Rick Santorum: The Biggest Loser

During a 2010 interview with Colby Itkowitz, who writes for the Washington bureau of the Allentown, Pennsylvania Morning Call, Rick Santorum said “when you’re dealing with 13 million people and they can’t meet you and don’t know who you are, then what the perception is [is]: Rick Santorum is this really nasty, intolerant, mean guy.”

So on one level, Rick Santorum is not totally delusional.

But then he went on to say that the “benefit of starting anew,” which he believes he’s doing as he runs for President of the United States, is that “he can share his brand of conservatism with people who can judge him with little bias, through what he tells them and not the negative image Pennsylvanians may have of him.”

As if those of us who have this “negative image” of him are somehow chained up in a basement somewhere in Pennsylvania, unable to tell the folks in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and elsewhere exactly why that “negative image” of Santorum developed in Pennsylvania, and why we didn’t re-elect him in to the U.S. Senate in 2006.

And let’s make no mistake about it — when Pennsylvanians sent Rick packing from the Senate, we made him THE BIGGEST LOSER in recent Senate history.

We were unequivocal in our rejection of Santorum.  He lost by 18 points, the biggest loss for a sitting U.S. Senator since 1980.

So can Santorum — a politician who engenders such strong and negative feelings in the voters of his home state — truly believe that those home state voters are going to sit quietly on the sidelines while he tries to persuade Republican primary voters in other states that he’s their best choice the be the leader of the free world, when we didn’t even think he was our best choice to represent Pennsylvania in the Senate?

Let’s just cut to the chase here — he’s underestimated our resolve to spread the truth about Rick Santorum’s record and his agenda for America.

Just for starters, we’d like to share a list of the top reasons that Rick Santorum became Pennsylvania’s BIGGEST LOSER (and trust us, we have many, many more to share as this presidential primary season — and Rick’s candidacy — marches on.

The top 10 reasons Rick became THE BIGGEST LOSER:

– Rick was improperly spending tax dollars on HIS family.

He took $100,000 from a struggling PA public school district to pay for his children’s “cyber” education program.

Unfortunately, Rick and his family were living in suburban Virginia then, so they were not entitled to those funds.

And when exposed in the press, Rick wouldn’t pay back the money, so the school district had to go to court to get it back — which cost us even MORE money.

Pretty hypocritical, since Rick won his first congressional race by attacking the incumbent for living in VA instead of PA.

– Rick voted against raising the minimum wage 8 times.  But he did vote to allow his own pay to be raised by $8000.

When he did propose a small increase, he excluded 10 million workers who live on tips, and even tried to end overtime pay beyond the 40-hour work week.

And who would have benefitted from that?  The owners of big chain restaurants like Outback Steakhouse.  And big hourly employers like Wal-Mart.

No wonder Rick took the Wal-Mart corporate jet to Florida for his fancy political fundraiser with Outback Steakhouse executives. (and oh, by the way, that was the same trip as Rick’s infamous visit to Terry Schiavo’s hospice when other events had been canceled out of “respect” for the Schiavo family).

– Rick wanted to privatize Social Security and raise the retirement age.

Remember, he was serving as a U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania — the second oldest state in the country.

Seriously, he led the charge for George W. Bush’s Social Security privatization plan, thinking Wall Street a safe place for the retirement funds of America’s seniors.

And he said not only would he raise the retirement age to “at least” 70 — he “would go even farther” if he could. Watch the video below:

– Rick voted with big Pharma and against seniors getting lower cost prescription drugs.

He sided with the big drug companies by voting to increase their profits and keep seniors from buying low-cost prescription drugs from Canada.

No wonder the drug lobby gave Santorum committees half a million dollars.

– Rick isn’t interested in protecting other people’s right to compensation if they are victims of medical malpractice, but that position didn’t keep his wife from suing a Virginia chiropractor for a half-million dollars in “pain and suffering.”

Instead, Rick voted to prevent Americans from getting just compensation for their pain and suffering caused by medical malpractice.

And his wife suing a chiropractor for $500,000 becomes even more hypocritical since that’s twice as much as the cap on such damages that his own legislation would have allowed others to receive.

Rick calls their own lawsuit a “private family matter,” but doesn’t seem to think everyone else’s family deserves the same rights and respect.

In fact, Rick has said that Griswold vs. Connecticut was wrongly decided, that there is no right to privacy and, therefore, the state has the right to regulate even the use of birth control by married couples.

– Rick thinks that public schools should teach the beliefs he holds instead of the rigorous academic curriculum our children need

Instead, Rick wants public schools to teach the faith-based belief in “intelligent design” as an equal alternative with Darwin’s scientific theory of evolution.

Rick says schools should present the “controversy” about biological evolution, even though the scientific community makes clear there is no such controversy.

The No Child Left Behind Act was meant to help ensure every young American gets the quality education they need to compete, but Rick’s amendment would have weakened the quality of their science education.

–  Rick claims to be opposed to stem cell research, but is he or isn’t he?

At the same time he was declaring his opposition, his political committee accepted well over $50,000 from companies that perform this very type of research.

And then he compared Sen. Specter’s bill to provide federal funding for a wider range of stem cell research to “the wholesale destruction of human life paid for by the federal government.”

– Rick voted to cut billions in loans that help middle class students afford college, but he voted to give oil companies an additional $2 billion in new tax breaks.

Watch our ad about this from 2006:

Roll Call 363, H.R. 6, December 21, 2005

Santorum voted to concur with the House amendments to S. 1932, the Deficit Reduction Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 2005
“House OKs legislation to save $39 billion over 5 years,” Knight Ridder Newspapers, Feb. 1, 2006

“…The largest reduction in spending would be a nearly $12 billion slice in federal student loans.”

Joint Committee on Taxation, “Estimated Budget Effects of the Conference Agreement for Title XIII. OF H.R. 6,” July 27, 2005

Roll Call 213, H.R. 6, July 29, 2005

“How Those Big Bucks End Up In Big Oil’s Pockets,” Washington Post, Aug 7, 2005

“…In recent months, oil company profits have soared again as international crude prices have hit new highs. Yet the reaction of the American public has been more muted. And that has probably emboldened Congress — which, instead of investigating oil companies, just handed them (by various estimates) anywhere from $1.4 billion to $4 billion in tax breaks in the new energy bill.”

– In his last year as a Senator, Rick’s political committees accepted more money from lobbyists than any other member of Congress.  No wonder he voted to give billions in special tax breaks to oil companies.

Watch our ad from 2006:

“The Bankrollers: Lobbyists’ Payments to the Lawmakers They Court,” Public Citizen, May 22, 2006
“Lobbyists: Top 20 Recipients 2006,” Center for Responsive Politics web site

– And finally there’s that whole embarrassing Rick Santorum homosexuality controversy

It really flared up a little more than 8 years ago, when Santorum made some comments about homosexuality, incest, bigamy, adultery and man-on-dog sex to the Associated Press during an interview.

Unedited excerpts of the taped interview were released by the Associated Press, and they are still available online.  Click here to read them.