Category: Politics

Santorum Praised by Sarah Palin on Fox; Endorsed by Key Iowa Evangelical Pastor

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Has the fight for the Republican 2012 presidential nomination already become a two-man race between Mitt Romney versus Newt Gingrich? Not according to Sarah Palin, who singled out former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum for praise during her appearance Thursday night on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show.

“There is still a lot of fluid dynamic going on in this race,” Palin said, adding that if Republican voters “start shifting gears and deciding they want ideological consistency, then they’re going to start paying attention to, say, Rick Santorum.”

The former Alaska governor and 2008 vice presidential candidate went on to praise Santorum for being consistent on issues including his support for Israel and his pro-life stance:

TRANSCRIPT:
Sean Hannity: All right. If, if – if you were to assess – first of all, two questions in one: Do you think this come down to Newt versus Romney? Do you think any of the other candidates can emerge? And two, because they’re leading in the polls right now, a quick synopsis of the strengths and weaknesses you see in Newt and Romney.
Sarah Palin: I don’t think it has come down solidly to Newt versus Romney – no, not yet, because there is still a lot of fluid dynamic going on in this race. And if voters kind of start shifting gears and deciding they want ideological consistency, then they’re going to start paying attention to, say, Rick Santorum, who has been consistent on being a hard-liner against Iran, to help protect Israel. He’s been consistent on wanting to protect the most vulnerable and the sanctity of life. He’s been consistent in saying, we need to slash the federal income tax – I say we need to do away with it, that’s the only way to re-industrialize America and create jobs. People will start paying attention to some of these other messages from some of these other messengers, like Rick Santorum – you’re going to see that happen, still, in the next 32 days.

Palin followed up her appearance on Hannity’s show with a message sent to her nearly 700,000 Twitter followers:

Glad Santorum wants to re-industrialize USA w/ eliminating the corp income tax on manufactures.

Palin’s boost for Santorum drew attention from such campaign observers as Danny Yadron of the Wall Street Journal and Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review. Many of Palin’s supporters had hoped she would be a candidate for president this year and were disappointed by her Oct. 5 announcement that she would not run. Her praise for Santorum comes at a key point in the campaign, barely a month before Iowa Republicans cast the first actual votes for delegates in the Hawkeye State’s Jan. 3 caucuses. There may yet be an opportunity for Santorum, as blogger M. Joseph Sheppard said in highlighting Palin’s comments:

“If Gingrich, who is now starting to feel the blowtorch . . . falters then, who knows, Santorum might be in a position to be the next Non-Romney.
“Certainly Santorum is unencumbered by any personal baggage. If his social views come under attack whilst he is rising, should he rise, then there would be little effect on his rising support as everyone is well aware of his right to life beliefs.”

No candidate in the Republican race has campaigned as hard in Iowa as Santorum, who has visited all 99 counties in the state, and will return to the state Sunday as part of his “Faith, Family and Freedom Tour.” In an appearance Thursday on MSNBC, Santorum told Andrea Mitchell: “We will do well in Iowa — I have no doubt about that. . . We’re going to surprise a lot of people on [Iowa caucus] Election Day on January third.”

A Catholic father of seven, Santorum ranks low in polls but has strong support among social conservatives, including an Iowa evangelical minister whose endorsement was announced in a press release sent by the Santorum campaign Thursday night:

SANTORUM RECEIVES ENDORSEMENT
OF INFLUENTIAL IOWA EVANGELICAL LEADER
Influential Iowa Evangelical Leader, Pastor Cary Gordon
Stands With Santorum And Will Formally Announce
Via Text Message to 788,000 Registered Voters

Verona, PA – Tonight, Iowa evangelical leader, Pastor Cary Gordon announced his endorsement for Republican Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum for President of the United States.

Senator Santorum said: “I am truly honored to receive this endorsement tonight. Pastor Gordon is a leader for God’s truth in Iowa and the nation – and has stood tall against the forces that have pushed the redefinition of marriage. His work in Iowa has helped ensure that the traditional American family is defended and protected. I am humbled to have such a stalwart defender of traditional American values by our team’s side as we work to return our nation to the values that made our nation the greatest in the history of the world.”

