The American Spectator

Bill| 2.14.12 @ 3:07PM

Santorum's record:
1. voted for raising debt ceiling 8 times, adding to the national debt $3 trillion because PA was a blue state
2. voted against "Right-to-Work" law because PA is a pro-union state
3. voted for the Medicare Part D because PA has a large population of retirees
Time and time, santorum surrendered to his liberal constituents and failed to stand up with the majority of people of PA, and that is why he lost his senate bid by 18 points to a "silly" liberal Bob Casey in 2006.
wanna be the President? You wish!

Dai Alanye| 2.14.12 @ 4:19PM

Gingrich's record:
Worse than Santorum's by far, and is undiciplined besides.

Santorum's ratings:
American Conservative Union -- 88%
National Right to Life Committee -- 100%
Americans for Tax Reform -- 95%
National Tax Limitation Committee -- 92%
U.S. Chamber of Commerce -- 88%
League of Private Property Voters -- 94%

Not too shabby, eh?

Bill| 2.14.12 @ 5:39PM

Santorum got his ass kicked in 2006! considering those ratings, they are ancient.

Dai Alanye| 2.14.12 @ 10:50PM

What about Santorum's crushing wins a week ago, and Newt's ignominious losses? Are those to be ignored while dwelling on something six years back? Elections are about today and tomorrow, not yesterday.

Santorum is a better conservative today than when in office, and right now he'd take Pennsylvania in a walk. Poor Newt, on the other hand, can only hope some doofus reporter picks a fight with him. He looks to be gone soon.

Anyone but Obama| 2.14.12 @ 3:22PM

You sound like a broken record...

LibertyAtStake| 2.14.12 @ 3:35PM

Of those you mention, only Newt can claim serious successes at the federal fiscal level: welfare reform, balanced budgets working with an opposition POTUS. It's such a shame he let himself go off on that moon colony delusion. It's almost as if he's the reverse of the problem you describe: more conservative in performance than rhetoric.

d(^_^)b
http://libertyatstake.blogspot.com/
“Because the Only Good Progressive is a Failed Progressive”

Fiscal| 2.14.12 @ 4:22PM

Antle is right and Newt is no exception -- Newt just happened to be there when you had a DLC President and an economy on the right side of the dotcom bubble. It's easy to balance budgets when the deficit is low and the economy is roaring. Economists have calculated that close to 70% of Obama's deficit problem is due to the unfunded wars and Medicare Part D of the Bush administration and tax cuts that were not offset by spending cuts.

The heart of this issue, however, is not fiscal conservatism, it is that in our form of government you need to get elected. Our citizens want something for nothing and don't mind mortgaging our children's future. You need to give goodies to get votes and make promises to lobbyists in order to have the funds to run. Then, you need to keep that going so you will continue to be elected.

We have a country that doesn't act in advance, it acts when there is a crisis. When you step back from all of the right and left rhetoric, you recognize, in action, there is really very little difference between Republicans and Democrats except on social issues where the Republicans want to force their religious beliefs on all of us and Democrats want to ignore religion.

The day of reckoning will come when China will no longer buy our debt. Unfortunately, that is several years in the future.

Mitt would probably be the best fiscal manager of the lot because at least he would pay attention to the numbers and have a spreadsheet at his fingertips. Anyone who has studied the budget in depth and played with the numbers knows that you can't balance it with cuts alone -- it is just not mathematically possible even with optimistic assumptions. The closest I've seen is the Simpson-Bowles proposal with $3 of cuts for every $1 of revenue. If Mitt just accepted their recommendation, he would be elected in a landslide over Obama. But because of party loyalty, and the need to get the votes of the base of the party who can't add, he will make a Bush I type promise and lose.

None of the candidates really has a core except for Ron Paul, and he will never get elected. For that matter, Obama has even less of a core, notwithstanding the far right diatribe. Right and left ideologies are the enemy of fiscal sanity because they put more weight on belief than fact.

I'm voting for Mitt with the hope that forgets some of the promises he made to get elected and deals with realism and facts to make decisions. That was the basis for his success in the private sector -- not blindly sticking to ideology.

Herb Tarlek| 2.14.12 @ 10:54PM

This is the best post I have read on here in a long time.

The reality is, for us to move forward we need a new party that does math. The Republican party has been given many chances & have blown it every time. They are done.

Harry K| 2.15.12 @ 8:17AM

You said it..

aware| 2.14.12 @ 4:48PM

For me it's simple, if you ever have supported the State over the individual, "regulation" over free markets,"security" over liberty, then you cannot ever be trusted and will never get my vote.

If only the fear and loathing "conservatives" feel now toward "the Regime" could at least be remembered when they win. The feeling you have now toward "government" is the proper attitude at all times, not just when the commies have the upper hand.

Bill| 2.14.12 @ 10:12PM

Santorum's record:
1. voted for raising debt ceiling 5 times, adding to the national debt $3 trillion
2. voted against "Right-to-Work" law
3. voted for the Medicare Part D
4. voted for allowing felons to vote
5. voted for "bridge to nowhere"
Santorum surrendered to his liberal constituents and failed to stand up with the people of PA, and that is why he lost his senate bid by 18 points to a "silly" liberal Bob Casey in 2006.
wanna be the President? You wish!

Dai Alanye| 2.14.12 @ 10:53PM

Yet Santorum is the best conservative in the race, and the present leader. Go figure. He seems impervious to the distorted arguments being raised against him.

Rick V.| 2.15.12 @ 4:58AM

"The fact is that Republicans are great fiscal conservatives when the Democrats are in power and tend to backslide when they are in power themselves." Too true, Mr. Antle. Whatever or whoever we are left to choose from in the 'R' column will be unsatisfactory to some degree, other than "not Obama." At least the Democrats have unifying principles which bind them to any 'D' leader. Unfortunately, those principles include a punitive tax policy, providing succor to our enemies both foreign and domestic, abortion as a sacrament and shepherding the elderly to the Soylent Green reclamation centers.

billy bob the monkey master| 2.15.12 @ 8:27PM

Jim, if someone's small government bona fides wax and wane based on the president's party, in what meaningful sense are they fiscal conservatives? By accepting this self-characterization, you are giving them a pass. Unless you've looked into their souls, it seems like nothing more than a branding gimmick to call them fiscal conservatives.
"Partisan" describes their behavior much more accurately, and it is their behavior, rather than the "taint of the Bush years." Congress is an independent and co-equal branch, and each of them could have voted against the President and for the principles they claim to have.

Chuck Vekert| 2.16.12 @ 9:05AM

Tend to backslide? Perhaps you do not remember Chaney's famous comment that Reagan proved that deficits don't matter. Bush paid for the Iraq war with tax cuts, and now Romney is looking to pay for a war with Iran with more tax cuts.