Tag Archives: Obamacare

Rick Santorum wins Missouri by 30, wins Minnesota by 18, wins Colorado by 5

Story here from the liberal Washington Post.

Excerpt:

Rick Santorum had a breakthrough night Tuesday, winning GOP presidential contests in Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado, all of which is expected to breathe life into his struggling campaign and slow Mitt Romney’s march to the Republican presidential nomination.

The Santorum triumphs promise to, at least temporarily, alter the face of the campaign going into the crucial “Super Tuesday” contests, as the caustic tone of the primaries is expected to continue and intensify. Romney and his allies have signaled that they will use their financial advantage to launch stepped-up attacks on Santorum and on former House speaker Newt Gingrich, the other main challenger.

Santorum solidly defeated Romney in Minnesota and Missouri, and he narrowly edged the former Massachusetts governor in Colorado, according to state GOP officials.

The victories mark a sharp turnaround for the former Pennsylvania senator, whose candidacy had been sputtering after he failed to capi­tal­ize on his narrow win in Iowa last month. Santorum’s wins across the Midwest could Tuesday bestow new legitimacy on his insurgent efforts and boost his fundraising in the critical period before next month’s major contests.

Santorum now appears to pose a more serious threat not only to Romney, but also to Gingrich, who had been positioning himself as the logical alternative to Romney.

Santorum staked his own claim on Tuesday.

“Conservatism is alive and well,” he told supporters at his election night party in Missouri. “I don’t stand here and claim to be the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney. I stand here to be the conservative alternative to Barack Obama.”

For Romney, his poor showing Tuesday raised anew the question that has dogged his candidacy all along: Can the relatively moderate, former Massachusetts governor become an acceptable standard-bearer of a party that is increasingly dominated by evangelical conservatives and tea party activists who have long been skeptical of Romney?

The reason why Romney is losing is because more and more people are realizing that his record is basically the same as Barack Obama. He’s got a pro-abortion, pro-gay-marriage, pro-socialized medicine, pro-tax-hike record. And that’s not what Republicans want. Romney is a radical leftist on every issue.

Look at this article from liberal ABC News.

Excerpt:

In 2006, Romney started a program to provide welfare recipients without access to public transportation with free cars. The idea was to provide them with a way to get to work so they could eventually get off welfare.

The cars were donated by charities, while Massachusetts taxpayers funded — as the Boston Herald reported in 2009 — “repairs, registration, insurance, excise tax, the title and AAA membership for one year.”

Romney’s Department of Transitional Assistance started the program, officially called “Transportation Support,” and nicknamed “Welfare Wheels” by the Boston Herald.

[…]The program was discontinued in 2009.

And:

[A]ccording to a 2011 analysis by the Boston Globe, “over the past 20 years, the percentage of inmates paroled while serving a life sentence … peaked in 2004″ — when Romney was governor — “and when all seven members of the state Parole Board had been appointed or reappointed by Republican governors.”

And that, according to the Boston Herald in 2008, “Some 118 killers and rapists were sprung early from prison under former Gov. Mitt Romney’s watch … allowed to walk out the gates by the Department of Correction by claiming so-called ‘good time’ that in some cases substantially reduced their sentences.”

That’s likely more of a concern to Republican primary voters than those ex-cons’ suffrage.

And:

Romney’s Massachusetts health care reform law created an 11-member “Health Care Connector Board” that would ensure affordable pricing for various health insurance plans. Romney appointed actuary Bruce Butler, CEO of Associated Industries of Massachusetts Rick Lord, and economist Jonathan Gruber. Four administration officials from Romney’s cabinet were also appointed to the board, per the law: his Secretary of the Executive Office for Administration and Finance; the Medicaid Director in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; the Commissioner of Insurance; and the Executive Director of the Group Insurance Commission.

The law also allowed the governor to appoint the executive director of the Connector Authority, and Romney picked senior vice president for policy development at Tufts Associated Health Plan Jon Kingsdale.

Kingsdale wrote a memo to the Connector Authority recommending that for abortions, insurance companies require co-pays between $0 and $100, depending on income level. In September 2006, that was approved by the Connector Authority. Every health care plan offered to low-income Massachusetts residents covers abortion.

Look at the most recent polls before the elections in Colorado, Missouri and Minnesota:

Colorado Romney 37, Santorum 27 Romney +10
Minnesota Santorum 33, Romney 24 Santorum +9
Missouri Santorum 45, Romney 32 Santorum +13

Yet the results are:

  • Missouri: Santorum beats Romney 55-25: +30.
  • Minnesota: Santorum beats Romney 45-17: +28. (Paul got 27)
  • Colorado: Santorum beats Romney 40-35: +5.

See below for more reasons to vote FOR Rick Santorum and AGAINST Mitt Romney.

Rick Santorum is a conservative

Mitt Romney is a liberal

Rick Santorum: Catholic bishops should not have supported Obamacare

Have you all heard that the Obama administration is forcing religious organizations to cover contraception?

Excerpt: (links removed)

HHS has issued a rule that requires non-exempt health care plans to cover all FDA-approved contraceptives, sterilization, and related education and counseling.

On the ground that certain FDA-approved contraceptive methods can sometimes “cause the demise of embryos both after and before uterine implantation,” many institutions also believe that the rule forces them to cover abortion.

Paying for, providing, educating about, or otherwise participating in abortion, contraception, and/or sterilization violates the religious or moral conscience of many individuals and institutions. Coupled with Obamacare’s new health care coverage mandates, the HHS rule therefore represents one of the broadest attacks on freedom of conscience ever in this country.