As detailed by Jennifer Jacobs of the Des Moines Register, influential Sioux City Pastor Cary Gordon endorsed former Senator Rick Santorum for President of the United States:

Sioux City Evangelical Minister
to Endorse Rick Santorum
By: Jennifer Jacobs, The Des Moines Register

Sioux City evangelical leader Cary Gordon, who played a role in the defeat of three Iowa Supreme Court justices in last year’s elections, will endorse Rick Santorum for president on Friday.Gordon will make his endorsement via a text message Friday morning to 788,000 cell phones owned by registered Iowa voters or by residents of Iowa’s 5th Congressional District.He is pastor of Sioux City’s Cornerstone Church and president of PeaceMakers Institute. He is steadfastly opposed to same-sex marriage and abortion.Gordon told The Des Moines Register today that he also will spell out reasons why he favors Santorum – and rejects Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney – in a 20-minute video.

UPDATE: The text above has been edited to reflect a change in the video selection, substituting the YouTube clip for this video from the Media Research Center of the entire Palin/Hannity interview. The exchange in which Palin brought up Santorum’s name occurs at the 8:37 mark of this video:

In a statement on his campaign Web site, Santorum said: “I am grateful to hear these kind words from a strong, conviction conservative like Governor Palin.”

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INTERVIEW: Sean Bielat Says He’ll Make 2012 Campaign Decision ‘Next Week’

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In 2010, Republican Sean Bielat gave Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank the toughest re-election challenge the Democrat had ever experienced. Although Bielat’s insurgent Tea Party-backed campaign fell short of unseating Frank, it was obviously a factor in the 16-term congressman’s decision this week to retire at the end of his current term, rather than seek re-election in a newly redrawn district. Thursday night, Bielat spoke to me in a brief telephone interview.

Robert Stacy McCain: So, this is the week of ‘Bye Bye Barney.’ How are you feeling right now?
Sean Bielat: [Laughs.] Well, you know, if you would have asked me a year ago at this time, I would have said that this was exactly what was going to happen. And then, you know, when he came out February and said, ‘I’m definitely running . . . definitely going to be back in this thing,’ I took it with a grain of salt, but I believed it. So he definitely caught me off-guard [by announcing his retirement Monday].

RSM: He’s saying that it’s mainly about the re-districting. Have you taken a good look at that map?
BIELAT: Yeah, I have. It is a much better district.
RSM: You mean, for a Republican?
BIELAT: Yeah. It’s still overwhelmingly Democrat, but it’s a much better district than before. But implicit in that comment – ‘it’s because of re-districting’ – is the fact that he thinks he’s going to have a competitive opponent, right? Because he’s been re-districted before and not retired. The difference is, he had a challenge last time. Now it’s a new district and I think he just wasn’t sure he’d make it through and it wasn’t worth the effort.

RSM: OK. And are you taking a victory lap? I mean, do you believe that your challenge last year convinced him that it was time to pack it in?
BIELAT: I’m also taking that with a grain of salt. I don’t think he would have retired if I hadn’t run against him, but I also don’t think he’s retiring because I did.
He, on Election Day [in 2010], thought he was going to lose. We were told that by a number of the reporters who were following him and who were in his van – they thought they were going to lose. And you saw he put a couple hundred thousand dollars of his own money it, you know. I don’t think he enjoyed this experience. He hadn’t really done this since 1982. I don’t think he enjoyed the eight debates. I think he was worn out. And I think he didn’t want to do it again, particularly if the district was going to be more favorable to his opponent.

RSM: And is there a chance that that opponent might be you?
BIELAT: [Laughs.] Well, there’s no chance it will be me against Barney, but there’s definitely a chance that it will be me against whatever Democrat they’re going to put up in the Fourth [District]. I’m looking very hard at it. Poltically, I think it makes a lot of sense. We’re just trying to figure out personally if it’s what we want right now, with the new baby and the other 15-month-old and, you know, the sacrifices involved in running. But I’m definitely very interested in it.

RSM: You’ve got two children?
BIELAT: Yeah, we just had the second one about two-and-a-half weeks ago.
RSM: Wow. And I understand that you were spending some time in Pennsylvania and some people were trying to lay the ‘carpetbagger’ thing on you.
BIELAT: Yeah, I think it’s tough to do when we only came [to Pennysylvania] in September and the reason I came was because we had family in the area and we had some difficulties the last time around, with the last pregnancy. So we wanted to be here in case that happened again. We’re planning to go back [to Massachusetts] after the holidays. Hope is still a student at Boston University. She took the semester off. She’ll be back in the spring semester. . . . It’s just the circumstance – we wanted to be near family because of the baby.

