Is Rick Santorum In Or Out Of The 2012 Race?

 There is some speculation that Rick Santorum will be dropping out soon given that he may not win any delegates in Pennsylvania and that there has been no campaign activity from the Santorum campaign:

Rick Santorum’s campaign insisted Friday the former Pennsylvania senator is still in the race despite mounting pressure even from voters in his home state that he pull out before the Keystone State’s primary April 24.

But Santorum has scheduled no public events over the holiday weekend and has made no major media buys, fueling speculation that he might quit. Polling in Pennsylvania that shows him slipping against front-runner Mitt Romney raises the prospect of an embarrassing home-state loss that could hurt his chances if he were to make a run for the nomination in 2016.

A Santorum campaign spokesman said the candidate had a busy slate of events scheduled for next week and promised that a list would be released soon.

If he decides to stay in the race, Rick Santorum will have to face some harsh facts about his campaign. Recently, a memo was released to the press from the Santorum campaign in which he outlined his belief that he can become the Republican nominee. However, Santorum's path to victory is based on some very flawed assumptions:

Santorum's camp said its internal count shows Romney with only 571 delegates while Santorum has 342. CNN's current delegate estimate, however, shows Romney with 657 and Santorum with 273.

"This race is much closer than the media and Establishment Republicans would like to report," stated the memo.

By CNN's count, Romney needs 44% of the delegates remaining to gain the nomination while Santorum needs 78%.

The campaign reached its rosier version of the delegate count making some assumptions that many experts don't believe will happen, including that Florida and Arizona will change positions and decide to award their delegates proportionally instead of winner take all. Santorum officials said the states broke Republican National Committee rules by not making their contests proportional and therefore conclude the RNC will take away some of Romney's delegates there.

Florida Republican Party Director of Communications Brian Hughes told CNN his state's rule was accepted by the RNC and therefore it will stay a winner take all state.

"It's a kind of a sad commentary on where they are that they have to make things up rather than face the reality of the status of their campaign," he told CNN.

Rick Santorum doesn't have a whole lot of time to decide. The Pennsylvania primary is in a few weeks and he has to decide whether he's in or out. Hopefully, he makes the right decision and bows out. 

Happy Easter 2012!!

I would like wish Christians everywhere a Happy Easter. Let us remember the true meaning of Easter. I would like to share "He Is Risen" as performed by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir: 

The Media Is Intentionally Misleading Its Viewers On Mitt Romney's Mormon Faith

When it comes to the media covering the Presidential elections, conservatives don't have a lot of trust in these institutions to present all the facts in a straightforward manner. The famous example is "Rathergate" in which Dan Rather attempted to create news about President George W. Bush in which he claimed to have authentic documents about Bush's service in the national guard only to have those documents exposed as forgeries.

The media has learned not to repeat the same mistake again. Rather than manufacture news based on falsified documents, the have shifted to a more subtle form of creating news by selectively editing important key facts. The most recent example of this tactic can be seen in the Treyvon Martin case in which NBC edited the 911 police call to make it look like George Zimmerman said "This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black" when in reality that is not what he said on the 911 police tapes. As a result, NBC is now conducting an internal investigation into a major breach of journalistic practices.

NBC pulled the same trick on Mitt Romney in which Martin Bashir aired an edited audio clip of an audience member asking a question about Romney's faith. Jeffery Meyer, pointed out that NBC distorted what Mitt Romney said because of their bias towards Republicans:

Bashir, who loves to attack Republicans on a daily basis, has decided to deliberately distort Romney and selectively edit his words so as to create a controversy where none exists.  Such journalistic malpractice is unacceptable and MSNBC needs to be held accountable.

The media isn't always subtle in its distortion of the facts. Sometimes it throws journalistic integrity out the window and reports false facts as if they were true. Watch the clip below for a good example of this:

 

CNN should be ashamed because the LDS Church has no position on interracial marriage amd it has never forbidden interracial marriage. Consider the following statements from past Mormon leaders. President Spencer W. Kimball, in a speech given to BYU students in 1965, had this to say about interracial marriage:

"Now, the brethren feel that it is not the wisest thing to cross racial lines in dating and marrying. There is no condemnation. We have had some of our fine young people who have crossed the lines. We hope they will be very happy, but experience of the brethren through a hundred years has proved to us that marriage is a very difficult thing under any circumstances and the difficulty increases in interrace marriages." (Source: Interracial Marriage Discouraged", Church News, June 17, 1978, p. 2.)

