Former and future Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum all but acknowledged he will run yet again for president, so a true conservative can get elected by the majority who, he thinks, are just like him.
Far right conservative Rick Santorum seems to be under the impression that he is not far right at all, but “center right.” So he suggested to far-right conservative radio host Tim Constantine of “The Capitol Hill Show” yesterday. Santorum all but announced he will run for president yet again, and railed against the big money interests funding GOP politics, whom he attacked as too “moderate.”
The former U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania accused the leadership of the Republican National Committee of being financially motivated rather than actually believing in the Republican platform — and rather than wanting to actually win elections.
Like many in the GOP, Santorum believes that if a Republican loses an election, it’s because they weren’t conservative enough, or were too far to the left — which explains the rise of the far right Tea Party.
“You look at our side and it’s, ‘You got to be quiet about this issue, you can’t talk about this issue, you got to stay away from this issue.’ When you do that, you’re not making the argument to the American public as to why you’re right and of course you’re going to lose on that issue if you never talk about it,” Santorum told Constantine. “That’s the problem, is that we have a bunch of people who run the Republican Party from the financial point of view who don’t believe in the party platform and have been trying to cow us into walking away from it.”
Earlier in the show (audio), Constantine discussed a recent Gallup poll (likely this one) that he claimed shows 42 percent of Americans are conservative and only 21 percent are liberal, touting its ‘two-to-one margin.” But he left out that the poll was referring to economic issues, not social issues — which are Santorum’s bread-and-butter. That poll also found 34 percent of Americans describe themselves as “moderate” on economic issues.
More importantly, that same poll found 37 percent of Americans claiming to be conservative on social issues, and 34 percent say they are liberals — with an increasing number of Americans becoming liberal.
“Will you run again in 2016? Will you carry the mantle of the conservative movement?†Constantine asked Santorum — who was only too happy to indulge him. “Well, I’m in South Carolina today.†Apparently, there was no other reason to be there.
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Hat tip: Right Wing Watch
Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr