GOP Candidates | Rick Santorum
January 16th, 2012 | Published in Veteran Perspective | 1 Comment
I was introduced to then-Senator Rick Santorum by one of the partners of the law firm where I worked as a messenger in 2006. There was a fundraiser that night and one of the messenger corps was asked to stay and help set-up/take-down the food, drink, and tables. I always volunteered for this because I would take a bottle of wine, go sit in an empty section of the office, and drink until it was time for the tear-down. Only that night, the lawyers wanted to show me off. These men and women, who didn’t have a word that wasn’t a command for me during business hours, now threw their arms around me and touted my veteran status. At the time, Santorum had been in the headlines because of his book It Takes a Family, in which he encourages both single mothers to find a man and working mothers to stay at home. When I shook his hand, I (well into my cups at this point) made some snarky, off-hand remark about being raised by a single-mother and asserted that I was voting for Bob Casey, Jr. If memory serves, Santorum took the comment in stride and thanked me for my service.
Those of us from Pennsylvania are familiar with the candidate most people hadn’t really heard of until he virtually tied Mitt Romney in Iowa. When Mike Huckabee won Iowa (handily, I might add) he parlayed that success to South Carolina and that was when it became a horse-race between he and Senator McCain. Huckabee was able to rouse the evangelical vote and came across as much more of a “nice guy,” than McCain. This is something Santorum definitely wishes to emulate.
In the New Hampshire polls, Santorum has only 8%-11% and is fifth behind Romney, Paul, Gingrich, and Jon Huntsman. So, the Santorum Campaign has set their sights on South Carolina, his campaign’s last stand. While Santorum’s surge surprised many of those professionals in the media, they continue to talk about Santorum as if his campaign is spinning its wheels or panicked. So does the Republican Establishment. This is because Santorum is somewhat of a liability.
Ideologically, the only the Santorum has been consistent about has been his positions on social and cultural issues, e.g. marriage, the family, abortion, and censorship in the name of protection. His stances on these positions have been a cause for controversy. For example, in 2006 he was under scrutiny for admitting that his family lived mostly in Virginia, but his children attended a “cyber school,” paid for by the Penn Hills, PA school district. At the time, he was critical of unmarried parents for remaining unmarried in an effort to continue to receive welfare benefits. An idea he continues to espouse now that he is on the national stage.
Much of Santorum’s support comes from the religious groups within the party. Catholic outreach groups are working very hard for Santorum, who is also a Catholic. A longtime Catholic Santorum supporter said, “I’ve convinced a number of my Democrat friends from church to switch parties to vote for Rick Santorum.” Although, she lives in Pennsylvania and won’t vote until April 24, 2012. Protestants, specifically evangelicals, have often had their differences with Catholics, insofar as some believe them to not be “truly Christian.” However, Santorum spends more time talking about abortion and homosexuality than he does about canonized saints or the Vatican, providing a much more palatable alternative than Romney or Gingrich.
Romney feels comfortable, especially since he eked out the technical win in Iowa with 8 votes, however he isn’t safe. Romney’s plan has always been to remind the voters of their real enemy, the President. Anytime an attack is leveled at Romney, he always mentions President Obama almost immediately. Yet, Romney continually gets in his own way. In a speech in New Hampshire, he said, “I like being able to fire people who provide services to me.” It was in the context of consumers firing insurance companies, but it has been appropriated to describe his tenure as the head of the investment bank Bain Capital. With the proper spin, this could be a deathblow for Romney. If that happens, all bets are off.
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February 14th, 2012 at 10:25 pm (#)
I am a veteran and feel I have the right to write this letter. Senator Santorum served in the U.S. Senate for sixteen years. He is now retired and receives 100% of his senator salary as a pension. He was a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, the group who decides military pay and pensions. As a senator, Rick Santorum voted to raise his pay and pension to over $14,000 per month while deciding to compensate veterans wounded and disabled in defense of this nation less than $3,000 per month. What heroic act did Senator Santorum do where he considers he deserves over $11,000 per month ($132,000 per year) more than soldiers wounded in battle? Senator Santorum obviously looks out for himself but doesn’t care about men and women who defend this nation.
Michael Rowzee
Former Staff Sergeant, U.S. Army
Here is a story found at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/18/rick-santorum-veterans-home_n_1212933.html
The Armed Forces Retirement Home, which is run by the Department of Defense, bills itself as the “premier home for military retirees and veterans.” The facility sprawls across 272 acres high on a hill in northern Washington, DC, near the Petworth neighborhood. The nearly 600 veterans who now live there enjoy panoramic views of the city—the Washington monument and US Capitol to the south, the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception to the east. At its peak, more than 2,000 veterans of World Wars I and II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War lived at the Home.
But with the rise of the smaller all-volunteer military, the Home began to run into serious financial problems. It was clear that one of its primary sources of revenue—a 50-cent deduction from the paychecks of active-duty servicemembers—wasn’t enough to keep the Home operating fully. In the 1990s, the Home scrambled to find ways to avoid insolvency trimming its staff by 24 percent and reducing its vet population by 800. Still, the money problems began to show, with its older historic facilities slipping into disrepair and decay. To grapple with its worsening shortfall, officials running the Home eyed a valuable, 49-acre piece of land worth $49 million as a potential financial lifeline.
Under one scenario, by leasing the parcel of land and letting it be developed, the Home could pocket $105 million in income over 35 years for its trust fund, David Lacy, then-chairman of the Home’s board of directors, told Congress in 1999. Lacy stressed that the Home wanted to keep the property, and not offload it to a buyer. “Once land is sold,” he said, “it is lost forever as an asset.”
Enter Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Penn.). At the behest of the Roman Catholic Church, and unbeknownst to the Home, Santorum slipped an amendment into the 1999 National Defense Authorization Act handcuffing how the home could cash in on those 49 acres. The amendment forced the Home to sell—and not lease—the land to its next-door neighbor, the Catholic University of America. Ultimately, the Catholic Church bought 46 acres of the tract for $22 million. The Home lost the land for good, and by its own estimates, pocketed $27 million less than the land’s value and $83 million less than what it could’ve made under the lease plan.