Here's another statement from Spencer W. Kimball: 

“When I said you must teach your people to overcome their prejudices and accept the Indians, I did not mean that you would encourage intermarriage. I mean that they should be brothers, to worship together and to work together and to play together; but we must discourage intermarriage, not because it is sin. I would like to make this very emphatic. A couple has not committed sin if an Indian boy and a white girl are married, or vice versa. It isn’t a transgression like the transgressions of which many are guilty. But it is not expedient. Marriage statistics and our general experience convince us that marriage is not easy. It is difficult when all factors are favorable. The divorces increase constantly, even where the spouses have the same general background of race, religion, finances, education, and otherwise. ” (Spencer W. Kimball, “The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball,” p. 302)

Another favorite tactic of the media is not distort the facts but to distort the viewer's perception of the facts as to elicit the desired response or reaction from the viewing audience either by reaffirming their biases or introducing them to it. Watch the clip for textbook application of this tactic below:

What Larry O’Donnell has done is use legitimate polling of people's willingness to vote for a candidate based on their religion as a means of cementing people's unwillingness to vote for a Mormon by distorting the history of the LDS Church. Noah Glyn, writing for National Review Online, summarizes O'Donnell's blatant and false distortion of the beginnings of the LDS religion:

Last night, MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell attacked Mitt Romney, Mormonism, and Joseph Smith. According to O’Donnell, Smith only created Mormonism to justify his lax sexual mores.

In this case, O'Donnell admits his bias towards the LDS religion. As a result, O'Donnell isn't educating the public about the news as a news reporter should, but is preaching his gospel of religious bigotry to anyone who will listen. As a result, those who are already biased towards the LDS faith will have their beliefs reaffirmed and those who haven't had such a bias are now potentially infected with it.

The reason why the media has been dishonest in the way they cover Mitt Romney's faith is because many members of the media are liberal and are hostile to religion. Nancy French explains why the media has been untruthful about Mitt Romney's faith:

Secular leftists are often quite religious in their zeal to attack traditional values, and I’d say that they have Mormons in their crosshairs in large part because they’re quite effective in defending our culture. After all, there’s only 6 million Mormons in America, yet the media Left — from HBO to PBS to Broadway — has spent much of the last two election cycles flailing away at the LDS church.

In other words, the secular Left hates Mormons because they see the LDS church as a part of the same Judeo-Christian tradition we belong to; the same Judeo-Christian tradition they so despise. 

John Schroeder over at Article6 blog explains why the intentional distortion towards Mitt Romney's faith is unacceptable for a religiously diverse country as ours:  

We cannot take this bait.  These kinds of assaults – the “weirdness” of proxy baptism, polygamy as a justification for illicit sex – may have some appeal if you think Mormonism a “false” religion.  But here is the thing.  In a religiously pluralistic society like ours, if it stands against them, something similar will stand against us. 

Last year, it was revealed that Obama planned on attacking Mitt Romney's faith but that idea was immediately ridiculed. Recently, Senator Orrin Hatch asserted that Obama would go after Romney's faith and many Democrats immediately denied Obama would do that. The President knows he can't get 6 million Mormons in the United States to vote for him and that he may not have it in his election strategy to make Romney's faith an issue in the campaign. However, those in the media have already made it an issue in this election in which they will discourage as many Americans as they can to not vote for Romney by intentionally distorting their coverage of his faith.

Rick Santorum Considering Dropping Out Before Pennsylvania Primary

Given that Rick Santorum faces a possible embarrassing defeat in his home state, he's considering suspending his campaign:  

The possibility of a loss in his home state of Pennsylvania might force Rick Santorum to drop out of the Republican primary sooner than he’d planned, say GOP strategists.

