Category: Politics

‘Mr. Cain, Who Is Lawrence O’Donnell to Tell You How to Be a Black Man?’

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After Thursday evening’s “interview” on MSNBC, Professor William Jacobson and others were outraged by Lawrence O’Donnell’s self-righteous and disrespectful hectoring of Herman Cain.

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So when the surging GOP presidential candidate agreed to take questions from reporters at his book-signing Friday at the Pentagon City Costco in Arlington, Virginia, I asked the question that many others were asking:

My question comes at about the one-minute mark of the video.

RSM: Mr. Cain, who is Lawrence O’Donnell to tell you how to be a black man?
CAIN: “It’s an absurd thing to try and do, isn’t it? I mean, for Lawrence O’Donnell to try and challenge me on what was I doing during the civil rights movement, that’s about as ridiculous as me asking him, ‘What were you doing when you were in kindergarten?’ The two things don’t even relate to one another. So, you’re right — his attempt to do that failed, in my opinion.”

While I certainly do not wish to accuse O’Donnell of raaaaacism, the way he treated Cain on MSNBC was typical of the let-me-tell-you-what-to-think attitude of elite liberalism. In the minds of liberals, anyone who disputes their pre-conceived narrative — whether about history, economics, foreign policy, race relations or anything else — is not merely wrong, but evil.

That is to say, on any issue that liberals care about, there is exactly one point of view that all people of good faith must share, and anyone who expresses skepticism toward the Official Liberal Viewpoint is presumed to be acting on secret motives of bad faith (mala fides).

So if you dispute, for example, the Official Liberal Viewpoint on “climate change” (anthropogenic global warming), their certainty of your wrongness leads them immediately to provide an explanation for why you are wrong. You may be merely too stupid to grasp the “consensus,” but it’s also possible that you have hidden motives — corporate greed! religious extremism! — that inspire your opposition to the Official Liberal Viewpoint.

This intolerance of dissent is especially characteristic of those liberals who, like O’Donnell, come from privileged upbringings where liberalism functions as a sort of noblesse oblige, and who therefore pre-emptively condemn conservatives as guilty of an indifference to the suffering and hardship of the downtrodden.

For a Boston Democrat of the My-Daddy’s-a-Lawyer variety like Lawrence O’Donnell, Herman Cain’s refusal to accept the Civil Rights Victimhood narrative — the only template for race relations that liberals understand — is a personal insult.

Marooned in Marin was at the Costco book-signing and captured my question from the opposite angle, where you can see my son Jefferson (in the red tie) standing next to me:

Marooned in Marin has lots more photos of the Costco event. Such was the reaction to O’Donnell’s insultingly high-handed lecture to Cain that O’Donnell spent a good chunk of his Friday show trying to un-dig the hole he’d put himself into. And in this video from Friday, you’ll hear a familiar voice at the 2:48 mark:

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Tommy Christopher at Mediaite chronicles O’Donnell’s crow-eating smorgasbord:

With the benefit of hindsight, O’Donnell told Melissa Harris-Perry that he didn’t “want to oversimplify the menu of choice that existed for black families in the South at that time,” although that’s exactly what he had done when he suggested that Cain “sat on the sidelines” rather than participating in demonstrations.
Harris-Perry wisely identified the problem with the manner of O’Donnell’s questions. She said that she was “squirming with discomfort” while watching the interview, and in explaining that discomfort, kindly employed the “royal we,” rather than point the finger directly at her colleague. “When we are not facing the lynchers’ noose,” she said, ”when we are not facing that imminent violence, ourselves, we have to be extremely careful about even the implication that those who did not participate were necessarily cowards.”
She pointed out that “it was always simply a minority of African-Americans who were engaged at any point in the civil rights movement because it was a life and death question.” . . .
Harris-Perry also nailed the inherently racist double-standard embedded in the Civil Rights line of questioning. “I can`t remember anyone ever asking a white politician who is of the same age where they were during the sit ins. As you pointed out in your interview, there were white students who came down to be part of freedom summer. There were white allies at every point.”
“Yet we don’t consider it a litmus test for white politicians to have had enough moral courage, ethical vision and American value to have participated actively in the civil rights movement,” she continued, pointing out that military service is a common such litmus test. “I”m worried when we don’t ask white politicians about their patriotism related to how they have or have not stood up for racial equality.”