RSM: OK, and last time around, the Internet fundraising and the support of New Media seemed to really kick your campaign into high gear.
BIELAT: Oh, without a doubt. I mean, one of the most important people for me to get back on the team is [New Media consultant] John La Rosa. I mean, our money came from online. Fox News was huge, too. Every time we went on Fox News, the money would come in, too. But it was because the groundwork was there, because went on the blogs. It was all over the Internet – the Tweets were out there, and Facebook was useful as well.
So it was huge, and then there was the ‘Dancing Barney’ video [by filmmaker Ladd Ehlinger Jr.] and the incident with [Barney Frank’s] significant other, where he was heckling me – that was huge. I can’t tell you how many people came up to me about that, or said, ‘I sent you a contribution after I saw that.’ That wouldn’t have gotten out there without the New Media channels.

RSM: So that really made a difference. What would be the timetable, if you did decide to run? When would you be thinking about putting something together again?
BIELAT: I want to make a decision next week. You know there’s a number of other Republicans who are calling me to find out my plans, because if I’m not getting in, they may want to get in. So I certainly don’t want to slow them down and, you know, I don’t want to be in limbo myself. If I end up not doing this, I’m going to be working on the [political action committee] – I’d like to kick that off and start doing some good there.  So I want to make this decision fairly soon.

RSM: OK, so you say, within a week?
BIELAT: Yeah. That’s the plan.

RSM: Wow. OK, then. So if we’re going to be scrambling the jets, we’re going to be scrambling the jets in a pretty quick hurry here.
BIELAT: Yeah. I mean, if I’m going to get in, I want to raise money this quarter. And if I’m going to raise money in December, when the holidays are coming up, I’ve got to do it right at the beginning. So that means making my decision right away.

Campaign Update: Rick Santorum Adds Friday Event in Merrimack, N.H.

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As reported this morning, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum will arrive Friday in New Hampshire for a two-day campaign tour. In a “media advisory” issued Thursday afternoon, the former Pennsylvania senator’s campaign announced the addition of another event to his Granite State itinerary. Santorum will speak at 9 a.m. Friday to students and faculty at Merrimack High School, at 38 McElwain Street in Merrimack, NH.

BULLETIN: Earthquake Hits Vanuatu as Santorum Vows on National TV: ‘We’re Going to Surprise a Lot of People’ in Iowa

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Geologists, eschatologists and political observers took note Thursday when an earthquake struck the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu at the exact time that Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum said during an appearance on a U.S. television network that he would do “very, very well” in next month’s Iowa caucuses.

“It’s coming our way,” the former Pennysylvania senator told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. “We’re the campaign that’s on the move. We’re the campaign that’s rising.”

Students of apocalyptic prophecies noted that, even as Santorum was speaking, a 5.2-magnitude earthquake rattled Vanuatu, a tiny achipelago of volcanic islands between Fiji and New Guinea.

“We will do well in Iowa — I have no doubt about that,” Santorum said during his Thursday interview with Mitchell. “We’re going to surprise a lot of people on [Iowa caucus] Election Day on January third.”

Thursday’s earthquake was the third to strike Vanuatu in the past five days. The former French colony was hit with 4.7 quakes on Wednesday and on Nov. 26, which most seismologists described as aftershocks of the 8.7-magnitude earthquake near Vanuatu on Nov. 11.

Asked by MSNBC’s Mitchell about his disagreements with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Santorum said the current GOP front-runner has “been jumping around a lot” on “very big, definining issues in Iowa and across the county,” including cap-and-trade legislation that would impact “lots of farmers in Iowa.”

Although no deaths resulted from the series of earthquakes that have recently shaken Vanuatu (known by Westerners as the New Hebrides prior to becoming an independent republic in 1980), disaster-relief organizations warned that tsunamis or other deadly catastrophes are possible if the long-dreaded “Big One” should hit next.

Recent polls in Iowa show Santorum in 7th place, although his strong grassroots campaign in the Hawkeye State has taken him to all 99 Iowa counties. A Catholic father of seven children, Santorum is staunchly supported by social conservatives, and recently gained the endorsement of Karen Testerman, a New Hampshire activist described by The Hill as a “powerful former . . . supporter” of Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann.

The Santorum campaign had no immediate comment on speculation by one autodidactic religious scholar that the Vanuatu earthquakes may be a “biblical omen of cosmic significance.” However, a few hours before the 5.2-magnitude quake hit Thursday afternoon, Santorum spokesman Matt Benyon issued an “updated media advisory” announcing that six events have been added to the campaign’s “Faith, Family and Freedom Tour” of Iowa that begins Sunday afternoon.

