Tagged: Rick Santorum

Posted: July 23, 2012 at 12:32 pm

Daines Under Fire

Congressional candidate Kim Gillan had strong words for Steve Daines today after the fundraising event he had this weekend with Rick Santorum as his guest of honor. Cowgirl readers will recall that during his presidential campaign, Rick Santorum that told CNN that said rape victims should suck it up and accept “the gift” that “God has given to you”. Here’s Rick Santorum on rape:

I’ve always, you know, I believe and I think the right approach is to accept this horribly created — in the sense of rape — but nevertheless a gift in a very broken way, the gift of human life, and accept what God has given to you. As you know, we have to, in lots of different aspects of our life. We have horrible things happen. I can’t think of anything more horrible. But, nevertheless, we have to make the best out of a bad situation.

Here’s Kim:

As a woman I found his comments and his attitude towards victims repugnant. I am disappointed that Steve Daines would stand shoulder to shoulder to raise money with someone who’s extreme views are so out of step with Montana values.

By bringing in Santorum, Daines shows he doesn’t get what Montanans are most concerned about. Gillan continues:

We must get our economy back on track and get Montanans back to work. Montana cannot afford to have our lone voice in the House of Representatives be that of someone that would give credence to such far-reaching radical ideas. There is too much at stake to be silent while Daines associates himself with people like that to fuel his ambitions.

Posted: July 22, 2012 at 7:04 pm

Steve Daines Finally Speaks His Mind

Rick Santorum joined Steve Daines for a fundraiser in Cascade on Sunday. Santorum is the GOP presidential candidate who promised a war on pornography if elected. Daines refused to say if he agrees with Santorum’s priorities. For that matter, Daines hasn’t said what he wants to do about education, the budget, and other important issues Montanans care about.

It turns out that anyone who wants to know what Steve Daines thinks was looking in the wrong place. His Twitter account (@steve_daines) is an unfiltered look into this man’s productive and inspired mind. The screenshot pasted below includes a few of this thoughts:

While I wouldn’t recommend that you type in any of these links if you’re at work (or even if you’re at home), the tweets do finally shed some light on Steve Daines’ vision for Montana. Apparently, that vision consists of cheap internet LOLZ and work-from-home scams.

This kind of razor sharp focus on such important priorities would make Daines a great replacement for Dennis Rehberg–but a second Dennis Rehberg is the last thing voters want.

Posted: May 15, 2012 at 8:42 pm

The Jesus Factor

Bowen Greenwood, the head of the Montana GOP, emailed party faithful that he will be running as a write-in candidate for clerk of the Supreme Court this fall.

In the email, Greenwood wrote:

I am first and foremost a follower and friend of a guy named Jesus of Nazareth. Nothing else even comes close.

Aware that his missive would be picked up and transmitted around, Greenwood clearly is keen on sending a message to the holy rollers in his party that he is One Of Them.

As this relates to the governor’s race, it’s been previously assumed that Greenwood is not a Rick Hill supporter, because of Hill’s lack of right-wing bona fides, Greenwood’s appearance in a Ken Miller video, and Greenwood’s support of Rick Santorum. I would say the email supports the notion that Greenwood likes the Miller candidacy.

And recently Miller has become more direct, himself, about highlighting his own status as “A Christian,” on his website and in debates.

Greenwood might also be worried about a religious insurrection within his party, and wants to appear to be a religious nut so that he can keep his job when the wheels come off in November. Right now the Montana GOP is run mostly by Helena insiders, but is staring at the real possibility of twelve straight years of Democratic control of the Governor’s office and 16 straight years controlling the Attorney General’s office and Land Board. If this comes true in November, there will be a Republican Revolution, but not the kind that the GOP enjoys celebrating, unless you happen to be one of the ecstatic rioting Tea Partiers holding the pitchfork that is hoisting the asses of Greenwood and Will Deschamp, the Party Chairman).

And there is another more subtle thing going on here.

Right-wingers have been led into a self-reinforcing delusion, ever since McCain lost to Obama, that if a moderate Republican candidate loses an election it’s because the candidate made the mistake of trying to appeal to independent voters. Be a true right-wing conservative and you will always win, say Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck to their daily audiences of twenty million foaming, gullible ignoramuses.

