There is a new national poll of Republican primary voters just out from Public Policy Polling which has some good news for Rick Santorum the ex-Pennsylvania senator who on Tuesday beat Mitt Romney in Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado.
Based on fieldwork that took place on Thursday and Friday Santorum is on 38%; Romney 23%; Gingrich 17% and Ron Paul on 13%. This is a huge margin which has been helped by the positive media coverage that he received following his three victories on Tuesday.
In surveys ahead of the elections in those three states the pollster produced figures that suggested Santorum was going to have a good night but on nothing like the scale of what actually happened.
The candidate will be only too aware that the nature of this battle to be the party’s nominee has seen many contenders surge forward only to fall backwards quite soon afterwards. So far there have been eleven separate leaders in the polls most of whom either did not enter the race or have since pulled out.
For Santorum the political effect of this and other polling expected this weekend is that it reinforces his position as the candidate from the conservative wing of the party who is most able to take on the Mitt Romney machine.
This latest poll found that if Gingrich dropped out of the race then out 58% of his support would go to Santorum and 22% to Romney.
The immediate worry for the Santorum campaign is that they are likely to be on the end of a furious negative advertising campaign ahead of the Arizona and Michigan primaries at the end of the month. That is how the Romney team dealt with others who threatened their position and what is likely to happen now.
I just heard from my Dad that Rick and Newt are not campaigning in Maine. It is a very blue state, so Romney and Paul will do well there.
First, let’s watch a video that explains what partial birth abortion looks like. (Using drawn images. Warning: Still graphic and disturbing, but no blood)
Intact Dilation and Extraction (Partial Birth Abortion)
In this procedure, the physician pulls the fetus feet-first out of the uterus into the birth canal, except for the head which is kept lodged just inside the uterus.
The base of the fetus’s skull is punctured with a sharp instrument such as a long scissors or pointed metal tube.
A catheter is inserted into the wound and removes the fetus’s brain with a powerful suction machine. This causes the skull to collapse, and allows for the expulsion of the fetus.
Here’s Rick Santorum on the floor of the Senate asking Democrat Senator Barbara Boxer to defend partial birth abortion in 1999, (when Mitt Romney was also pro-abortion).
(The clip is very low volume)
Transcript:
Santorum: Good! All I am asking you is, once the baby leaves the mother’s birth canal and is through the vaginal orifice and is in the hands of the obstetrician, you would agree that you cannot abort, kill the baby?
Boxer: I would say when the baby is born, the baby is born, and would then have every right of every other human being living in this country. And I don’t know why this would even be a question, to be honest with you.
Santorum: Because we are talking about a situation here where the baby is almost born. So I ask the question of the senator from California, if the baby was born except for the baby’s foot, if the baby’s foot was inside the mother but the rest of the baby was outside, could that baby be killed?
Boxer: The baby is born when the baby is born. That is the answer to the question.
Santorum: I am asking for you to define for me what that is.
Boxer: I don’t think anybody but the senator from Pennsylvania has a question with it. I have never been troubled by this question. You give birth to a baby. The baby is there, and it is born. That is my answer to the question.
Santorum: What we are talking about here with partial birth, as the senator from California knows, is a baby is in the process of being born —
Boxer: “The process of being born.” This is why this conversation makes no sense, because to me it is obvious when a baby is born. To you it isn’t obvious.
Santorum: Maybe you can make it obvious to me. So what you are suggesting is if the baby’s foot is still inside of the mother, that baby can then still be killed.
Boxer: No, I am not suggesting that in any way!
Santorum: I am asking.
Boxer: I am absolutely not suggesting that. You asked me a question, in essence, when the baby is born.
Santorum: I am asking you again. Can you answer that?
Boxer: I will answer the question when the baby is born. The baby is born when the baby is outside the mother’s body. The baby is born.
Santorum: I am not going to put words in your mouth –
Boxer: I hope not.
Santorum: But, again, what you are suggesting is if the baby’s toe is inside the mother, you can, in fact, kill that baby.
Boxer: Absolutely not.
Santorum: OK. So if the baby’s toe is in, you can’t kill the baby. How about if the baby’s foot is in?
Boxer: You are the one who is making these statements.
Santorum: We are trying to draw a line here.
Boxer: I am not answering these questions! I am not answering these questions.
Obama has had difficulty explaining some of his 129 “present” votes in the Illinois legislature on issues such as promoting school discipline and prohibiting sex shops near places of worship. In the case of his votes on the anti-abortion legislation, however, he has had a solid alibi. The Illinois branch of the Planned Parenthood organization has given him a”100 percent” pro-choice voting rating and depicted the present votes as part of a previously agreed strategy to provide political cover for other legislators.
Under the rules of the Illinois legislature, a present vote effectively functions as a no vote because only yes votes count toward passage of a bill. Legislators vote “present” rather than “no” for a variety of tactical reasons, including making it more difficult for their political opponents to use their votes against them in campaign advertisements.
“We worked on the ‘present’ vote strategy with Obama,” said Pam Sutherland, chief lobbyist for the Illinois branch of Planned Parenthood, an abortion rights group. “He was willing to vote ‘no’, and was always going to be a ‘no’ vote for us.”
Sutherland said Planned Parenthood calculated that a ‘present’ vote by Obama would encourage other senators to cast a similar vote, rather than voting for the legislation. “They were worried about direct mail pieces against them. The more senators voted present, the harder it was to mount an issues campaign against the senator.”
Here is a full list of Obama’s seven ‘present’ votes on issues related to abortion:
1997 Votes
SB 230 Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act. Senate approved bill 44-7, with five senators voting present, including Obama.
HB 382 Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act. House version, passed Illinois State Senate, adopted as law. Under the bill, doctors who perform partial-birth abortions could be sent to prison for one to three years. The woman would not be held liable.
2001 Votes
HB 1900 Parental Notice of Abortion Act. Bill passed 38-10, with nine present votes, including Obama.
SB 562 Parental Notice of Abortion Act. Bill passed Senate 39-7, with11 present votes, including Obama.
SB 1093 Law to protect Liveborn children. Bill passed 34-6, with 12 present, including Obama.
SB 1094 Bill to protect children born as result of induced labor abortion. Bill passed 33-6, with 13 present, including Obama.
SB 1095 Bill defining “born alive” defines “born-alive infant” to include infant “born alive at any stage of development.” Bill passed 34-5, with nine present, including Obama.
If Rick Santorum were the nominee, he would ask Barack Obama about his views in the Presidential debates, just like he asked Barbara Boxer on the Senate floor. Wouldn’t you like to hear Obama defend partial birth abortion in a debate? I would. Maybe it’s about time that Obama had to do more than vote present to cover up his radical pro-abortion record.
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.
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:
WINTERY KNIGHT 