip, it was as a favor to my devoutly Catholic friend, Lisa Graas, whom I first knew as the Twitter phenomenon “PalinTwibe,” which she abandoned in 2010 when Sarah Palin endorsed Rand Paul in the Kentucky Senate GOP primary where Lisa (a Kentuckian) favored another candidate.
One month from now, I plan to be in Iowa, reporting the results of the Republican caucuses. And I’m asking readers to contribute to the Shoe Leather Fund to get me there — $10, $20, $50, whatever you can afford.
My plan is to leave on Dec. 26, the day after Christmas, so you’ll have a full week of on-the-scene campaign coverage. I’ll cover all the candidates, but you guys know I’m a hopeless sucker for dark horses, long shots, underdogs and lost causes.
On this day, a month before the Iowa caucuses, what cause seems more hopelessly lost than Rick Santorum‘s campaign? He’s been stuck in single digits in all the polls. Nobody thinks he has a chance.
People laughed at me when I spent months covering Herman Cain, but they stopped laughing when magic happened in Orlando:
What Herman Cain did in Orlando this weekend was both completely unexpected and entirely predictable. As late as Friday afternoon, none of the pundits expected the Atlanta businessman to win the Florida GOP’s “Presidency 5” straw poll. But if what it took to win was a dynamic speaker who could bring a roomful of grassroots Republicans to their feet, Cain’s victory was in some sense inevitable.
“Send Washington a message!” Cain thundered from the stage of the Orange County Convention Center, prompting one of seven standing ovations he received Saturday in his speech preceding the vote in which he stomped Texas Gov. Rick Perry so badly that the Republican front-runner may never recover.
Perry’s disastrous debate performance Thursday — in which he said opponents of college tuition subsidies for illegal immigrants “don’t have a heart” — was the precipitating event of Cain’s triumph. As the old saying goes, luck is the intersection of preparation and opportunity, and Cain was perhaps uniquely prepared to take advantage of the opportunity Perry’s stumble presented. . . .
— “Cain’s Magic Moment,” The American Spectator, Sept. 26, 2011
How quickly things can change, you see. And just as Cain’s years of experience as a public speaker was exactly the kind of preparation that made Orlando such a turning point, aren’t Rick Santorum’s months of grassroots campaigning exactly the kind of preparation needed to seize the opportunity in Iowa?
You say it can’t be done? You say Rick Santorum can’t possibly win the Iowa caucuses? One month before Election Day in 2009, I had never even heard of a guy named Doug Hoffman, and by the time it was over, that geeky accountant had become “an electric symbol of conservatism.”
Some of my friends who spent months riding with me on the Cain Train may not be huge fans of Rick Santorum’s politics. And if you don’t want to take this ride, I’ll understand. But to me, the message and the mission are the same things that made NY-23 a national crusade: To wreck the plans of those GOP Establishment insiders who think they can shove their bogus sold-out candidates down our throats.
We must rally the people to a good man who stands firmly for what he believes to be Right and True. And those who complained constantly about Cain’s weaknesses must admit that Santorum is strong exactly where Cain was weak: Experience in office, a firm grasp of foreign policy details, and the kind of solid campaign structure needed to turn grassroots enthusiasm into votes on Election Day.
Rick Santorum is a different kind of candidate than Herman Cain, but I know him to be a good man. I’ve met his family. I’ve hung out with him when other reporters on the campaign trail were ignoring him. He actually bought me lunch once. And he inspired Lisa Graas to write something beautiful:
I may be a crippled and mentally broken single mom in poverty in the Appalachian foothills — a coal miner’s daughter — but to hold onto and speak up for what is true … that is the kind of person I have to be because, as noted, to do otherwise is death for me. Rick Santorum knows that about me, and that’s why he called this broken woman in Kentucky and said, “You’re an inspiration.” No matter how broken I may be, I will stand, and seeing that in the various people he meets in his travels is what keeps his hope for our country alive. I know that to be true about him.
“Karen and I understand how trying national political campaigns are — not just on the candidates, but the candidate’s family. We respect Herman’s decision to suspend his campaign and trust that he made the best decision for his family. As we have for all our fellow candidates, we will continue to keep Herman and his entire family in our prayers.”
— Rick Santorum
UPDATE II: Thanks to Joan in Georgia and Mike in New Hampshire (both Cainiacs, BTW) for hitting the tip jar. Here’s some groovy and hopeful music for you:
You know, I remember when Sarah said “no” and broke the hearts of the Palinistas. A lot of them ended up on the Cain Train. Now that’s gone off the rails and so here’s to hoping we can pull a shocking upset that will let the Establishment know that We the People are still willing to fight back.
2:10 p.m. ET: My 12-year-old son Jefferson asked, ‘What does ‘suspending’ mean?” It means “quit.” Cain will still be on the ballot in several states. He could, if he chose, resume the campaign at some future point, but in general, “suspend = quit.”
The good news? J.D. Gordon is now unemployed.