The rule includes an exemption for religious employers. But as Heritage stated in public comments submitted to HHS in 2011, the exemption “is too narrow to accommodate properly the interests protected by First Amendment freedoms.”

Indeed, according to The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, the exemption is based on “the stingiest definition” of a religious organization ever to appear in federal law. The definition likely would not protect many religious charities, hospitals, colleges, nursing homes, universities, and others.

The exemption also fails to protect individuals who object to enrolling in or contributing to plans that cover the morally controversial items now mandated by law.

The HHS contraceptive mandate powerfully illustrates the principle that freedom of conscience in health care goes hand in hand with more personal control and freedom of choice over health care decisions.

Why would I want to get coverage for contraception? I’m chaste. It’s wrong to force me to pay for contraceptives, when I don’t want them or need them. And I don’t want to lower the cost of premarital sex for other people by handing them free condoms. Medical insurance should not be a form of wealth redistribution or social engineering. I don’t want to subsidize the lifestyle choices of others. And I don’t want to normalize behaviors that I don’t agree with by making everyone pay for them.

In any case, let’s see what Rick Santorum thinks.

Here is an excerpt from an interview where Rick Santorum reacts to this attack on religion by the secular leftist Obama administration:

HH: Now I want to talk to you about two substantive issues, Senator Santorum. The first are these new regulations from the Obama administration. I read the letter from Archbishop Olmstead of Phoenix on the air. Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles has written a new article in First Things. It’s shocking, actually, what’s going on. Should this be a centerpiece of whoever the nominee’s campaign is?

RS: I talked about it in every speech I’ve given today. And here’s what I said, though, Hugh. I said that I took issue with the Catholic Bishops Conference, because Hugh, you may remember, they embraced Obamacare.

HH: Yes.

RS: They embraced it and said…here’s what I said to them. Be careful when you have government saying that they can give you rights, that you have a right to health care, and government’s going to give you something, because once you are now dependant on government, they, not only can they take that right away, they can tell you how to exercise that right, and you can either like it or not. And that’s the problem. That’s what the Catholic Bishops Conference didn’t get, that there’s no free lunch here, folks. If you’re going to give people secular power, then they’re going to use it in a secular fashion. And that’s why, you know, I hate to say it, but you know, you had it coming. And it’s time to wake up and realize that government isn’t the answer to the social ills. It’s people of faith, and it’s families, and it’s communities, and it’s charities that need to do this as it has in America so successfully for so long.

The funny thing is that most Catholics voted for Obama. So Rick Santorum is really calling them to account for that. He sounds so much like an evangelical Protestant, no wonder we like him so much.

Rick Santorum

Mitt Romney’s record as governor is pro-abortion and pro-socialized medicine

Byron York explains Mitt Romney’s liberal record as governor of Massachusetts.

Excerpt:

To win election as a Republican in Massachusetts, and then to govern effectively, Romney had to align himself with the left side of the GOP. And to do that, he adopted positions that haunt him still.

Perhaps the most fateful was on abortion. Romney’s reputation as a “perfectly lubricated weather vane” — to use the memorable phrase of former rival Jon Huntsman — comes from his decision to run for Senate in 1994 and governor in 2002 as a strongly pro-choice candidate, and then to run for president in 2008 as a strongly pro-life candidate.

According to a new book by Boston journalist Ron Scott, when Romney was planning that ’94 Senate run, he commissioned polling that showed a pro-life candidate could not win statewide election in Massachusetts. So Romney, who said he was personally pro-life, became politically pro-choice.

And not just pro-choice, but ardently pro-choice. “I am not going to change our pro-choice laws in Massachusetts in any way,” Romney said in an Oct. 29, 2002, debate. “I will preserve them. I will protect them. I will enforce them. I do not take the position of a pro-life candidate. I am in favor of preserving and protecting a woman’s right to choose.” When The Boston Globe said there was not a “paper’s width” of difference between Romney and his Democratic opponent on abortion, Romney proudly quoted the paper.

If Romney had chosen a less liberal state to live in, he would not have had to do that — and, of course, he would not have had to switch back to a pro-life position in 2004-2005, as he formed a political action committee and began working toward a run for the Republican nomination for president.

As a candidate for office in Massachusetts, Romney also had to take positions on guns, global warming and gay rights that later caused him difficulties in Republican presidential politics. He even had to renounce Ronald Reagan — an extremely unwise thing to do in today’s GOP. “Look, I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush,” Romney said in a 1994 debate with Sen. Ted Kennedy. “I’m not trying to return to Reagan-Bush.” Now, of course, Romney sings Reagan’s praises at nearly every campaign stop.

If he hadn’t run in Massachusetts, he wouldn’t have had to bash Reagan in the first place.

But, after abortion, the most devastating consequence of Romney’s choosing Massachusetts has been the issue of universal health care. In extending coverage to everyone in the state, Romney helped fulfill a long-time liberal goal; just look at the love-fest with Kennedy at the bill’s 2006 signing ceremony. But Romney did not effectively control rapidly rising health care costs. And he could not have anticipated how deeply unpopular universal coverage schemes would become with the Republican base after Obamacare.

In the campaign, Romney has blamed the Democratic Massachusetts legislature for Romneycare’s problems and denied vigorously that he believes his bill would be a good model for the nation. It’s a difficult position to take on his signature achievement in office. And it would not have happened had Romney not chosen to run in Massachusetts.

We can’t afford to run a moderate against Barack Obama – Obama is going to win because he will just point out that Romney agreed with him on everything when he was governor of Massachusetts. Republican voters are pro-life and we oppose government-run health care. we need to elect someone who has a Republican record.

 

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