By Joe Suszczynski
The beauty of politics is that with any given moment, anything can change.
Mitt Romney was looking pretty good in the primaries, leading in the polls. However, Rick Santorum seemed to come out of nowhere winning Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado. This was a shock to some people including myself. Now recently, Santorum has passed Romney in polls, making him the new front runner.
Despite his new found popularity, like previous front runners in the GOP, he will just be another phase in the GOP and will drop back in the polls.
The reason that we haven’t seen much of Santorum was due to being near last in the polls. He hardly spoke at debates compared to Mitt Romney. The only thing that people really know about Santorum is that he reveres the idea of “family values.”
On the points of “family values” and other social issues, Santorum makes no bones about where he stands on certain issues. He is pro-life, opposes gay marriage and, if he was elected president, he would ban pornography.
Now, respectfully, if the former senator doesn’t agree with abortion, gay marriage and does not like pornography, that’s fine, he has every right to his opinion, but what gives him the right to have them banned? What makes him the arbiter on what’s right and wrong?
He should not dictate on what women should do with their own bodies, nor does he have the right to tell other people they cannot marry each other because of their sexual preferences or tell people what they can and cannot watch. It’s insane that there is a candidate in 2012 that is trying to be a crusader on what is to be determined right and wrong.
For economics issues, like the other candidates, Santorum has a conservative stance. He is for repealing Obama care. He wants to cut taxes for corporations, cut the tax rate to zero for all manufacturers, permanently extend the Bush tax cuts rates for capital gains and dividend tax rates, repeal the death tax, and reduce the tax code for all brackets. Santorum wants to remove certain regulations such as the CO2 on the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). Along with Obama Care, Santorum wants to repeal Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank.
In his energy plan, he wants to continue to keep using oil along with coal, natural gas and nuclear. He is for offshore drilling, wanting to getting rid of President Obama’s restriction on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
These positions are not surprising considering these are all now dogma in the current Republican Party. The current GOP candidate has to be in favor of repealing Obamacare; otherwise the candidate will not get the nomination.
Just like with economics, Santorum has a conservative stance on foreign policy. He is for keeping the troops in Afghanistan, he says he would not have taken troops out of Iraq, and he wants to make sure that Iran doesn’t get ahold of nuclear weapons, even suggesting that the scientists involved should be assassinated. He also criticizes the president on the handling of Libya. Santorum also supports the use of waterboarding to extract information from prisoners.
Again, the positions aren’t surprising. The former senator is a chicken hawk when it comes to foreign policy, even though he has never served in the military. He is also trying to promote torture as a good policy, referring to the act as “enhanced interrogation,” even though it has been shown to not work. Santorum is trying act “macho” when it comes to foreign policy, trying to be the big policeman of the world. Out of the four current candidates the only one who has went against the grain with Republican stances on foreign policy is Congressman, Ron Paul.
All in all, Rick Santorum’s surge in the polls is going to be all for naught. He’s very headstrong about social issues; he wants to get rid of regulations, continue the Bush tax cuts and cut the corporate tax. He also wants to keep the war in Afghanistan going and wants to use torture as means of getting information.
Despite Republicans liking some of his policies, he won’t even fair against the president. Polls have shown President Obama beating Santorum by a decent margin. In this election, Republicans just want a candidate that can beat Obama and sadly, Santorum isn’t it. It’s only a matter of time before he falls in the polls just like Bachmann, Perry, Cain, and Gingrich.
Mitt Romney shouldn’t have a problem sleeping at night.