Like Herman Cain, I am a native of Atlanta, where Henry Grady’s post-Reconstruction “New South” message of economic growth was first proclaimed, and where Booker T. Washington famously urged American businessmen not to rely on immigrant labor, but rather to “cast down your bucket where you are” by employing black workers. During the civil rights era, Atlanta was proud to be “The City Too Busy to Hate.”

Having been quite literally in kindergarten the year the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, my personal memories of that era are necessarily limited. However, it has always seemed to me that decent law-abiding people — working hard to support their families and do the right thing in their everyday lives — need make no apologies to anyone.

Politics isn’t the entirety of our existence and we should keep in mind Eric Vogelin’s warning not to immanentize the eschaton. Quiet acts of Christian goodwill done by such ordinary Americans are not recorded in the pages of history books, and were not front-page headlines in 1964, but nevertheless it should be obvious to anyone with common sense that Rosa Parks and Bull Connor are not the whole story of the civil rights era.

UPDATE (Smitty): Welcome, Instapundit readers!

UPDATE II (RSM): Jehuda the Rhetorican credits me with the press conference “question of the year.” Hey, just doing my job — speaking of which, there’s lots more campaign news today.

UPDATE III: Linked by The Lonely Conservative, William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection and Obi’s Sister.


Who Said It? July 14: ‘I No Longer See a Path to Victory for Herman Cain’

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“Herman Cain has bottomed out, but still can’t find momentum to get in the air again. …
“If Cain cannot do well in Iowa, he is finished. And with six months to go, Iowa caucus goers are referring to him as a ‘supernova;’ i.e. a great flash of brightness soon to go dark. There are only around 125,000 caucus goers in Iowa. And many of those who were going to go with Cain are now going to Bachmann or waiting for someone else. He’s losing staff in Iowa and New Hampshire.
“I no longer see a path to victory for Herman Cain.”

I’d never seen that quote before, but it’s featured in today’s “Day by Day” cartoon:

Click the picture to see the whole strip. Just in case you were wondering what I was up to at that time: On July 17, I covered a Herman Cain fundraising event in Bethesda, Maryland — and drank Flying Dog ale with Cain’s campaign manager, Mark Block:

Flying Dog Ale: Secret of My Success!
 

#VVS11: Campaign Spin Wars Follow Values Voters Summit Straw Poll

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Following up on the earlier post about the Values Voters Summit presidential straw-poll results, we continue to the spin phase of the event, where people tell us what it means. Most interesting to me was a story in the liberal New Republic by Simon van Zuylen-Wood:

The story from Day One of the Christian conservative powwow was not merely that Cain killed it and Perry underwhelmed. That was a foregone conclusion before either of them spoke — when Texas megapastor Robert Jeffress introduced Perry onstage, he tried to exhort the crowd with the unfortunate question, “Do we want a candidate who is skilled in rhetoric or one who is skilled in leadership?” (Confused applause.)
The bigger takeaway was this: Perry, the GOP frontrunner most attuned to the persuasions of the Christian right, completely blew his opportunity to win them over. . . . Instead it was Cain, not known for his religious views, and in fact targeted at the event by the National Organization for Marriage for not having signed a couple of their pledges (the other frontrunners have), who galvanized a ballroom full of Evangelicals and born-again Christians with rousing promises to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act and protect unborn children.

Just to give you an idea of why, when it comes to public speaking, Herman Cain stomps the competition like Godzilla stomped Tokyo, here’s a brief clip from his Friday speech. He had just criticized the “Occupy Wall Street” protests and the crowd leapt to its feet cheering:

With impeccable timing, Cain followed up by reiterating and expanding the point, drawing another round of applause. Nobody else in the 2012 presidential field can fire up a Republican crowd the way Herman Cain can. And you’ll excuse me for thinking that getting Republicans fired up is a big part of what will be needed to beat Obama in 2012.

