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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bearcatbob who wrote (468223)	1/29/2012 3:35:51 PM
From: longnshort	2 Recommendations Respond to of 793670

Like Obama, no one knows anything about him. No test scores, no grades, no birth certificate, no one knew him in high school, college, no history, the perfect candidate

To: Bearcatbob who wrote (468223)	1/29/2012 4:13:11 PM
From: DMaA	3 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793670

It's always been the only person who can run is someone who has the Elite's imprimatur. What's different this time is the party's man is actually getting a rectal exam like everyone else. And I really don't like what I see.

To: Bearcatbob who wrote (468223)	1/29/2012 6:04:21 PM
From: simplicity	9 Recommendations Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793670

Soon the only person who can run is someone who has done nothing and is no one. A very good point … and I would add that one can also rarely expect to be elected on the national level these days without either endorsement from the party establishment, or friends with money. Bear with me here, and don’t turn away simply because I mention the name Rick Santorum (again). I am fully aware that he will not get the nomination, but his case needs to be studied in order to correct a major, perhaps someday deadly, flaw in the system. I know that many of you here consider Rick Santorum to be a one-trick pony – a ‘social issues’ conservative. That is a label affixed to him by the mainstream media, and bears no resemblance to the truth. Rick is indeed an avowed conservative on social issues … but he is certainly not focused solely, or even mostly, on social issues. He is extraordinarily accomplished, experienced, and articulate in virtually every other issue that is ailing this country. The trouble is that people outside of Pennsylvania know virtually nothing about his legislative and private sector history, both of which are brimming over with visionary (yet practical), detailed solutions to our problems -- from how to deal with the war on terror, to putting the economy back on track, doing away with Freddie and Fannie, major private-sector-based healthcare reform, and the like. Santorum has either authored or sponsored countless pieces of revolutionary, intelligent, fact-based legislation to address all of the above during his sixteen years in the house and senate, and, since he left government in 2006, he has immersed himself in private sector (foreign policy and ethics think tanks, hospital boards, and the like) enterprises, with amazingly powerful results. The resume on his website is amazing, and virtually unknown to most Americans. I am generally a glass-half-empty kind of person, but I truly believe that, were the mainstream media to have afforded Rick the kind of coverage they afford Newt and Mitt (and, it goes without saying, Obama), and had the average American gotten to know him as well as the average Pennsylvanian does, this would have been an entirely different race. The bottom line is: This candidate spent almost two years, on and off, in Iowa, working on a shoe-string, holding nearly 400 town hall meetings, traveling from one place to another in a pick-up truck. The result was that he got his own message out. He couldn’t rely on the mainstream media, the party establishment, or the deep pockets of the influence peddlers, so he did what candidates did long before the age of technology and media mega-power. The result: the people of Iowa got to know him and respected what they saw. Time has not allowed him to do the same foot-to-pavement campaigning in the succeeding primaries, so his voice has been drowned out by those with deeper pockets and better media availability. I am not criticizing anyone else’s choice of candidate, nor promoting Rick Santorum (his is a losing cause at this point). I am merely observing that genuinely good candidates can often be overlooked simply because (1) the media choose to label them in a certain way and refuse to cover any other aspect of their resume, no matter how powerful, and (2) the candidates with the most financial backing these days are always capable of drowning out the message of candidates with equal or better credentials who haven’t the financial wherewithal to educate the public regarding those credentials. Call me a Pollyanna if you like, but I believe that is one of the major evils of today’s political process. Money talks, and qualifications often take a back seat.