Santorum calls Romney “desperate,” downplays wins
Republican presidential contender Rick Santorum on Sunday called recent attacks by his rival Mitt Romney “desperate,” as the two face off in an increasingly contentious battle to become the party’s White House nominee.
Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania and social conservative known for his staunch positions on abortion and gay marriage, is competing to be the conservative alternative to Romney, who faces resistance from Republicans skeptical of moderate stances he took when he was governor of the liberal state of Massachusetts.
Asked about Romney’s recent efforts to highlight times when Santorum sided with Democrats while in Congress, including votes to raise the federal debt ceiling, Santorum appeared amused.
“For him to suggest that I’m not the conservative in this race, you know, you reach a point where desperate people do desperate things,” Santorum said on ABC’s “This Week.” He also downplayed recent victories for Romney, who won the nonbinding Maine caucuses as well as a straw poll at a major conservative conference in Washington over the weekend.
Santorum also suggested Romney won Saturday’s Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll by busing in supporters and giving them tickets.
“I don’t try to rig straw polls,” he told CNN. When asked if he thought Romney rigged the CPAC vote, Santorum said, “Well, you have to talk to the Romney campaign and how many tickets they bought. We’ve heard all sorts of things.”
The straw poll was conducted among CPAC attendees, a group of party activists from across the country. It is strictly symbolic but does show Romney’s organizational strength and demonstrate he is capable of appealing to conservatives who have lacked enthusiasm for him.
Michelle Obama likes just being “Meesh”
ORLANDO – First lady Michelle Obama craves normalcy sometimes. The woman who has seemingly endless options living at the White House loves it most when she can hang out and just be “Meesh” to her family and friends.
Obama, who realizes her life will get even busier leading up to the Nov. 6 election, said she tries to get away from the “bubble” created by security and media at the White House and be as much of a regular person as she can.
“I go shopping. I go to my friends’ houses for dinner,” she said in an interview with a few reporters.
“Barack and I try as much as possible to get the girls out of the White House,” she said about her daughters Malia and Sasha. “That is important to us. There’s a freedom of getting them into some normalcy. When they’re outside of the bubble -– even if it’s going for a walk or going skiing or going for a bike ride — it just reminds them that their life is normal.”
A fond memory is taking the girls and traveling to Oregon not too long ago to see her brother Craig Robinson and his family.
“We stayed in his house, we sat on the back porch and we had barbeque. It was important for me to go there. We still are members of a family. We still have cousins and nieces and nephews who don’t see us in any other way other than ‘Meesh’ –- which is what my family calls me –- and ‘Barack.’ Those are the kind of other things that tend to be important.”
One telling sign, IMO, in the difference between the vitriol lobbed at Obama by the righties compared to the vitriol lobbed at Bush from the lefties is this; the left almost never attacked Mrs. Bush, while the right regularly goes after Mrs. Obama. I also think this is more evidence of the rights attitude toward the president and our country, if it is not ‘our’ guy/girl, they have no respect for the office and the person.
Not all smooth sailing for Romney in Maine
Republican Mitt Romney found it was not all smooth sailing in Maine on Friday night when he was heckled repeatedly at a town hall meeting in Portland at a marine storage and repair facility.
Romney jetted in from Washington to fire up his base a day before the Maine Republican Party announces the results of a week-long caucusing process. But the well-attended meeting wasn’t without some unexpected drama that showed the candidate’s testy side.
The event’s second question centered on “stashing your money away in Cayman Islands,” based on investment strategies revealed when Romney recently released his 2010 tax returns. “ First of all, first of all, I’ll have to take a look at what the trustee says,” Romney said, adding that his fortune — estimated to be as high as $250 million — has been managed in a blind trust for ten years.
When Romney later talked about the importance of increasing domestic oil production, an audience member yelled, “NO FRACKING, NO FRACKING,” referring to the technique for extracting oil and natural gas from deep underground by the injection of a highly pressurized fluid. Fracking has been linked to a number of unintended consequences, from water contamination to earthquakes. A brief, heated exchange followed, before Romney finally shot back, “don’t get so upset about it, madam. It’s not worth getting upset about.”
On the Keystone Pipeline itself, Romney said, “If you don’t want oil from Canada, vote for Barack Obama.”
Romney also endured heckling on his proposal to immediately overturn President Barack Obama’s healthcare reforms if elected president. “OBAMACARE IS ROMNEYCARE,” shouted a man with a ponytail. And when Romney used one of his standard stump lines –- that U.S. household incomes have fallen under Obama’s watch, the same man yelled, “THERE’S A RECESSION GOING ON, MISTER ROMNEY!”
Ron Paul takes commanding early lead in Maine Caucus http://www.examiner.com/libertarian-in-d enver/ron-paul-takes-commanding-early-le ad-maine-caucus
Obama kids are happy campaigners, first lady says
The Obamas return home after their vacation in Hawaii, January 3, 2012. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
DALLAS – Michelle Obama, who entered the 2008 presidential electoral season reluctant to go out in public and urge voters to support her husband, shared a surprising nugget of personal information: their kids love to campaign.