This thinking allows right-wing leaders and shouters to have their cake and eat it. They can say “I told you so” if and when candidates like Mitt Romney or Rick Hill get defeated. And the purveyors of this Theory of Conservative Purity themselves become more relevant in the off-season. Their followers, meanwhile, can take solace in the fact that arch conservatism is The Way, and that Republicans can only lose elections for failing to follow The Way. This is exactly the bed that has been made for Mitt Romney, by Santorum and Gingrich, Beck and Limbaugh. When Romney loses, they’ll say its because a false conservative, not a true one, was nominated.

For a Party activist like Greenwood, this delusion has a more practical application: it sets up a good position from which to dump on a GOP candidate who loses.

It’s an easy out. For when Rick Hill loses (and he will be the nominee, and will lose to Bullock), Greenwood will signal to the base of his party, “I told you so.” This, even though Ken Miller would himself strand no real chance of winning a general election. But how could this be disproven if Miller never gets the nomination? It can’t, and that’s the beauty of it.

The entire Greenwood email is pasted below the fold.

Continue reading →

Posted: March 3, 2012 at 7:48 am

We’ve Got a Screamer

Anti-intelligence candidate Jon Arnold has filed for office on the Republican ticket. He says he wants voters to send him “kicking and screaming” to Helena.

I will go kicking and screaming into Helena, pushing our leaders to try to take back our powers that have been restrained from us by the federal government.

I think Arnold is confused about what “going kicking and screaming” means. But that’s no surprise, considering that he’ll tell you straight up: ”intellectuals” are the problem:

We have a despotic, unconstitutional fourth branch of government, comprised of a small army of two million bureaucrats….Many of these people are considered to be “intellectuals.” The problem with intellectuals is that they are not smart enough to know the things that they don’t know. This was the brilliance of our founders.

Well, it is “the brilliance” of Jon Arnold anyway.

It used to be that being smart and getting an education was viewed as important in America. But now, it’s the dumb that we put on a pedestal. And to what do we owe this gift of dumb? Right-wing fundamentalism, both religious and political. We have a Presidential candidate who is worried that Satan is attacking America. Rick Santorum says, in public, that college is all part of Obama’s evil plan to corrupt the nation’s youth.

Arnold further demonstrates his aversion to smart when he asks voters to:

Imagine if ten years from now there is a “sin tax” (such as those for alcohol and tobacco) for the purchase of a cheeseburger…The only protection against such injustices is to not grant the government this power to begin with.

What Arnold doesn’t know is that there is already a gaggle of Montana politicians clamoring for policies that would require a massive food police bureaucracy–at an enormous expense. However, they are all members of his own party. Here is a list of legislators (all Republicans) that signed an op-ed in favor of the idiotic boondoggle. The “evidence” for the claims made in the op-ed comes from TEA Party Republican Tom Burnett’s own blog and “research” paper.

Representatives: Tom Burnett, Janna Taylor, Salomon, Wayne Stahl, Jonathan McNiven, Pat Ingraham, Tom McGillvray, Ken Peterson, Jeff Wellborn, Cary Smith, Jerry O’Neil, Bob Wagner, James Knox, Dan Skattum, Wendy Warburton, David Howard, Jerry Bennett, Jesse O’Hara, Christy Clark, Kris Hansen, Champ Edmunds, Krayton Kerns, Ron Ehli, Mark Blasdel, Doug Kary, Austin Knudsen, Kelly Flynn, Walt McNutt, John Esp, Pat Connell, Matt Rosendale, Cleve Loney, Mike Cuffe

Senators: Debby Barrett, Ed Walker, Ryan Zinke, Bob Lake

Arnold is a Republican candidate Montana Senate District 43, which includes Anaconda and surrounding communities.

Posted: February 21, 2012 at 10:33 pm

Sexism’s Sugar Daddy Says Rehberg’s a Favorite

Foster Friess, the Wall Street billionaire bankrolling Rick Santorum, outraged millions for saying basically that women wouldn’t need contraception if we would just keep our slutty legs closed.

“Back in my days, [women] used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives; the gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly.”

Now, this gem of humanity has announced his intent to spend big bucks to support Dennis Rehberg.

The latest (subscription only) edition of The New Republic profiles Friess, an “eccentric Republican billionaire,” and his support for Rick Santorum. Very notably, Friess said Denny Rehberg is one of his favorite candidates. The Montana Lowdown has more.

