Santorum speaks to Tulsa

Updated: Officials estimated over 4,000 Tulsans came to hear Republican Presidential Candidate Sen. Rick Santorum speak at the Mabee Center, Oral Roberts University.

The students asked excellent questions and Sen. Santorum lingered to talk with media. Tulsa Today was there and this writer was impressed, but my precinct had already voted in a straw poll to endorse his effort. 

Last Saturday at my Republican Precinct meeting in the central business district of Tulsa, the crowd was divided evenly at first between Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum.  

We began to talk after dismissing Mitt Romney as just too slick, obviously duplicitous and as dedicated to his own ambition as Obama.  Romney did not earn one supporter at the meeting comprised of many “independent” thinking Republicans.  Do you ever wonder why the national media think “independents” demand compromise with the Left?  Do you remember college?  The independents were the ones that refused to pledge to a fraternity or sorority and didn’t compromise (GDIs - “gosh darn independents").

As the discussion turned to Gingrich and Santorum, the consensus was for the best Conservative.  While Gingrich can debate with skill and energy, his approach is to use Teddy Roosevelt styled big government to implement policy directing individual activity which is one great fault of establishment Republicans. 

Voters want smaller government with functionality limited to that authorized by the Constitution.  As discussion ranged over specifics, Santorum’s positions won the crowd.  The final vote in our precinct straw poll was unanimous for Santorum and March 6, we vote for real.

Rick Santorum swept three state contests three days later.

Santorum beat Romney by 30 percentage points in Missouri’s non-binding primary, where former U.S. Speaker Newt Gingrich wasn’t on the ballot. He topped his nearest competitor in Minnesota’s caucuses, U.S. Representative Ron Paul of Texas, by 18 points, with Romney placing third. He beat Romney in Colorado by 5 points.

While no delegates were awarded, Sen. Santorum, 53, now has four victories in the nomination race and Romney has three. Santorum told supporters in St. Charles, Missouri, that he was the candidate best suited to take on President Barack Obama in November’s general election.

“Mitt Romney has the same positions as Barack Obama,” the former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania said Tuesday. “I don’t stand here to claim to be the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney. I stand here to be the conservative alternative to Barack Obama.”

“We definitely are the campaign right now with the momentum,” Santorum said Wednesday on CNN. “We’re doing very, very well raising money,” with about $250,000 raised online that night, he added.  I agree and endorse Rick Santorum for President of the United States of America.  It is time Republicans stand on basic principle.  

For thirty years as a pundit and online at this domain since 1996, regular readers know I am stridently supportive of individual liberty as enshrined within the U.S. Constitution.  In my first story in review of then-candidate Barack Obama, May 2008, I wondered if he just might be a Socialist as I considered his friends and his history.  Now I am convinced by the public record that regardless of what you call him, Barack Obama is destroying the U.S. Constitution, Individual Liberty, Freedom, equality under the law, the credibility of the currency and free enterprise that built this nation.