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If Mitt Romney wins in Florida on Tuesday — as I believe he will, possibly by a big margin — he will almost surely sweep the GOP primary table in February and go on to win the nomination.
So, right now, Romney looks more than ever to me like the GOP standard-bearer for 2012. Soon, it will be time to unite the party and focus on beating Barack Obama in November. And a big part of uniting the party revolves around Romney’s choice for a running mate.
That’s why it’s got to be Rick Santorum.
For starters, a presidential candidate must choose a running mate who bolsters his weakest area. For Romney, his biggest shortcoming — going back to his run in 2008, when he lost the nomination to McCain — has been his failure to connect with the conservative base of the Republican Party.
Santorum is a solid conservative in every area — on economics, social issues, defense and national security, you name it. As he’s been saying all along on the campaign trail: “I’m someone who has not only talked the talk, but I’ve walked the walk.” And he has, even when it has cost him dearly.
A VP candidate should also bring some electoral oomph to the ticket, and Santorum certainly does. He has a strong appeal to working-class people, to blue-collar workers like those in the steel towns of Pennsylvania where he first campaigned for Congress and won elected office. He proved so popular that he ran statewide for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania and continued winning, in a state with one million more registered Democrats than Republicans. Yes, he lost his last Senate race by a sizable margin, but that was in one of the worst years ever for Republicans.
The point is that over a long period he proved that he can not only compete, but win, in the kind of swing state that will be vital to a GOP victory in the general election.
Romney will also want a running mate who’s disciplined and handles himself well in debates. Santorum has shown himself to be nothing if not disciplined on the campaign trail — unlike Newt, he won’t be proposing colonies on the moon, or hurting the conservative cause by talking about “vulture capitalism” or playing racial politics. Santorum stays on message and he has consistently been stellar in the debates.
If Mitt Romney wins in Florida on Tuesday — as I believe he will, possibly by a big margin — he will almost surely sweep the GOP primary table in February and go on to win the nomination.
So, right now, Romney looks more than ever to me like the GOP standard-bearer for 2012. Soon, it will be time to unite the party and focus on beating Barack Obama in November. And a big part of uniting the party revolves around Romney’s choice for a running mate.
That’s why it’s got to be Rick Santorum.
For starters, a presidential candidate must choose a running mate who bolsters his weakest area. For Romney, his biggest shortcoming — going back to his run in 2008, when he lost the nomination to McCain — has been his failure to connect with the conservative base of the Republican Party.
Santorum is a solid conservative in every area — on economics, social issues, defense and national security, you name it. As he’s been saying all along on the campaign trail: “I’m someone who has not only talked the talk, but I’ve walked the walk.” And he has, even when it has cost him dearly.
A VP candidate should also bring some electoral oomph to the ticket, and Santorum certainly does. He has a strong appeal to working-class people, to blue-collar workers like those in the steel towns of Pennsylvania where he first campaigned for Congress and won elected office. He proved so popular that he ran statewide for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania and continued winning, in a state with one million more registered Democrats than Republicans. Yes, he lost his last Senate race by a sizable margin, but that was in one of the worst years ever for Republicans.
The point is that over a long period he proved that he can not only compete, but win, in the kind of swing state that will be vital to a GOP victory in the general election.
Romney will also want a running mate who’s disciplined and handles himself well in debates. Santorum has shown himself to be nothing if not disciplined on the campaign trail — unlike Newt, he won’t be proposing colonies on the moon, or hurting the conservative cause by talking about “vulture capitalism” or playing racial politics. Santorum stays on message and he has consistently been stellar in the debates.
And, last but not least, a VP candidate must adhere to the same core principle that doctors swear to uphold when they take the Hippocratic Oath: First, do no harm. You simply don’t want a Joe Biden at the bottom of the ticket. Otherwise, you’re going to have to spend a lot of your time explaining stupid behavior.
You know, like when “Clueless Joe” traveled to San Francisco recently and bragged to an audience there that the New York Giants were going to the Super Bowl. And what team were the Giants about to play to determine which one would actually advance to the big game? That’s right....the San Francisco 49ers. True to form, “Clueless Joe” couldn’t figure out why his big applause line was greeted by stone dead silence from the crowd. Nothing but crickets chirping in the background. It turned out the Giants weren’t such a “big [freaking] deal” to Niners fans.
During this presidential campaign season, and throughout his career, Santorum has been thoroughly vetted. Everything there is to know about him has been made public. So there won’t be any other shoes dropping during the campaign.
To be sure, Democrats and their liberal media allies will do their darndest to paint Santorum as an extremist on social issues. They will pound him for being unapologetically pro-life, including when it comes to rape or incest. Although these cases represent only a tiny fraction of all abortions, they get the vast majority of attention from liberals in government and media.
Such was the case when Piers Morgan questioned Santorum on his program recently, asking him if he would allow his own daughter to have an abortion if she were raped. Santorum stood his ground, explaining that as horrific as the circumstances of that conception would be, there is still a baby’s life hanging in the balance and the baby’s life shouldn’t be snuffed out. This is something that simply confounds and enrages liberals.
Well, I have an idea. The next time a woman is raped, let’s kill the woman like they do in Muslim countries with so-called “honor killings.” You say that’s evil, that in a just society we shouldn’t blame the victims or kill the innocents? Well, you’re absolutely right. Yet every time a woman is raped and becomes pregnant, the Left screams in unison: “Kill the baby!” Even though the baby is as innocent as the woman, and can be given to a loving family through adoption if the mother feels she is unable to raise the child herself.
Every abortion stops a beating heart, regardless of how the child is conceived.
Obama has been the most pro-abortion president in our nation’s history, and now we learn that ObamaCare will mandate the use of abortion drugs, contraception, etc., regardless of religious beliefs, through his Department of Health and Human Services. The head of that department, Kathleen Sebelius, presided over a state that was the abortion capital of the world, and that’s the reason Obama picked her for this post. Consequently, we’d better start calling it the Department of Death and Homicidal Services.
Obama supports all abortion and the public funding of it, including partial-birth abortion. Moreover, when he was in the Illinois Senate, he wouldn’t even step up to protect the lives of babies who miraculously happened to survive abortions — which means he clearly favors live-birth abortions as well.
So who is the real extremist on this issue, Obama or Santorum? I, for one, would love to see that debate play out in full this fall.
With that, I’ll officially make my endorsement for this year’s presidential election — Romney/Santorum 2012.
As Jon Lovitz (as Tommy Flanagan) would say: “Yeah, that’s the ticket.”
e-mail: tom3264@msn.com, or go to tom’s Facebook page to send a message