 




 


 

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Ace of Spades Really Hates Ron Paul, Endorses Re-Election of Barack Obama

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“I heretofore state I will not support, or vote for, Ron Paul, under any circumstances whatsoever.
“That’s where I’m coming from. Under no circumstances whatsoever will I vote for this reactionary, anti-semitic peacenik ‘We brought 9/11 ourselves’ pacifist Chomskyite crank.
“And I’ll say it: I will, yes, be amenable to Barack Obama being re-elected under those circumstances.”
— Ace of Spades

This seems to be turning into “Let’s F– With Ace” Week, so what the heck? Go with it. Having spent three months kicking Tabitha Hale in the shins — “Not Good Enough for BlogCon” — this wheel’s gonna keep on squeaking until some grease shows up.

Also, “heretofore,” Ace? Think you meant “hereby” or “henceforth,” but if the Valu-Rite Vodka says “heretofore” . . . Go with it.

Everybody knows I love Ace, so why am I doing this? Why would I push a running gag so far as to deliberately expose him to the vitriolic rage of the Paulistas who will flood his comments with fuming denunciations? A few possibilities suggest themselves:

A. It beats the hell out of finishing my long post about why you should hit my tip jar to send me to Iowa.
B. It beats the hell out of transcribing audio of the various interviews I’ve done recently.
C. It beats the hell out of soberly confronting the undeniably grim prospects for the Herman Cain campaign.
D. There’s no point traffic-baiting Allahpundit who, since becoming an employee of Salem Communications Inc., doesn’t give a damn anymore whether bloggers talk smack about him.
E. Admit it: “Let’s F– With Ace” Week is probably funnier than anything else I could be blogging about this week.

If you answered “All of the Above, But Mainly E,” congratulations: Put $10, $20, $50 in my tip jar and I’ll keep it up all week, just for fun and also to pay my way to Iowa. Because if you’re going to f–k around on a blog as a therapeutic escape from depressing realities, you might as well do it for profit. More f–king around after this ad for our Amazon “Black Monday Deals Week” specials.

See? I got no shame in my game, because Smitty reminded me last week why he’s willing to pay the blog-hosting fees out of his own pocket: It’s his patriotic duty to keep me online. Continue reading Ace of Spades Really Hates Ron Paul, Endorses Re-Election of Barack Obama →

Cain in N.H.: ‘I’m Not Finished Yet!’

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Tim Buckland of the Manchester (N.H.) Union Leader reports:

MANCHESTER — A small group of supporters and a horde of media got unclear answers Wednesday night whether Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain is staying in the race.
During a gathering held for core New Hampshire supporters at his campaign office on Lowell Street, Cain told the group: “They keep coming after me. After that firestorm, people thought I was finished. Well, just like Yogi Berra said, it ain’t over ‘til it’s over, and I’m not finished yet.”
But, during a five-minute press conference held after the appearance, he said he was still “reassessing” his campaign.
“As a businessman, that’s what I do,” he said. “I don’t make a kneejerk reaction.”
He said he would make a decision “about the campaign” within the next few weeks after he evaluates the impact the campaign is having on his family, his supporters and on fundraising.
“During this hit, fundraising went down. I admit that,” he said. “But fundraising is starting to go back up.”
But he never said during the meet-and-greet with supporters or during the press conference if he is considering dropping out. His political advisor, Bo Harmon, said Cain planned to keep an appointment [Thursday] with the New Hampshire Union Leader for an interview. . . .

Skip Murphy of Granite Grok live-blogged the Manchester event and at the “media availability” (translation: press conference) after the event, Skip says the media disgraced themselves:

Tonite was a great “teachable moment” in how the MSM can make anyone appear in a bad light — all it takes is an uppity attitude, a whiny voice, a TV camera, and a pre-determined narrative.

Skip singles out Amy Coveno of WMUR-TV for her especially petulant attitude. Hell hath no fury like an anchorette scorned. And via Memeorandum, Susan Saulny and Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times report under a Columbus, Ohio, dateline:

But nothing in Mr. Cain’s actions on Wednesday suggested that he would halt his campaign as he engaged in a whirlwind day of campaigning around Ohio and in New Hampshire.
“They want you to believe that we can’t do this,” he told a few hundred supporters gathered in a hotel ballroom in Dayton on Wednesday morning. “They want you to believe that with enough character assassination on me, I will drop out!”
The audience shouted, “No!” and “Don’t go!”
Mr. Cain seemed delighted. “Well, the American people have a different idea,” he said. “The American people are going to raise some Cain in 2012!”

Longtime Cain enthusiast Chris Barron (who remembers when this blog was just about the only place on the Web regularly covering the Cain campaign) makes his case: “Why Herman Cain Should NOT Drop Out.”


