Today Erick Erickson tweeted out a link declaring Santorum supported the individual mandate in 1994:
Santorum too was once an individual mandate supporter. patheos.com/blogs/frenchre…
— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) January 7, 2012
Problem is that there is no link to the source for us to validate and the quote is in third person which means it’s not even Santorum’s own words. It’s something that someone said about him. But Erick Erickson expects us to believe this garbage?
The other week he wrote a piece on Santorum that some continue to pass around. It’s not that I have a problem with looking at someone’s record, but Erickson writes with such contempt for Santorum that it’s surprising.
My point isn’t to pick on Erickson per se, but to suggest that this kind of shilling is shameful and damaging. It’s obvious he is a Perry fan like many of us are, but he insists on trying to flatten the tires of other candidates who begin to surge in favor of Perry. Right now Santorum is surging and I think that’s great. It’s not that Santorum is the perfect candidate. In fact every one of our candidates has done one thing or another that we don’t like and not one of them is perfect. But does Erickson want to end up with Romney? Perry hasn’t gained traction since he lost it and it doesn’t look like he will, yet Erickson wants to destroy every other candidate in hopes that maybe Perry will finally surge. But what if he doesn’t?
Look, here’s my take. I am not a Romney/Paul/Huntsman fan so I’d rather have another choice in the primary. I don’t post their video ads here because I don’t support them. So, my choices are Perry/Santorum/Newt and I’m happy with either of them. Sure, I have my preferences and I find Newt the least trustworthy of the three, but even still I’d much rather have Newt over Romney. I trust him much more than I do Romney.
But in the end, if Perry and Newt can’t sell their messages to the people and Santorum can, then I’m ecstatic. You can change that equation with either of them really and I’d be just as happy. My point is I want a conservative and these candidates are the closest we are going to get to having a conservative in office. I’m not going to shill for any of them but I will shill for conservatism.
That said, here’s the list of my preferences of all the pertinent candidates from most trustworthy/conservative to least:
- Rick Perry
- Rick Santorum
- Newt Gingrich
- Mitt Romney
- John Huntsman
- Ron Paul
- Barack Obama
Note: Once you get past Romney, I’m pretty much fear electing any of the others.