Cain’s critics like to talk about his gaffes — the Muslim thing, the “brainwashing” comment, etc. — but grassroots Republicans seem to understand that such politically incorrect moments are to be expected from a guy who makes a point of being “Not a Politician.” There is less forgiveness for Perry’s gaffes, including such unforced errors as this:

A Texas pastor introduced Rick Perry at a major conference of Christian conservatives here on Friday as “a genuine follower of Jesus Christ” and then walked outside and attacked Mitt Romney’s religion, calling the Mormon Church a cult and stating that Mr. Romney “is not a Christian.”
The comments by the pastor, Robert Jeffress of Dallas, injected a potentially explosive issue into the presidential campaign: the belief held by many evangelicals that Mormons are not Christians.
And it raised immediate suspicions that the attack might have been a way for surrogates or supporters of Mr. Perry, the Texas governor, who has stumbled in recent weeks, to gain ground by raising religious concerns about Mr. Romney. Mr. Jeffress similarly attacked Mr. Romney and his faith during the 2008 campaign.

For the sake of decorum, let’s not consider whether Pastor Jeffress was theologically accurate in his description of Mormonism as a “cult.” Rather, let’s ask the less esoteric question of whether Rick Perry benefits from having one of his proxies raise the issue of Romney’s heterodoxy. Perry’s trying to win an election, not leading a seminary discussion. Playing the Mormon card against Romney is, at the very least, going to cost Perry points for poor sportsmanship.

Keep in mind that evangelical Protestants aren’t generally big fans of popery, either, but that didn’t stop the Catholic candidate, Rick Santorum, from placing third in the Values Voter Straw Poll.  The Santorum campaign was celebrating in their press release:

October 8, 2011
For Immediate Release
Contact: Matt Beynon – 703.307.8633

SANTORUM DOUBLES
PERRY & BACHMANN
Values voter straw poll results once
again show Santorum on the rise

Verona, PA — Continuing a trend that started at the Ames Straw Poll, and continued in both Pennsylvania and Florida, Rick Santorum proves once again that the combination of the right message, right candidate, and hard work is the clear path to winning the Republican nomination. Senator Santorum’s total — 16% — was double that of media anointed frontrunners Governor Rick Perry (R-TX) and Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN), and quadruple that of 2007 Values Voter Summit Presidential Straw Poll winner Governor Mitt Romney (R-MA).
Senator Santorum said: “Values voters know me very well. We fought together and we won together on important issues like ending partial birth abortions, welfare entitlement reform, and protecting traditional marriage between one man and one woman. The legislation we fought for changed this country for the better, but we blinked and this President has changed this country for the worse; however, the values voters know we can restore the foundation of America and do great things because we’ve done them before. I thank them for their support in the past, their support today, and their support in the future.”
Hogan Gidley, National Communications Director, said: “Values voters got to see every candidate side-by-side, including the media anointed frontrunners, and the differences were clear. It’s no wonder Senator Santorum’s vote totals doubled-up Governor Perry’s and Representative Bachmann’s, and quadrupled Governor Romney’s. Rick Santorum is the only one who has led and recorded victories on the issues across the spectrum — social, economic, and defense — and the voters know it.
Senator Santorum’s strong third place finish at the Values Voter Summit Presidential Straw Poll — ahead of Governor Rick Perry, Governor Mitt Romney, and Representative Michele Bachmann — is another in a string of momentum building and expectations defying finishes. In May, Senator Santorum won the only statewide straw poll in the First-in-the-South state of South Carolina. In August, Senator Santorum, though outspent 10:1 by his opponents, finished a surprising 4th at the Ames Straw Poll. And then in September, Senator Santorum again surprised prognosticators by finishing 4th at the Presidency 5 Straw Poll in Florida and winning the only statewide straw poll in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania.

Santorum keeps out-performing expectations, chugging along as he says like “The Little Engine That Could” and — with Perry weakened and Bachmann now obviously fading — he’s in better shape than ever. ABC News makes a point in this article:

Santorum is not running in place like Jon Huntsman, but it’s unclear when his moment will come? His national poll numbers remain low, although the candidate says he does not pay any attention to the dismal numbers.
“I don’t want to be depressed by watching national polls,” Santorum said. “I just tend to focus on what we’re doing on the ground and know, just like in the Ames Straw Poll where no one gave us any chance, every poll said we were way, way back in the back and we finished a pretty strong fourth.”
Santorum’s campaign has held more than twice as many events in the Hawkeye state as any other 2012 candidate.