Santorum is notoriously strong-willed, and those close to him say that party elders will not be able to convince him to exit the race if he thinks he has a shot at the Republican nomination.

But one of Santorum’s close friends told The Hill that while the former Pennsylvania senator remains confident about winning his home state and using that to build May momentum, if that confidence falters, he might exit the race. Pennsylvania state Sen. Jake Corman (R), a longtime friend of Santorum and his family, said if it appeared Santorum wasn’t going to win the state, the former senator could drop his campaign.

“He’s a realist; he doesn’t have his head in the clouds,” Corman told The Hill. “As long as he sees a pathway to the nomination he’s going to stay in it, but he won’t stay in it to prove a point. If he gets to the point where he doesn’t think he’ll be the nominee, he’ll get out.”

One of the big factors that is weighing heavily on Santorum's mind is facing the possibility of losing in his home state twice which would tarnish his political future:

Many Republican strategists argue that Santorum has resurrected his political career after a bad 2006 Senate loss with his surprisingly strong presidential campaign — but that another loss in his home state could undo all that work, leading to predictions that if he thinks he could lose Pennsylvania, he might bow out.

“If he loses Pennsylvania twice, that’s going to really hobble him in the future. That’d be very hard to live down,” said Kirsten Fedewa, Mike Huckabee’s 2008 communications director.

Another point for Rick Santorum that he will probably be considering is that his support is shrinking dramatically after suffering a humiliating three state loss just a few days ago

“There’s a point on the campaign trail where you start seeing diminishing returns, thinner crowds, you’re not getting the big boost on your website fundraising, the enthusiasm factor is dying down,” she said. “He’s going to be feeling it on the stump and seeing the impact on his campaign. He’s an anti-establishment candidate, so what the establishment does or doesn't do isn’t going to persuade him — but when he sees the intensity factor waning, that’s going to weigh heavily.”

Another factor that Rick Santorum is considering is that there is no realistic way for him to continue on in the race no matter how confident he feels in Pennsylvania and in the following primary elections. Dick Morris explains why: 

Rick Santorum has now punted April and is saying that we need to wait until May for him to rack up significant totals of delegates. Fat chance.

After DC, Maryland, and Wisconsin, Romney has about 640 delegates. He will probably win New York (95 delegates), Del (17), Ct (28), and RI (19) raising his total to about 770. He’ll lose Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri but he’ll get his share raising his total to 800 delegates). He could, and probably will, win Pennsylvania giving him 870. (Santorum doesn’t have delegates in each part of his home state).

Then comes May, Rick’s favorite month. But Romney will probably win Maine (24), Indiana (46), and Oregon (28) giving him just shy of 1,000 delegates. He’ll probably lose Arkansas (36), and might lose Kentucky (45), Nebraska (35), North Carolina (45). He will however pick up some portion of their delegations in the proportional representation states. And he’ll likely lose the big May primary – Texas with 155 votes. But since Texas votes by Congressional District, he’ll win his share. Most likely, he will exit May with over 1,000 delegates and could approach 1,100.

Then, by June 6th, he will vault past the 1,144 he needs for the nomination by winning California, New Jersey, Utah, South Dakota, Washington State, Montana, and New Mexico.

Santorum, Gingrich, and Paul not only have no chance at winning a majority of the delegates, but they also have no chance of deadlocking the convention. The numbers don’t add up.

Rick Santorum shouldn't have to think too hard about whether to drop out or not. All the evidence strongly indicates that he cannot win Pennsylvania since Mitt Romney is leading in the polls in that state, he cannot win any of the subsequent primary elections nor can he win the Republican nomination. Moreover, he can't even cause mischief by creating a brokered convention because the delegate math states that is not possible. 

Mitt Romney bowed out graciously when he realized that he could not win the Republican nomination and then worked hard to help McCain. Rick Santorum should do the same so that everyone can focus on making President Obama a one term President.  

Mitt Romney Wins Big In Wisconsin, Maryland & Washington D.C. Primary!!

