Politics & Government

Santorum Takes in the Game [VIDEO]

Supporters enjoy Patriots, politics at The Draft in Concord.

Football, politics, and beer were on tap at The Draft in Concord, where former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum and about 30 supporters watched the Patriots game on Sept. 18.

Santorum thanked everyone for coming out to the event, telling the crowd that unlike some other candidates in 2012, he would not be giving up the race. His strategy is to focus on the three early contests in the race and then move on from there.

“We continue to work hard,” he said. “We haven’t given up.”

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Santorum said despite some states trying to muscle in ahead of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, he wouldn’t allow them to “monkey around with the order … it’s just going to do harm to the process.”

“The bottom line is that these three states have proven that they take this responsibility seriously,” he said, “they engage the candidates, and they do a great job in making sure that these candidates are properly vetted.

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Santorum said he wasn’t out of the race and reminded his supporters that at this time four years ago, Fred Thompson and Rudi Giuliani were at the top of the heap and eventual competitors, Mike Huckabee and John McCain, were in single digits. And then, after being vetted in Iowa and New Hampshire, Huckabee and McCain were vaulted to the top, he noted. In 2008, Santorum said, voters spent time “kicking the tires” and getting to know the candidates.

“We’re going to live up to that tradition,” he said. “We feel very good … one thing I hear more than anything else is, ‘We want to hear more from you,’ and that’s a good thing … we’re starting to build some momentum and traction around the country. We’re committed to being in this thing ‘til the very end.”

Santorum called his support “rock solid” and said that he was many voters’ second choice and when the other candidates fall back to the earth, he would be in a position to move up in the ranks.

Issues

Santorum laid out a few issues for undecided voters to consider and started by saying that he would always stand by his convictions.

“I won in a blue state and didn’t change anything,” he said. “We’ve been out there telling the truth.”

Santorum said many of the issues he has been working on for years and now, voters are starting to come around to them. He said the fight over the future Social Security was an old one and easy to follow along with now that AARP agrees that reform is needed. Santorum accused former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney of incorrectly describing how he truly ran Massachusetts when he was there and also called Gov. Rick Perry “a moderate.”

“You need someone who is the real deal,” Santorum said.

One voter asked about the candidate’s position on the state of the Middle East.

Santorum said prior to 2001, he had limited knowledge of radical Islam and didn’t think the threat of terrorism was much different than other terrorists. While serving on the Armed Services Committee, he did try to move the military away from a ground war in Europe strategy to one that was more mobile. Santorum said he had spent a lot of time reading and trying to find out who the enemy was. He called Iran “a threat” to the United States and Israel and shouldn’t be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon. Santorum said Americans didn’t understand that some people used their faith as a weapon against others and that was mostly because those people didn’t have their own faiths. He added that Americans often don’t know about their own history, never mind the thousands of years of history between the east and the west.

On the economy, Santorum would repeal Obamacare, keep the Bush tax cuts in place, repeal the estate tax, cut corporate taxes in half, and cut corporate taxes on manufacturers to zero, in an effort to bring jobs back to the United States. He said that should be the most important thing the country should be doing right now. He would also try and repatriate corporate profits made overseas by lower the tax rate to 5 percent. Santorum would also work to get a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution approved.


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