Iowa has become practically a second home for Santorum. For now, he and the other GOP candidates are heading to New Hampshire, where they’ll debate Tuesday at Dartmouth College.

Virginia Is For Election Lovers

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by Smitty

This morning I attended a Fairfax County GOP Veterans breakfast. The state’s rock star Attorney General was there, as a featured speaker. He kept the chat local, and election-focused, not addressing ObamaCare at all. Mingling later, it sounded as though VA’s case may get mixed in with the rest, argued early next year before the SCOTUS, with a possible decision in the June time frame. I gathered that was all speculative, and readers of this blog will know that my prediction-fu is weak.

Virginia elections matter, coming as they do on off years, and with VA being a designated ‘battleground’ state, according to the MSM. I can safely predict that, in the case of a Lefty triumph, VA’s battleground status will suddenly be huge; if the GOP reclaims the VA Senate: crickets. A handful of VA Senate candidates were present, for example, the fabulous Gerarda Culipher for the 34sth District: My district, 30, features Tim McGhee, an admirable chap whom I’ll happily support. Turning the VA Senate red will be helpful in building momentum for next year’s elections.

Also speaking at this morning’s breakfast was Congressman Frank Wolf, who sounded the alarm concerning China, and the question of whether the 21st Century would be an American century or no, and then tied his remarks back to the humble local elections, where ‘just folks’ do the grunt work of making an election happen, serving in local and state offices and such. Things at which Tea Party conservatives, e.g. me, have kind of sucked. At the DC level, it was good to see Patrick Murray again, and while I didn’t explicitly hear Murray say that he’d be giving “Gentleman” Jim Moran more bad dreams in 2012, another run for VA-8 hung in the air like two dots awaiting connection. Curiously absent was Keith Fimian, who lost to Gerry Connolly in VA-11 by the slenderest of margins in 2010. Connolly will join Moran in having a retired Army O6 breathing down his neck, as Chris Perkins brings the heat. Good times.

So, yes, we like us some elections in Virginia. This state provided a hefty chunk of the brain trust that founded the country all those years ago, as we crawled out from under the British thumb. It’s only logical that Virginia show leadership as we crawl out from under the Progressive thumb.

Finally, let this post encourage you to keep doing whatever it is you do to improve the political landscape in the country. Progressivism is a kidney stone which we are going to pass, not without some pain, but after which our future will improve. Or my name isn’t Phineas J. Whoopie.

Update: linked at StrictlyVA.

PAULBOT-MANIA: Ron Paul Supporters Buy Victory in ‘Value Voters’ Straw Poll

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The question to be asked is not whether it is unfair for the Paul campaign to keep doing this, but why the rest of the GOP field can’t spend a few bucks to do it themselves. Dave Weigel at Slate reports:

He beat out seven other candidates and “undecided.” The full results, with 1,983 ballots cast:

Ron Paul – 36.9% (732)
Herman Cain – 22.5% (447)
Rick Santorum – 16.3% (323)
Rick Perry – 8.4% (167)
Michele Bachmann – 7.9% (157)
Mitt Romney – 4.4% (88)
Newt Gingrich – 2.7% (54)
Undecided – 0.7% (13)
Jon Huntsman – 0.1% (2)

In a post-vote press conference, FRC President Tony Perkins made sure to note that 600 people had bought tickets for Saturday only — a none-too-subtle hint that Paul’s supporters had over-represented themselves.
“Do the math,” said Perkins. “Ron Paul and his campaign are very well organized.”

What did 600 tickets cost the Paul campaign? And what would have been the publicity value if, for example, the Rick Perry campaign had paid for 1,000 of their supporters to attend the summit? Perry raised $17 million and he can’t afford to buy a straw poll? Your stupidity is not someone else’s fault. Beyond that, the story is:

A. Herman Cain continues his momentum; and
B. Santorum got twice as many votes as Bachmann.

This pretty much puts a fork into the Bachmann campaign. If she can’t beat Santorum in a straw poll at a national conference of social conservatives, Bachmann probably can’t beat Santorum in Iowa, either.