Tonight was a big night for Mitt Romney. in which he won Maryland, Washington D.C. and Wisconsin. A combined total of 98 delegates were at stake in these states and a substantial majority of the delegates in each state. Each of these primary elections were winner take all states in which all the delegates were up for grabs. By winning tonight, Mitt Romney increased his massive lead over his Republican competitor.

In Maryland, Romney won 53% of the vote which allowed him to win all the 37 delegates available tonight. An interesting fact came from the Maryland exit polls in which Romney TIED Santorum in Maryland among the very conservative voters. Also, 41% of Maryland voters said that the most important quality that they wanted in a candidate was someone who can beat Obama. Mitt Romney's victory in Maryland pushes him past the half way point of getting the 1,114 delegates needed to become the GOP nominee: 

Maryland was expected to go to Mr. Romney, but the delegates he secured there pushed him past an important milestone on his quest to be the Republican presidential nominee: Mr. Romney is now more than halfway towards the 1,144 delegates he needs to mathematically win the nomination.

Maryland brings Mr. Romney's delegate total to 600 according to an ongoing count by The Associated Press. Rick Santorum, with 272 delegates, has less than half that amount.

Romney also won all of the 19 delegates in Washington D.C with 72 % of the vote  Rick Santorum was not able to get on the ballot in Washington D.C. and as a result, Romney got those delegates pretty much for free.

Finally, in Wisconsin, Mitt Romney won  21 delegates with 43% of the vote. Clearly, this was a good night for Mitt Romney. Rick Santorum wanted to take Mitt Romney out by any means possible tonight but  admitted that he doubted he could win Wisconsin after it became clear that Romney had erased his lead in that state in the weeks prior to the election.

Prior to this election night, the current delegate count stood as the following: Romney (568), Santorum (273), Gingrich (135) and Paul (50). Now the delegate count stands as pictured below:

Rick Santorum suffered an embarrassing loss tonight which demonstrates his declining influence in this primary race. He's stated that he would be open to becoming Mitt Romney's VP but Team Romney shot that down by stating he's not on their list.  Part of the reason why the Romney campaign doesn't want Santorum as their VP is that he doesn't really have much influence or clout inside or outside the Republican party. 

Despite losing badly to Romney, Rick Santorum remains undaunted and vows to fight on despite the fact that it is virtually impossible for him to win the Republican nomination because Mitt Romney Romney has collected 70% of delegates thus far (646), more than all the other other candidates combined (458). Given the impossibility of getting the Republican nomination, some people are questioning Santorum's sanity in pressing forward despite getting swept out by Mitt Romney.  However, Rick Santorum has indicated that he will stay in the race until the Pennsylvania primary.

Tonight's victory demonstrated the 2012 Republican primaries are over. Rick Santorum is in denial about this fact. However, it has been announced that Republican National Committee (RNC) and the Romney campaign will now be raising campaign funds together. That's an obvious sign that the Republican party already knows who the Republican nominee will be.

Another sign is that for the first time in the Romney's campaign, supporters who came to see Mitt's victory speech tonight had to walk through metal detectors and saw an increase in the number of Secret Service agents at campaign event.

The best thing about Mitt Romney's win tonight is that it marks the beginning of the general election against President Obama. Romney is already beginning to shift to the general election by spending more of his time attacking President Obama than focusing on contrasting himself with the other 2012 candidates.  Mitt gave an great speech tonight distinguishing himself from Obama and setting out his vision for America.

The battle between Obama and Mitt Romney is now on. Go Mitt Romney!

Rick Santorum Is Not Honest About His Pro-Life Record

Today, Rick Santorum is in Wisconsin trying to get religious conservatives in that state to vote for him on the upcoming primary next Tuesday. Rick Santorum has currently positioned himself as the social conservative in the race. He wants you to believe that he's always been a pro-choice warrior who has fought in defense of life. However, that image does not provide a true picture of who Rick Santorum is. 