More good news? My “sources close to the campaign” can now speak on the record about who was responsible for screwing up.
And finally, for those of my friends worried about my future diplomatic career, it’s still morning in Vanuatu. IYKWIMAITYD.
UPDATE 3 p.m. ET: Major media headlines via Memeorandum:
Iowa law enforcement officials could not immediately confirm rumors that several of the remaining 2012 GOP presidential candidates have sought restraining order to prevent J.D. Gordon from coming anywhere near their campaigns.
UPDATE 6:30 p.m. ET: The disappointment of our hopes requires psychological healing, and my healing process has involved focusing my rage on J.D. Gordon. This is my fault and not J.D.’s. He showed himself a Christian gentleman by calling me on the phone just now to address my anger head-on.
More will need to be said, to explain all the misunderstandings, but it seems that I have unfairly blamed J.D. for things that were not his fault. Putting Robert Costa on Tuesday’s conference call and leaving me out? That was somebody else, and J.D. didn’t even know that media (including a Fox News reporter) were on the call until it was over.
As to the general errors of the messaging/P.R./communications operation under Gordon’s tenure . . .
Well, “extenuating circumstances” would be one way to say it, although those less charitably disposed toward Gordon might say “excuses.” Gordon spent 93 days in a crucible of nonstop crisis and, in retrospect, he never had time to fix everything that needed to be fixed, including many things that were not his fault — and being hated by some people merely because he wasn’t Ellen Carmichael.
Those of us in the press corps who admired Ellen Carmichael’s work — when she worked for a candidate best known as “Herman Who?” — are necessarily prejudiced in her favor. As my disappointment turned to rage this week, and I sought a scapegoat on whom to focus all my pent-up frustration with the failures of the Cain campaign . . .
Well, J.D. drew the short straw. And it was unfair to blame him, uniquely and personally, for destroying the Cain campaign.
I’ll try to explain more about my feelings, and what happened to the Cain campaign, when I’ve gotten some sleep. And switched to decaf.
So I’m sorry to disappoint those who were looking forward to a bloody death-match beween J.D. and me. But I hope you enjoyed a laugh at my ballistic fury.
** PREVIOUSLY **
1:45 p.m. ET: “I am not going to be silenced and I am not going away! . . . Plan B: I call it ‘TheCainSolutions.com.'”
1:42 p.m. ET: Cain says he is suspending his campaign.
1:41 p.m. ET: “I am at peace with my God. I am at peace with my wife. And she is at peace with me.” Chants of “Gloria! Gloria! Gloria!”
1:40 p.m. ET: “False and unproven accusations . . . It hurts the American people.” Chants of “Herman! Herman! Herman!”
1:39 p.m. ET: “I am the very first to own up to my mistakes . . . I handle it my way.”
1:38 p.m. ET: “I am proof that a common man can lead this country.”
1:36 p.m. ET: “We can say, I’m in the Final Four.”
1:34 p.m. ET: Cain jokes that his name recognition is now “probably 99.9 percent.”
1:32 p.m. ET: Cain’s verb tenses indicate he will quit?
1:30 p.m. ET: Cain says his supporters are not “warm weather supporters.”
1:29 p.m. ET: Herman Cain takes the stage. “Well, you all are great. . . . I love y’all, too.”
** PREVIOUSLY **
We are awaiting Herman Cain’s appearance at an event where he is expected to announce whether or not he will continue his campaign for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.
UPDATE: I’ve been told that Cain’s speech is actually likely to begin at 1:30 p.m., instead of the announced 1 p.m. time. The cable TV networks are full of speculation of what Cain will do if he quits. My sources say: “Full speed ahead.”
UPDATE II: Invocation prayer by Alveda King. The pledge of allegiance by Col. Michael Steele.
While some published reports indicate that Herman Cain plans to announce today that he will suspend his Republican presidential campaign, even top staff on the campaign still have no idea what Cain’s decision will be.
“I don’t know anything,” said one staffer who was working in a key early state this morning. The campaign’s field director Jamie Brazil “doesn’t know anything,” the staffer said in a brief phone interview. Politico cited “multiple sources” for its report that the Atlanta businessman was “leaning toward suspending the campaign,” a report dismissed by the staffer.
“Nobody knows. The honest answer is, nobody f–king knows. I don’t know. I don’t even know if Mark Block knows. My guess is that he probably does not. … Everybody’s just waiting. I think the honest truth is, whoever talked to Politico … is speculative. I mean, everybody’s got their opinion of what he might say or do, but nobody knows for sure.” . . .
It’s kind of funny how much easier it is to get exclusives once you threaten to beat the campaign communications director into a bloody mess. Many “sources close to the campaign” wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment. If the Cain campaign continues, J.D. Gordon will almost certainly be fired.
UPDATE: “Everybody hates J.D.,” says a source close to the campaign, after describing how one longtime Cain adviser “laughed for five minutes” when told about my sarcastic remarks about Gordon.