UPDATE: Jazz Shaw at Hot Air: “Ron Paul brings home the bouquet for best organizational skills at a conservative event .”

And by “organizational skills,” he means, the willingness to spend money on grassroots activism, i.e., offering free tickets for any Paul supporter who wanted to come vote for their guy.

UPDATE II: My buddy Joe Fein has shown how the Paulistas won — “stole” might be too strong a word — the California GOP straw poll.

Stipulate that the Paul campaign operates according to the “By Any Means Necessary” radical principle. Nevertheless, the point to which I wish to call the reader’s attention is this: The Paul campaign is smart to spend money on getting their supporters to events, and other campaigns are stupid in spending money to hire a bunch of staffers and consultants who don’t necessarily provide value-added to their efforts.

Suppose you are a college kid who might be willing to support a Republican presidential candidate. Now, suppose that you could actually get to meet that candidate, and get free travel to events where that candidate appears. OK, furthermore suppose that the campaign had a sort of Amway incentive deal where, if you were campus activist who could sign up a dozen of your college buddies to accept the same free-travel deal, you’d get a small commission for every warm body you delivered on the Republican candidate’s behalf.

Shouldn’t Republicans be able to understand how the Ron Paul campaign is using market incentives to build their movement?

Why, then, are most GOP presidential campaigns top-heavy affairs that spend ridiculous sums on “media consultants,” etc., rather than to use their money the way Ron Paul’s campaign uses their money?

Like I said: Your stupidity is not someone else’s fault.

Conventional Wisdom on Herman Cain

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Having covered the Herman Cain campaign since December 2010, I’ve had occasion to remark more than once that people underestimate him at their peril. The experts have said all along that there’s no way Herman can win. It’s possible they may keep right on saying that — chanting it like a mantra — until the votes are counted on Nov. 6, 2012, at which point the same TV talking heads who derogated Cain’s chances from the start will then be called on to provide their insightful analysis of how he did what they said with absolute certainty he could never do.

And then these pundits who were consistently wrong will be invited to speak at a major national conference. But I digress . . .

While I’ll later be posting photos, videos and more about our Friday covering Herman Cain and the Values Voter Summit (my 12-year-old son Jefferson accompanied me as my assistant), let me first share another writer’s article. She reports some key facts, but Molly Ball of The Atlantic draws an odd conclusion from those facts:

They admired Rick Santorum. They ate up Rick Perry. But it was Herman Cain who rocked the house at the Values Voter Summit.
Many other speakers got standing ovations, but only Cain provoked church-like shouts of “Yeah!” from the crowd. When Newt Gingrich came up to speak after Cain, a good portion of the crowd got up and wandered out of the giant ballroom at the Omni Shoreham Hotel here in Washington.
Think about that: the former speaker of the House of Representatives — himself once considered a rock star of the Republican base — thoroughly upstaged by a political novice mostly known as “the pizza guy.”
After the speeches, when Gingrich and Cain both held book signing sessions, the line for Cain stretched down a long hallway, then through the hotel’s large lobby to the door. The line for Gingrich was, shall we say, substantially shorter.
Based largely on a similarly rousing speech, Cain won the Florida P5 straw poll late last month, dealing Perry a stunning blow. Cain’s surge in recent polling — he’s rocketed into second behind Mitt Romney in some polls — is getting him billed as the next flavor of the month for a GOP base that’s having doubts about Perry.
The Cain surge has also provoked a round of media hand-wringing over whether, and how much, to “take him seriously” as a contender, or whether it was still safe to treat him primarily as a man trying to sell books and perhaps get himself a television show. . . .

You can read the whole thing, which then goes on to explain that Cain cannot possibly threaten Romney’s front-runner status because . . .

Well, she never says exactly why this can’t happen, but she’s a professional political journalist, whereas the hundreds of people who cheered Cain’s speech are merely Republican voters — and who cares what they think, right?

