According to The Hill web site, Rick Santorum thumped his Bible at a rally in Rock Hill, South Carolina, but ignored birther remarks from the crowd.
During a rowdy question-and-answer session, Santorum was interrupted as he addressed a question on national security.
“This president continually undermines the national security interests of our country, undermines the economic interests of this country. Why?” he asked rhetorically.
“Because he wasn’t born here!” yelled one man from the back of the room. The audience laughed and applauded.
Santorum paused briefly, then moved on with his answer. A few minutes later, as Santorum laid into Obama once again, another man yelled, “He hates America!” The crowd cheered. Santorum once again ignored the remark.
Rick Santorum failed to generate much interest in the South Carolina GOP Primary, garnering a 17% third-place finish.
“Preserves honor” doesn’t equate to “lets a birther argument stand” in my book. Sometimes not protesting against madness can only be interpreted as condoning it.
When it comes to Republican politicians, I have very low expectations.
John McCain, however, is one who actually stood up to the birthers at a town hall meeting.
That seems to be the case with a lot of people in this country, hence our current situation.
I expect our leaders to demand that we become better versions of ourselves. Non-confrontation (silent acquiescence?) enables the Race to the Bottom to roll on by.
Is Churchill running for President this year? Maybe a Roosevelt or two? Can I get a Lincoln anywhere?
At least Santorum didn’t egg them on or issue a giggle. Although he puts it to severe ideological uses he does have more character than most (as 2 out of 3) of his remaining opponents.
Are you referring to the time he declared Barack Obama to be “a good family man” as opposed to being an Arab?
Here’s a lengthy MSNBC piece about McCain’s defense … his campaign was running ads whipping up fears, including the Bill Ayers meme (“I’m John McCain and I endorse this message!”), and in person he was saying the opposite. Having it both ways? Ouch. That was one messy campaign that McCain never seemed to be in control of.
Dr C. – you might have to make an update to your article and correct the title here, where you say that Santorum “preserves honor”
On Chris Matthew’s show today (somewhere between the 10-15 minute mark in his show), there was a *NEW* incident that just took place at a Santorum gathering.
During Santorum’s Q&A portion with a different audience today, a lady asked a question loaded with many direct Birther talking points and also openly calling Obama a Muslim.
Matthew’s just correctly called out Santorum for his cowardly response – in which he simply used her question as an excuse to pander to the audience and attack Obama as violating the Constitution and did NOTHING to address nor rebut any of the Birther or Muslim portions of her question at all.
Contrast that with how McCain handled a similar question from an ignorant lady during the 2008 General Election campaign…and did the right thing by correcting and rebutting her.
If I find a link to the this NEW incident and story, I’ll post it here. Right now, breaking news I just heard and wanted to bring it to your attention…
Good points – he really was playing both sides… or to be fair, his VP Palin was out pushing those false red meat memes, while McCain seemed to be mostly taking the higher road…
That is the situation I’m thinking of…
Here – found some news coverage of this NEW event:
Several articles are now starting to emerge on this, but I’m going to link this this CNN one, as it not only has a write-up, but also a video clip of the actual exchange:
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/23/santorum-ignores-charge-obama-is-a-muslim/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_politicalticker+%28Blog%3A+Political+Ticker%29
That was the exact quote of what this woman said. Here is Santorum’s cop-out pandering response:
Notice how Santorum cowardly ignored both the Muslim charges and the “he’s not really president” portions of her question entirely…
Well, a quick election news update, here 3 days before the FL primary takes place.
There has been speculation that Herman Cain would endorse Newt Gingrich ever since he dropped out of the race. That speculation ran really hot when he suggested he was issuing an endorsement prior to SC. That turned out to be a serious of PR stunts, where he first issued an endorsement of “We the People” and then was part of the Stephen Colbert “Vote Herman Cain” stunt.
Well, today, he finally made his official endorsement – and it is what I suspected all along: He officially endorsed Newt Gingrich.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/election-2012/post/herman-cain-to-endorse-newt-gingrich/2012/01/28/gIQAG2KnYQ_blog.html
It makes for an interesting dynamic. Romney is still favored in FL. He and his Super PACs have heavily outspent Gingrich in the all expensive FL media market with a massively devastating negative ad campaign. Gingrich and his Super PAC have tried their own negative ad campaign back, but they are simply outmatched and outspent – some say by as much as a 5:1 factor. Gingrich’s big chances were the debates last week, but he failed to repeat on the bold fervor he demonstrated in the SC debates, and therefore lost ground by disappointing his red meat followers.
The other two players still in the race are Rick Santorum and Ron Paul. Ron Paul has continued to be steady, and some say improving slightly with every debate performance. However, he is not spending any money on FL and is focused on the Feb caucus contests beyond.
Rick Santorum has had extremely strong debate performances for the past 4 debates. He too has been credited as getting better debate by debate as many commentators say that the debate last Thursday was his best by far. In that debate, he landed the strongest criticisms of the night – mostly focused on both Gingrich and Romney – in order to distinguish himself from them. Romney, under a new debate coach, showed one of his boldest performances on Thursday night as well…but he also was stung by several crushing blows from both his opponents and the moderator…so it was both a very good night and a very concerning night for him.
Regardless, where things stand, FL is a prize in the race so far – with 50 delegates at stake that will probably be allocated “winner take all”. Romney remains the odds-on favorite to win Florida and regain his momentum…which would give him quite a boost and make him the instant odds on favorite in NV (where there is a huge Mormon population).
The only other one considered possibly positioned to win FL is Newt Gingrich, but if that happens, that should be considered an upset. If that were to happen, NV would move from “favors Romney” to “up for grabs”.