If we really take a close look at Rick Santorum's record on abortion, voters will find that he either tolerated abortion or has flip flopped in on his position of abortion. Let us the review the facts: 

When we look at his voting record, we find that Rick Santorum voted for the protection of Abortion Clinics. He's also backed pro-abortion candidates against pro-lifers such as Arlen Specter. Rick Santorum has admitted that he has not be a firm warrior on the issue of abortion: 

“Santorum, who describes himself in his campaign manual as a “progressive conservative,” and who did not have a firm position on abortion”

“Santorum said he had always opposed government funding of abortions, but “beyond that I tried as much as I could to dance around the issue, not really take a position on it.”

Additional evidence shows that Rick Santorum did not take up a position upon abortion until it was politically convenient to do so:

What's even worse, Rick Santorum may have been hostile to those who have been fighting the pro-life agenda. Recently, a video has surfaced in which it shows standing on the right hand side of Arlen Specter, applauding him as Arlen Specter berates those in the “radical” wing of our party who are fighting for justice for the unborn and religious freedoms. Watch the video below: 

Rick Santorum has been trying to portray himself as the stalwart warrior on abortion as a means of portraying himself as a staunch social conservative. However, the facts demonstrate that Rick Santorum's past actions undermine the image he's trying to put forth to the American public. This information is relevant for social conservatives in this race because they may not be happy with someone who is being dishonest about their pro-life record and has been seen cheering on a senator who openly mocks those who have been fighting for the unborn.

The Real Agenda of Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich And Rick Santorum

Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum are determined to stay in the race even if the chances of them winning the Republican nomination grows slim with each passing election contest. All of the candidates know this but they're not in the race to become President. Each one of them have an agenda. 

Ron Paul

Ron Paul's chances of winning the Republican nomination is extremely low. He hasn't a won a single primary or caucus and his unfavorability rating is quite high.  However, Ron Paul has admitted that he isn't in the race to become President but that he's in the race for the sole purpose of amassing enough delegates so that he can use his delegates as a way of getting the Republican party to adopt his libertarian views on foreign policy, economics and other issues. Recently, Ron Paul admitted on Fox News that he doesn't want the power of being the President but to have the power to influence our nation on matters he considers important. However, if that is his goal, Ron Paul has only has 50 delegates as of today. By the time the GOP convention rolls around, he won't have enough delegates and as a result will be in a inferior bargaining position in attempting to negotiate with the Republican party into adopting  his views on the national platform.

Newt Gingrich

Newt Gingrich's chances of winning the Republican nomination is also extremely low. He's only won two Republican nominations and he only has 135 delegates as of today. He also has amazingly high unfavorability ratings of 60%. Regardless, Newt Gingrich is determined to press forward by bypassing the primary process and winning at the convention by getting the delegates to switch their votes to Newt.  Joe DeSantis, the campaign’s communications director, explains Gingrich's new election strategy:

The idea, Mr. DeSantis said, is to persuade unpledged delegates and those who have backed another candidate to see Mr. Gingrich as the best challenger to face President Obama. 

Joe DeSaintis elaborates more on their new election strategy: 

 “We believe that if Governor Romney is unable to secure 1,144 by the last primaries, he will be unable to do so at the convention where the vast majority of the delegates are conservative,” DeSantis said. “That creates [an] environment at the convention where Gingrich can emerge as the one candidate who can unite social, economic and national security conservatives (a fact which is borne out by polling).”

Newt Gingrich's agenda is pretty obvious. He is remaining in the race out of pure revenge and will do anything he can to prevent Mitt Romney from winning the nomination:

Joe DeSantis said Gingrich's decision to lay off staff and replace his campaign manager was a reorganization that would enable him to fight on to the Republican National Convention in the summer and win the nomination there.

The overhaul comes as a CNN/ORC International poll released Tuesday indicated that most Republicans would like to see Gingrich and Texas Rep. Ron Paul end their White House bids.

But they want conservative challenger Rick Santorum to stay in the race.

The poll, conducted over the weekend, showed that about six in 10 Republicans wanted Gingrich and Paul to halt their campaigns, while a similar number supported Santorum continuing his bid.

DeSantis said the poll "showed that Gingrich dropping out of the race would help Mitt Romney dramatically more than it helps Rick Santorum."