One veteran political correspondent to whom I spoke this morning said that he had long been in direct e-mail communication with top Cain campaign staffers Mark Block and Linda Hansen, and even with the candidate himself. “That all stopped in October,” said the reporter, who never had any dealings with Gordon. “Who is this guy, anyway?”
Meanwhile, another source close to the campaign said, shortly before noon, that “all the internal communications” indicate that Cain’s plan are to go “full speed ahead” with the campaign, and predicted that the candidate will give a “defiant” speech in Atlanta.
Shortly after midnight, I received an e-mail from an aide to the Herman Cain campaign, evidently alarmed by expressions of wrath in last night’s post. In the wee hours this morning, I replied to that e-mail with a simple question: “Has J.D. Gordon been fired?” So then I went to bed and, upon checking my e-mail after waking up this morning, I found a reply to the effect of “I don’t know.” To which I then replied:
When I woke up, after five hours sleep, the question in my mind was this: To whom is my loyalty owed?
That is to say, am I writing on behalf of the people who have been paid to do a job at which they have conspicuously failed — and I think the name J.D. Gordon is at or near the top of that list — or am I writing on behalf of the many thousands of small donors who have helped pay the salaries of the failures, and on behalf of the unpaid volunteers whose long hours of labor have been squandered because of those failures?
And look: “Multiple sources told POLITICO late Friday that Cain was leaning toward quitting.”
Where are MY “multiple sources,” huh? How come I could get nothing from anybody?
— RSM
Perhaps readers will get the point without my explaining it, but I’ll explain anyway: When J.D. Gordon screwed me over by leaving me off Tuesday’s conference call, I took it personally. But it’s not just about me. It’s about people who supported Herman Cain who have been screwed over by that kind of routine incompetence by staffers who were being paid to do jobs at which they failed.
This afternoon, I went to the bank and then went to Wal-Mart to get some ink cartridges for my printer ($41.28 — hit the freaking tip jar). As is my habit when I’m offline for more than a few minutes, I kept working the cell phone the whole time I was out, calling sources and so forth, and spoke to multiple people about the Herman Cain campaign.
Never mind today’s news: What the hell is going on inside the inner circle? At one point, I grabbed my pen and scrawled a few quotes from a source: “[Name of campaign staffer] killed Herman Cain . . . I’m a little pissed about it. . . . Everybody was turf-guarding.”
Obviously, you don’t know what those quotes signify, and the omitted name is neither Mark Block nor J.D. Gordon, although their names came up frequently in conversations with people who are sick and tired of what one source called the “clusterf–k nightmare” that the Cain campaign has become. People who hope and believe that Herman Cain will keep going and may actually mount a miracle comeback are demanding that someone — or better yet, everyone — on the senior campaign staff be fired, if not indeed horsewhipped within an inch of their miserable lives.
“I’m a little pissed” — that one source severely understates the wrath of many people who love Herman Cain, but hate his campaign.
Inevitably, however, the helpless confusion of the campaign reflects on the candidate: He’s the guy whose business expertise is about finding the right people to focus on the right problem. But the people he has found — well, they are the problem.
“How the f–k is he going to run the country if he can’t run a g–d–d campaign?”
Maybe that was a source. Or maybe that was me, shouting into my phone while standing in the electronics aisle at Wal-Mart. I wasn’t taking notes at that point, so I’m not exactly sure, although I do remember some shoppers giving me startled looks, so it was probably me.
Well, anyway, I got back home, went to work on some projects, including arrangements for my trip to Iowa (departing Dec. 26 — hit the freaking tip jar) and by the time I had time to look at the headlines . . . Yeah, “clusterf–k nightmare” sums it up:
From my perspective, these headlines are much less consequential than “Stacy McCain Excluded From Conference Call,” but I understand if the rest of the world doesn’t see it from my perspective.
The factional infighting among various cliques and personalities within the Cain campaign staff — yeah, I could tell you some of that. (Source: “What does [name of staffer] actually do?”) However, I hope within 24 hours to be able to report that the entire Cain campaign staff have taken their quarrels with them on the way to the unemployment office.
And perhaps in a week or so, you’ll see one of these ex-staffers standing by the freeway ramp, disheveled and bleary-eyed, holding up a crudely lettered cardboard sign: “Will F–k Up Your Campaign for $$$.”
UPDATE: If it is true, as I have been told since this post went online, that Herman Cain’s campaign currently has $7 million cash on hand, the overwhelming likelihood is that Herman Cain will not quit — and that is exclusive news.
With $7 million, Cain can do a lot of things: Even if his “burn rate” amounted to $500,000 a week on average, he could make it all the way through February — without raising another dime. But if he could actually manage to continue his campaign despite all the evil that has been heaped upon his name, that would be enough of a moral victory as perhaps to inspire greater support and continued contributions.
And how much would it cost to send J.D. Gordon to take charge of the Cain campaign headquarters in Fargo, North Dakota? Probably less than it would cost to clean up the bloody mess that will be left of him if I ever lay eyes on that useless son of bitch again.