It’s easy to understand why a Santorum sugar daddy would be backing Rehberg, too. The two have much in common.

Santorum is the Republican Presidential Candidate that said rape victims should suck it up and accept “the gift” God has given to you.” Here’s Rick Santorum on rape:

I’ve always, you know, I believe and I think the right approach is to accept this horribly created — in the sense of rape — but nevertheless a gift in a very broken way, the gift of human life, and accept what God has given to you. As you know, we have to, in lots of different aspects of our life. We have horrible things happen. I can’t think of anything more horrible. But, nevertheless, we have to make the best out of a bad situation.

Rehberg is the TEA Party Congressman who cosponsored and voted for H.R.358, the “Let Women Die” bill. Shockingly, H.R.358 would force doctors to let women die rather than provide abortion care. Rehberg also tried more than once last year to completely eliminate funding for Planned Parenthood.

Posted: January 19, 2012 at 7:42 am

Political Quick Hits

Pass the Caviar, Congressman Hill

We know that former GOP Congressman Rick Hill’s campaign for Governor has made some questionable expenditures. But champagne, really?

If this is how the campaign spends money, I’d hate to see what they do with our tax dollars.

Rehberg fails to stop himself from blocking Montana jobs

Rehberg sent out a press release recently claiming that Tester had “Failed to stop his liberal allies and donors from blocking Montana jobs. Here’s the screenshot:

The problem is, as Montanans for Tester points out, Congressman Rehberg is the only member of Montana’s congressional delegation who has voted against the Keystone XL pipeline.

In other words, he failed to stop himself from blocking Montana jobs.

Another Santorum grossout

Another weird detail involving Republicans and birth has come to light. This time, it isn’t birtherism. At issue is the fact that Rick Santorum’s wife Karen was actually delivered by a man that later became her live-in boyfriend.

Was he thinking “Hey, I bet this baby is going to turn out to be really hot one day”? The lovers weren’t married. Oh, and the guy, who is now 92, was an abortion doc. Santorum is running on hardline opposition to abortion and premarital sex for Americans, but I guess it’s different when it comes to his own wife’s past.

Posted: January 3, 2012 at 6:02 pm

Presidential Candidates Get A Favor from Rehberg

The Hill has a running list up of which members of Congress are endorsing which presidential candidate. As of this posting, the tallies stood at Romney – 61, Perry-13, Gingrich-8, Paul-3, Cain-1 Bachman-1, Santorum-0.

Montana Congressman Rehberg is not on the list.

To be sure, Rehberg’s absence could simply be explained by his fear to make a choice this early. But given that we already heard his de facto endorsement of Bachmann in February of 2011, it may be that he was asked by the campaigns to do them a solid and stay out. After all, Rehberg has been at the center of Congress’s failure and brinksmanship throughout the budget debate. As David Weigel theorizes in Slate, the brinkmanship and failure to accomplish anything is tanking the popularity of House Republicans:

there has been a rarely-admitted fatigue with the Republican House, and its inability to get anything done unless there’s last-minute stop-the-clock brinkmanship…it started to mean that you were part of Washington machinery that was creaking and belching acrid smoke.

Posted: December 5, 2011 at 7:09 pm

Bowen Greenwood Craves Santorum‏

The head of the Montana Republican Party has announced his support for Rick Santorum despite the fact that Newt Gingrich is leading all other presidential primary candidates by nearly 30 points in Montana. GOP Executive Director Bowen Greenwood announced his yearning for Santorum in a recent Tweet. Here’s the screenshot:

It is surprising to see a major party figure getting behind a candidate without an official party action—like a primary or caucus.

Perhaps Greenwood feels so comfortable being out there for Santorum because Greenwood believes that Santorum is the most anti-gay candidate in the mix (that hasn’t yet totally imploded anyway.) Last June, the MT Republican party adopted an official platform that keeps a long-held position in support of making it illegal to be gay. Santorum has said publicly that he is the the candidate who is most focused on social issues (as opposed to jobs and the economy–sounds just like the GOP legislature). It’s hard to deny that Newt Gingrich isn’t the right guy to lead the antigay crowd–he isn’t exactly the poster boy for making anyone want to sign up for “man woman marriage.”