This would "virtually guarantee Mitt Romney the nomination," he said, as he urged conservatives to rally behind Gingrich to keep the former Massachusetts governor from victory.

Rick Santorum

Rick Santorum has done much better in this election than Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich have. He's won 11 primary contests so far and currently has 273 delegates. However, the chances of him getting the 1,1140 delegates needed to win the Republican nomination grows slim with each primary election. The evidence is overwhelmingly clear that the electoral math doesn't work for Rick Santorum. He cannot get the necessary 1,140 delegates needed to win. As Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post points out, there's just no way for Rick Santorum to win the Republican nomination: 

Romney still leads by about 300 delegates . With 568 delegates to Santorum’s 273 Romney, Romney needs only 576 more delegates, about 46 percent of the remaining delegates. Santorum would need to win about 70 percent, and that just isn’t going to happen.

Rick Santorum disputes the current calculation of delegates by arguing that what you hear in the news doesn't accurately reflect the delegate count:

As he struggles to keep up with frontrunner Mitt Romney and parries calls for him to drop out of the Republican presidential race, Rick Santorum has said in recent weeks that he has actually won more delegates than some media counts show.  Those counts, Santorum says, are not taking into account Republican party rules, as well as the state-level meetings that actually determine how many delegates go to each candidate.

"Here's one of the things that I can tell you I didn't know," Santorum told a small group of reporters at a breakfast in Washington Monday.  "Every single state is different.  Every state. Every single state is different.  It's different on how you get on the ballot.  It's different on their structure, how they allocate delegates, whether they are bound, whether they are unbound, when they're committed, how long they committed, how they're selected. Our math is actually based on the reality of what's going on in the states."

Now, the Santorum campaign is providing some numbers to flesh out the candidate's claims.  In a long conversation Wednesday evening, John Yob, the campaign's national and state convention director, pointed out that many high-profile primaries have been little more than beauty contests, and that delegates in many key states are actually being awarded in county, district, and state conventions, which are often dominated by conservative activists. "In that process, we are doing very well," said Yob. "The moderate candidate almost never performs better than a conservative candidate in a county, district, or state convention process."

Of course, the Romney campaign rejects Rick Santorum's claim and argue that no matter how Rick Santorum calculates the delegate math, he's still going to come up short: 

The Romney campaign strongly disputes Santorum's numbers.  In a March 22 memo -- sent out after Romney's win in Illinois but before Santorum's victory in Louisiana -- Romney political director Rich Beeson wrote that Romney led Santorum by more than 300 delegates and that Romney already had more than half of the needed 1,144 delegates. "Each day Senator Santorum continues to march up this steep hill of improbability is a day we lose to unite in our effort as Republicans to defeat President Obama," Beeson wrote.

Beeson pointed out that it is impossible for Santorum to reach the 1,144 delegate number himself.  Team Santorum doesn't really claim otherwise.  But their math is now about keeping Romney short of 1,144 -- and hoping things go their way in state conventions and, ultimately, in Tampa in August.

Despite the small chances of winning the Republican nomination through out the primary election,  Rick Santorum is going to try the same strategy as Newt Gingrich by  wooing delegates at the Republican convention: 

Arguing that neither he nor Mitt Romney will be able to sew things up by the last GOP primary in June, Santorum envisions spending July and August trying to persuade individual delegates to support him and “put together the coalition that’s necessary for you to get the 1,144.” He and his delegates would then move on to the Republican convention, scheduled to begin Aug. 27 in Tampa, Fla.

Its clear that Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum are in the race because they want to become President. Each of these men are not interested in becoming leaders. They all have their own person agendas which they are placing above the American people's wishes of getting Barack Obama out of the White House. Ron Paul is running is in the race purely to change the Republican party platform from a conservative platform to a more libertarian one. Both Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum are aiming for the mythological brokered convention as a last ditch attempt to prevent Mitt Romney from winning the Republican nomination. 

There's only one candidate who is in the race to defeat Barak Obama and make him a one term President. Moreover, he's in the race because he wants to be the President who will be a true leader and revive America's economy. That man is Mitt Romney.