Memo From the National Affairs Desk to the Herman Cain Presidential Campaign

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To: Mark J. Block, J.D. Gordon
Re: U.S. Policy, South Pacific Region

The island republic of Vanuatu will, I think, play a key role in the Cain administration’s foreign policy vis-a-vis the South Pacific.

While the Republican Party Establishment has long ignored Vanuatu, my years of study of their culture, history, geography and economy have convinced me that this archipelago should be a vital linchpin of U.S. relations in the entire Hebrides/Solomon Islands region. A history of GOP indifference to Vanuatu has, however, enabled Democrats to portray Republicans as anti-Vanuatu, even though the policies of the Obama administration have had a devastating impact on the Vanuatuan economy. The natives have historically been pro-American in their sympathies, but the recent downturn of the island’s tourism industry — a direct consequence of policies enacted under Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner — have damaged U.S.-Vanuatu relations. An important diplomatic thrust of the Cain administration’s policy must therefore be to repair our standing with this traditional ally.

Of course, as you know, I am strictly a neutral objective journalist, and my assignment to cover the 2012 campaign would prevent me serving in any sort of official advisory capacity for Mr. Cain. However, if the topic should come up in a debate (and my sources say Romney’s oppo-research team may be preparing to hit Mr. Cain as “soft on the Vanuatu issue”), don’t hesitate to ask me to send you my extensive collection of materials compiled during my decades-long research into this topic, vital to U.S. national security interests. In fact, I think if you will ask around among well-informed conservatives, they will agree that no one excels my expertise on this subject.

Given the many crises that currently affect the United States, I’m sure that our policy toward Vanuatu may not be a “front burner” issue at this early stage of the campaign. Perhaps when I come out to cover the debate in Las Vegas Oct. 18, we can get together and discuss this in more depth. As I say, journalistic ethics would forbid me providing policy advice to a campaign that I’m covering — if I gave you my complete Vanuatu files, the Bachmann and Santorum campaigns may even accuse me of unfair bias — but after a quarter-century in journalism, I’m ready to explore new career horizons. Diplomacy strikes me as the sort of field where my unique combination of skills and knowledge might be useful, and when this campaign is over, I may be willing to give it a try.

Therefore, if Mr. Cain should require my services as U.S.ambassador to Vanuatu, I wish to inform you in advance that I would be honored to accept such an appointment, and will strive to do all in my power to restore America’s reputation in the archipelago that I call “The Key to the South Pacific.” While it would be quite a sacrifice for my family to re-locate to the embassy in Vanuatu, this is a sacrifice I’m willing to make, considering the crucial nature of the assignment.

Please keep this memo on file, because I know how things can get lost in the shuffle during the post-election “transition” process and wouldn’t want you to forget my offer between now and Jan. 20, 2013. Looking forward to seeing you in Vegas.

Sincerely,
Robert Stacy McCain

P.S.: I hope you don’t mind my publishing this on my blog, in the interests of “transparency,” as they say.

UPDATE: Understanding the seriousness of the issues involved, I shared this message with Bert the Samoan Lawyer, who replied:

Clearly the consulate on Vanuatu will need a Legal Liaison. I am brushing up now on all things consular.
Let’s see: Four gallons of grapefruit juice; four quarts of vodka, a fifth of Blanton’s small-batch bourbon; a fifth of Lagavulin single-malt, Islay whiskey; a basket of limes, twelve tabs of mescaline . . .
How difficult will it be to ship the convertible? Does Vanuatu have roads?
No matter. It will “stimulate” the Vanuatu economy to engage in some infrastructure construction . . .

Indeed, my arrival in Vanuatu in January 2013 — accompanied, of course, by the newly-appointed Legal Liaison — will have an immediate and positive effect on the economy. To begin with, I’ll have to hire some native girls to perform the important work of bringing me mai-tais whilst I conduct important business in my beachside cabana . . .