Friedrich Hayek vs. Ace of Spades

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“Yeah, I know political journalists aren’t supposed to believe in ‘omens.’ Still, there’s something vaguely . . . hinky about the way Perry’s stealth campaign has been operating here in Iowa.
“Call me crazy. Attribute my forebodings of doom to irrational prejudice. Say what you will, and I don’t care, but I felt a need to put on the record my instinctive sense that there’s something fundamentally wrong about the Perry campaign. And if Jan. 20, 2013, brings the joyous inauguration of President Perry, then you can say my fears were mistaken. Yet I can’t shake my gut hunch that it won’t work out that way. Some kind of catastrophe will result, one way or another.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, Aug. 9, 2011

OK, Smitty’s been doing the philosophical thing with his series about “Explaining Postmodernism,” while I’ve been trying to do news, news, news, and I’m in a mood to stretch my intellectual legs a few minutes.

Last night I nudged Ace a little bit, and today Jeff Goldstein gave Ace an intellectual body-check, and then today — riffing on a Dennis Miller rant — Ace came back with a long argument that included this:

[P]eople don’t get invested, as far as emotional and [egotistical] investment, in facts and data.
What they get emotionally and egotistically invested in is probabilities and guesses based upon underlying worldview.
It’s this — the gut, the “psychic vibe,” the horse-sense, the common-sense, the cunning, the read on people, the ability to predict the future based on incomplete information — that people really get personally invested in.
It really makes no sense. Everyone knows there is no such thing as psychic vibes, everyone knows the “gut” is a decent instinctual device but hardly something you’d want to start betting big money on, and everyone knows that predicting the future is a job for charlatans and fools, but when we start making predictions — “Sarah Palin can’t win!”; “No, Sarah Palin will dominate!“ — all of a sudden we start speaking with a level of assuredness and confidence and emotional investment that we are too smart to apply to virtually any other situation.
And this keeps happening. No matter what the topic, the less that is known about a situation, the less intellectually confident we can each be about our tentative conclusions, the more emotionally confident we will become.

Well, you can read the whole thing, but here’s my counterpoint: We know what we know and we reason outward on the basis of known facts — accumulated through education, observation and experience — to speculate on the probable nature of the unknown.

What Ace calls “gut” is therefore not always pure instinct or mere arrogant assertion of personal, subjective opinion.

There is such a thing as an informed guess. If someone is a professional pilot, and he sees a TV news report about an airline crash, what he guesses about the likely cause of the crash is not merely “gut.” Likewise, if a veteran police detective picks up a magazine and reads a story about an unsolved murder case, his suppositions about the crime are more than “gut.” Continue reading Friedrich Hayek vs. Ace of Spades →

New Cain Campaign Video: ‘Put an Executive in the Executive Office’

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The Herman Cain campaign today released a new online video focusing on job creation and economic issues:

A press release (see full text below) from the campaign called the video a “new Iowa ad,” although the length — 51 seconds instead of 30 seconds — would make it incompatible with standard broadcast requirements. The statement from campaign spokesman J.D. Gordon did not include any specifics about when or in what venues the video might be aired.

** TEXT OF CAIN CAMPAIGN PRESS RELEASE **

Cain Releases New Ad in Iowa;
Campaign Moves Forward

It’s time to draw a line in the sand.
While the Obama Administration sits on the sidelines, and Congress gets nothing done to help end this crippling recession, Republican candidate for president, Herman Cain, is traveling the country, spreading his vision to jump-start the economy and create a climate where businesses can grow and produce.
Take a moment and watch the Cain Campaign’s latest video, shot in a factory, in which Mr. Cain lays out a clear and concise message on how to get the manufacturing sector in this country back on track, generating millions of new, high-paying, private sector jobs.
It’s no secret that the Democrat Party and their surrogates in the mainstream media are out to derail Herman Cain’s candidacy, and the only way for them to succeed is to destroy him personally.
How can we expect good conservative “candidates of the people” to stand up against the “establishment” and run in the future if we abandon Herman Cain now?
It’s time to tell it like it is: Herman Cain threatens the Democrat Party like no other candidate, and because they cannot defeat him on the battlefield of ideas, they must resort to the desperate strategy being played out in public now and fueled on by the liberal media.
Don’t let it happen. Watch Mr. Cain talk about what’s really important: Jobs. Jobs. Jobs. Then send the link to your friends and help them learn about the “9-9-9 Plan” and Jobs. Jobs. Jobs

For More Information:
J.D. Gordon, Vice President of Campaign Communications
Friends of Herman Cain, Inc.


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