The first lady, who has been fiercely protective of her daughters Malia and Sasha and their privacy since Barack Obama became president, said that to the kids, the campaign trail was fun.
“They actually like campaigning,” Mrs Obama told a small group of reporters traveling with her on a three-day tour to promote her healthy eating and exercise “Let’s Move” program.
“Because when they were younger, when we were first running, what was campaigning? Campaigning was when you fly into a city with a bunch of young campaign workers who love kids and they took them for ice cream, everywhere.”
With a laugh, the first lady recalled how, after a day of campaigning for the 2008 election, she took stock of what her daughters had done while she was meeting voters and revving them up to elect her husband.
“One day, I counted it — this was before ‘Let’s Move’ — we were back on the plane and I found out exactly what they were doing when I was on the stage — they had had ice cream four times that day,” she said. “So Sasha’s like ‘I love campaigning.’ They have kind of a skewed (view).”
Watch live: Newt Gingrich speaks at CPAC
Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich speaks at CPAC at 4:10pm ET.
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Watch live: Mitt Romney speaks at CPAC
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaks at CPAC at 12:55pm ET.
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Watch live: Rick Santorum speaks at CPAC
Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum speaks at CPAC at 10:25am.
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Rick Santorum: birth control ruling has nothing to do with women’s rights
Forcing religious organizations to provide contraceptives has nothing to do with women’s rights, Republican presidential contender and vocal Catholic Rick Santorum said on Thursday.
The comment aligned Santorum with a lineup of conservative critics bashing Democratic President Barack Obama’s rule requiring religious institutions — but not churches — to provide health insurance plans that cover birth control.
The rule, announced in January, covers religious-affiliated groups like charities, hospitals and universities. The Catholic Church opposes most methods of birth control and conservatives have painted the rule as an attack on religious freedom from a secular president.
Speaking to CNN’s John King, the former Pennsylvania senator said: “That’s the Church’s money, and forcing them to do something that they think is a grievous moral wrong. How can that be a right of a woman? That has nothing to do with the right of a woman.”
Santorum bills himself as the only true conservative in the field of Republicans vying to win their party’s nomination to challenge Obama in November. He’s backed by evangelical leaders and social conservatives who admire his consistent and at times polemical stances on abortion and gay marriage. He swept nominating contests Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado on Tuesday buoyed by votes from social conservatives.
Better than expected economic news and the administration’s move, which was initially viewed as a score for women’s health advocates, have shifted the conversation of an election that most believed would be centered on the economy.
Conservative heavyweights including House Speaker John Boehner, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, Texas Governor Rick Perry and presidential candidate Newt Gingrich have all warned of an attack on religious freedom coming from the White House. Obama also risks losing the votes of Catholics of whom he won 54 percent in 2008. On Thursday, the administration back-pedalled from its position, promising room for compromise but the groundwork for the attacks seems to have been laid.
Some churches believe blood transfusions are morally wrong, some believe psychology is wrong, some believe all physical ailments should be cured with prayer alone. None of them have any business getting involved with health care.
Contraception is not a contraversial issue; 98% of catholics use it. The church is already trying to amend their rules because millions of their faithful in africa are slowly dying of AIDs while they preach about the evils of condoms. The more the church fights on this issue, the more they reveal themselves to be anachronistic and irrelevant. Declining membership and revenues will ultimately force them to make an awkward concession.
Washington Extra – Just “okay”
It was a long slog to the government’s mortgage abuse settlement with top banks, one in which officials slept in their offices and worked round the clock. And yet, a consumer advocate looking out for those who lost homes to foreclosure can only muster an “it’s okay.”
You don’t need an expert to tell you how little of a dent the $25 billion deal makes in a mortgage morass that President Obama reminded us is one of the biggest drags on the economy. It took 16 months to get to a settlement that helps roughly 1 million borrowers, while 11 million Americans owe more money that what their homes are worth. People who lost their homes to foreclosures will get payments of $2,000. Home prices, meanwhile, are still 33 percent lower than 2006.
It’s a lot of work for a little relief. But if there is one constituent that walks away satisfied it has to be the state of California. Attorney General Kamala Harris held out for a better deal right to the end. What she won was 45 percent of the settlement spoils, and she only came to the table with a third of the nation’s foreclosures in her portfolio. It pays to play hard to get.
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Maybe it’s better not to get that big endorsement
One staple of the U.S. political scene is the quest for endorsements, and Republican front-runner Mitt Romney seems to be leading in the race for support from the GOP establishment.
He picked up the support of Arizona Senator John McCain, who was the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota, who also was a member of the U.S. presidential field until August.
He may not be part of the party “establishment,” but Romney even got the backing of a high-profile party figure — albeit one who declared himself an independent in December — reality television star and real estate mogul Donald Trump, who called the former Massachusetts governor “tough, sharp and smart.”
But does such support really help?
“At best, so far that’s gotten him mixed results,” Republican strategist Keith Appell said, when asked about Romney’s support by party leaders. “Nikki Haley didn’t help in South Carolina. Tim Pawlenty did not help him in Minnesota.”
Prominent supporters can act as useful surrogates. Backers might pay to attend a fundraiser headlined by a well-known supporter, and voters might turn out to hear one speak.