EXCLUSIVE: Rick Santorum Interview

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WASHINGTON, D.C.
Here at the FRC Value Voters Summit, I was walking through the lobby of the Omni Shoreham Hotel when I saw a familiar face: One of the daughters of former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. The candidate’s three oldest children and his lovely wife were sitting in the lobby, awaiting the candidate’s return from an interview with Megyn Kelly at the D.C. bureau of Fox News. After a few minutes, Santorum returned, and we had lunch — sandwiches and chips — then he agreed to a brief video interview:

I’m in kind of a hurry here — Herman Cain speaks at 4:15 p.m. — so there’s no time to transcribe his quotes. If some of our blog friends and commenters would care to do so (just stick the quotes down in the comments), I’d be much obliged.

While we were having lunch, one of Santorum’s staffers walked up and told us the news that Iowa has scheduled its caucuses for Jan. 3. So, good-bye Christmas, eh? But Santorum has campaigned hard in Iowa, and has a solid base of grassroots support, so he may be positioned to take advantage of What Florida Hath Wrought.

UPDATE: Thanks to Steve Eggleston of No Runny Eggs for this transpcript of the interview:

McCain – We’re here in Washington, DC, at the Value Voters Summit at the Omni Shoreham Hotel talking to former Senator Rick Santorum. How are you, sir?
Santorum – I’m doing great, Stace. How are you?
McCain – I’m doing pretty good. How’s your campaign been going the last couple weeks since we’ve seen you?
Santorum – We feel very, very good. I think we’re picking up some traction, I think getting the recognition as being a serious candidate has got the grass-roots effort out there, as well as the substance to do the job as President and to win a tough election against what will be a tough opponent. I think the more people look at the candidates and make an assessment as to who can deliver the mail, who can stand up for conservative principles, get things done in Washington, bring the country together, and first and foremost win the election, that we’re going to be on top.
McCain – You just got back from a 3-day swing from Iowa…
Santorum – I was in Iowa for most of the week, actually, in, I think, close to my 70th county in the state. I’ll be back again into New Hampshire this coming week, then South Carolina, and then the following week back to Iowa. So, we’re working all the three early-primary states and giving the chance for the voters to get a chance to kick the tires and find out about who we are, not just go give speeches or do television interviews, but really have a chance for the interaction that, at least I’m told the voters in Iowa really appreciate and that pays off, if you do well, in the long term.
McCain – And your debate performances; a lot of people have praise for your performance in Orlando, and I believe I characterized you as a “brutal counter-puncher”. Sometimes these debates have been kind of rough at times.
Santorum – My feeling is there are differences between the candidates on substance, you have to let the folks who are going to make these tough decisions, you have to let them know what those differences are. There clearly were differences between me and Governor Perry on the issue of immigration and this issue of mandatory vaccines, his executive order on vaccines. There have been differences between me and Ron Paul on the issue of Iran and Israel, and our position in Afghanistan. I’m not shy about pointing those differences when they are, and looking forward do more of that in debates ahead on other issues.
McCain – All right then. And your website is…
Santorum – ricksantorum.com. Go and send us a check.
McCain – All right. Thanks.
Santorum – Thanks.

UPDATE II: Josh Lederman of The Hill reports on Santorum’s speech today:

Rick Santorum came out with his own economic plan Friday to top the 9-9-9 plan pushed by Herman Cain.
“I’ve got a better plan. It’s the zero-zero-zero plan,” the GOP presidential candidate and former senator told the Value Voters Summit.
Santorum said his plan would levy zero taxes on repatriation of funds invested overseas, cut corporate taxes for manufacturers to zero and eliminate every regulation put in place by President Obama.
Santorum has long been a favorite son of the socially conservative voter bloc that flocks to Washington every year for the Value Voters Summit, but has yet to define himself as independent thinker on economic issues within the Republican presidential field.

My 12-year-old son Jefferson, who’s here with press credentials as my assistant, overheard one of the conference attendees say that he’d decided to support Santorum for the very reason that he met and talked to him in the hotel lobby. Santorum is the most accessible candidate here, and he spent most of the afternoon in the lobby meeting voters one-on-one. He posed for a photo with Jefferson:

Of course, Santorum knows I’m a Cain guy, but also knows that I’m friends with his strongest online supporter Lisa Graas. And speaking of which, I ran into K-Lo here and she said to me, “Who’s this Lisa Graas who CC’s me on all her Tweets?”

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