After previously being denied by the Student Government Association’s Senate, an anti-abortion group at Johns Hopkins University has been granted official status as a campus organization and will continue to conduct “sidewalk interference” sessions outside clinics, now with possible university funding.Johns Hopkins announced on Wednesday that the Student Government Association’s Judiciary Committee unanimously voted to overturn the earlier decision and grant the group official privileges, such as listings in all university publications and websites and on-campus fundraising opportunities.The committee’s decision coincided with a visit to Johns Hopkins from former Senator Rick Santorum, who told students: “The vast majority of people who are pro-life are pro-life because they know something scientifically.”Santorum’s faith in science only went so far, as he went on to remark that many scientific journals have been “discredited” on climate change: “The bottom line is in the last 15 years the earth is not warm,” Santorum said. “The warmest year was 1998. We have not seen any warming since then. This was somehow lost on the people in this room.”Continue Reading… … Read More
Santorum: “Suicidal” for GOP to embrace gay marriage
Though two Republican senators, Mark Kirk and Rob Portman, have recently announced their support for marriage equality, Rick Santorum doesn’t think the party will ever embrace the issue.Referencing Republicans who supported pro-choice efforts in the 60s and 70s, Santorum told the Des Moines Register: “I’m sure you could go back and read stories, oh, you know, ‘The Republican party’s going to change. This is the future.’ Obviously that didn’t happen.”"I think you’re going to see the same stories written now and it’s not going to happen,” he said. “The Republican party’s not going to change on this issue. In my opinion it would be suicidal if it did.”Santorum also noted: “I’m hopeful the Supreme Court learned its lesson about trying to predict where the American public is going on issues and trying to find rights in the Constitution that sit with the fancy of the day.” Continue Reading… … Read More
Rick Santorum’s plan to revitalize the GOP: Defund Planned Parenthood
In a fundraising email sent Sunday, former Pennsylvanian Sen. Rick Santorum warned that social conservatives were being pushed out of the Republican Party. The former GOP presidential candidate said he had a three point plan to prevent the Republican Party from abandoning social conservatives and…
Rick Santorum: I could run for president in 2016
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum (R) hasn’t ruled out running for President of the United States again. “I’m making no commitments at this point, but we’re not doing anything inconsistent with running in 2016,” he told Newsmax TV’s Steve Malzberg on…
Rick Santorum: “We’re not the Libertarian Party, we’re the Republican Party”
The great libertarian dream of
entering the GOP in a Trojan horse Rand Paul built by hand is over.
Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee are on to us and they are putting
their gouty feet down. “Look, the Republican Party isn’t going to
change,”
former Sen. ;Rick
Santorum ;(R-Pa.) ;tells ;Politico. “If we
do change, we’ll be the Whig Party….We’re not the Libertarian
Party, we’re the Republican Party.”
Santorum and Huckabee (who is far less interesting in
Politico’s piece, aside from a joke about McCain and
Romney failing to “just light ’em up at the National Right to Life
Convention”) both seem to think the real reason the GOP
lost two presidential elections in a row is because its candidates
did not talk enough about the horrors of abortion and men
kissing each other on the mouth. Sayeth Santorum: “If we had
candidates in the last two presidential elections who weren’t
ashamed of the positions they had on these issues and played
offense, instead of listening to the same people who now want to
abandon the issues, we would’ve been successful.” ;
What Santorum doesn’t say, but Politico’s other interviewees do,
is that social conservatives don’t find the small government
message very convincing:
“If we gave our voters an accurate portrayal of our ideas, that
we want to cut the rate of growth on Social Security, give tax cuts
to billionaires and then the values issues, the values issues would
be more popular than the economic agenda of the current Republican
Party,” said Gary Bauer, citing particularly those Mass-attending
Roman Catholics who have fled the Democrats.
Bauer added, “I would caution the donor wing of the Republican
Party that is driving a lot of this: If they think social
conservatives are the only thing preventing Republicans from
winning, they’ll learn that their economic agenda will go down the
tubes along with the Republican Party’s prospects.”
Despite evidence that young voters are cool with men saying “I
do!” to other men, and then kissing those men long and hard,
Santorum is hopeful they will eventually discover the error of
their ways. “I think we’ll see the pendulum swing back once young
conservatives see the real consequences to the destruction of
marriage.” ;
On another front in the war over the GOP’s soul,
podcasting ;Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol says
it doesn’t matter what young people think about marriage, or
anything else for that matter.
From Mediaite: ;
Noting that the Republican “establishment” (not including
himself, ;of course) looks like a herd “running to
catch up with the trends” because “some polls show [same-sex
marriage] is now 58% popular and five years ago it was only 43%
popular” (yes, that’s called an upward trend), Kristol lamented how
some of the party’s leaders believe it necessary to take on the
“fashionable” position of being okay with gay marriage.
“Not only will those earn the contempt of people who believe in
defending traditional marriage,” he said, but they won’t even get
credit for hopping onto the bandwagon.
“This kind of pathetic attempt to say, ‘Oh, my God! Young people
especially are liberal so let’s just rush to cater to them,’ as if
they’re going to respect you if you just embrace the views of some
26-year-old who doesn’t know anything honestly.”
A winning strategy, for sure. ; … Read More
Covered at Reason 24/7: Gingrich-Santorum “Unity” Ticket Almost Formed in 2012
The 2012 presidential election season
was an interesting spectacle for many reasons. However, it looks
like the race for the White House could have been a little more
interesting had a “Unity Ticket” that reportedly almost came into
being actually been realized.
From
Bloomberg:
It’s one of the great untold stories of the 2012 presidential
campaign, a tale of ego and intrigue that nearly upended the
Republican primary contest and might even have produced a different
nominee.
As Mitt
Romney struggled in the weeks leading up to the Michigan
primary, Newt
Gingrich and Rick Santorum
almost agreed to form a joint “Unity Ticket” to consolidate
conservatives support and topple Romney.
Follow this story and more at ;Reason 24/7.
If you have a story that would be of interest to Reason’s
readers please let us know by emailing the 24/7 crew at
24_7@reason.com, or tweet us stories at ;@reason247. … Read More
Romney tells CPAC “I’m sorry”
Mitt Romney has a long and unique relationship with CPAC. In 2007, the former Massachusetts governor was a star, winning the CPAC straw poll as the conservative alternative to the more moderate front-runner, John McCain. A year later, Romney used the venue to make the surprise announcement that he was dropping out of the race. Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham, who was tasked with introducing him, said last week on her radio show that she was given just a minute or two to rewrite her speech.In 2009, with the fiery Tea Party movement on the rise, a Yoda-like Romney warned conservatives against giving in to anger; in 2010, as a slew of young politicians was about to be sent to Congress, Romney was well received as a seasoned statesmen; in 2011, angling for the GOP nomination again, he tossed out right-wing red meat about Saul Alinksy and socialism to keep Ricks Perry and Santorum at bay. Continue Reading… … Read More
