When Duty Calls
By: Laura Burke
January 4, 2012


As some of you know, I’ve been on a blogging hiatus since September 2009 (for reasons that are not important at the moment); however, listening to the so called “experts” provide their analysis of the Iowa Republican caucus results last night struck a gigantic nerve in me and I decided its time to speak my mind once again.

I’ll start with Rick Santorum’s recent surge in the polls and the great showing in last night’s caucus. In order to explain Santorum’s surge one must first look back to the beginning. Mitt Romney and Ron Paul have been running since pre-2008. In addition to my dissatisfaction with Romney’s outlook on Iran and my feeling that he was thinking with his ears rather than knowing the facts, I blogged briefly about Mitt Romney’s mandatory healthcare law in Massachusetts after meeting Romney while he was campaigning in Chicago during the summer of 2007, indicating my displeasure with the entire thing. At that time, Romney’s healthcare plan was known to few and wasn’t discussed in the mainstream media. In 2008, Mitt Romney pulled 25% of the vote in the Iowa caucus and Ron Paul won just a single county. Of course, in 2007 Ron Paul was not well known to the masses because he was not allowed to participate in the Fox News debates even though he was polling much higher than some of those in the in the 2nd tier. Oh, how times have changed, or have they?

In four years time, where Mitt Romney and Ron Paul have been campaigning for support endlessly, Ron Paul has increased his showing in Iowa exponentially while Mitt Romney has remained the same at 25%. Romney shared the win with Rick Santorum who placed 2nd only 8 votes behind Mitt. Ron Paul placed 3rd with 21% of the vote, Gingrich with 13%, Rick Perry 10%, Michele Bachmann 5%, John Hunstman (who didn’t compete) 1%, Herman Cain (who?) 58 votes, and the Occupy people cast 135 protest votes with a “No Preference” (they would have made a greater impact, in my opinion, if they voted for someone like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Mickey Mouse, or even The Queen of England). Romney did not gain any ground after spending four years campaigning, he’s still at 25% in Iowa and the top three—Romney, Santorum, and Paul—are expected to each receive the same number of delegates, 7, making it a statistical three-way tie.

Rick Santorum’s increase in support is due mainly to the fact that Gingrich’s support had plummeted as a result of numerous negative attack ads that ran in Iowa, attack ads that were truthful—he was fined by the Ethics Commission, he supported Fannie Mae and was paid $1.6 million dollars by Fannie Mae for his services, he teamed up with Nancy Pelosi to promote environmental concerns for “global warming”—and those voters fleeing Gingrich jumped on the Santorum bandwagon. Gingrich supporters were those who fled Herman Cain whose voters fled Rick Perry whose voters fled Michele Bachman. These voters are the “anti-Romney” people who are desperately trying to find a conservative candidate they like, anyone but Romney, whack-a-mole style. This is important because these people will run to anyone who is not Mitt Romney. Santorum is simply the next in line to experience this support. The last man standing against Mitt Romney will get many, if not most of these votes. Initially, Santorum will get many of the votes of Bachman and Perry when they drop out but once Rick Santorum’s past actions are made public, and you can bet they’ll be coming fast and furious, his support will plummet and those voters will move to Jon Hunstman who simply does not have the funds to stay in the race after New Hampshire or South Carolina.

The “establishment” believes Mitt Romney is the only “elect able” one but the voters say otherwise with only 25% support, still 25% after four years of campaigning, and neck-and-neck with Obama in national polls (neck-and-neck won’t win in the end). The “establishment” needs to get with the program before they lose yet another presidential race (unless that’s their plan). Once Bachman, Perry, and Gingrich drop out of the race, these supporters will find their way to anyone but Romney. They will not support Romney. Whack-a-mole. Bachman has already “suspended” her campaign, and Rick Perry is going home to “reevaluate” his campaign which means both will drop out, so Santorum will surge again before he tanks and those supporters en mass will look for someone else but not Gingrich who will drop out before seeing the last man standing against Romney. The anti-Romney voter is so opposed to Mitt Romney they will go as far as to cast a 3rd party vote out of protest if they have to—anyone but Romney. These anti-Romney people have principles and the passing of Romney’s own healthcare mandate in Massachusetts violates their firm principles, they will not budge from their position. They are not “Die-Hard Republicans;” they are “Principled-Republicans” who stand by their personal principles no matter what—Principle over Party. The anti-Romney vote will ensure that Republicans do not fill the White House chair if the “establishment” continues to promote Mitt Romney as the only one who can beat Obama, which is patently false as I attempt to explain herewith.

Now Rick Santorum has a checkered political past. He supported fellow Pennsylvanian Senator Arlen Specter (a liberal posing as a republican—RINO) helping him to get elected in the primary against Pat Toomey. Santorum’s support was crucial to his election where he defeated Toomey with only 50.8% of the vote. In 2009, Specter faced certain death in the gop primary against Toomey so he jumped ship and received the strong support of Barrack Obama. Specter lost that primary to Joe Sestak who lost the general to Pat Toomey. So, the reason Santorum’s support of Specter is so important? Because not only is Arlen Specter very “pro-choice” on abortion where Santorum is very religious and adamant about “pro-life” but Specter was the key to passing Obamacare, he was the swing vote needed to pass it and as we all know, it passed. Obamacare is one of the main reasons republicans so badly want to remove Obama from office, the same mandatory health care reason why Principled-Republicans refuse to support Mitt Romney. Die-Hard Republicans, not the same as the Principled-Republicans, are vehement about removing Obama from office; in the gop field they’ll support anyone who can beat Obama, and I mean anyone.

Those who have watched the republican debates from beginning-to-date have seen with their own eyes that Santorum is a hot head and he gets angry with what he doesn’t agree with, especially his religious-political beliefs such as the U.S.’ support for Israel. He despises Ron Paul because Ron Paul is a non-interventionist who also doesn’t feel we should financially support any nation other than our own. There is this tremendous misnomer that Ron Paul is anti-Semitic because of his non-intervention stance. In 1981 when Israel bombed Iraq’s Osarik nuclear facility that was under construction, at a time when Iraq was our ally against Iran, nations across the globe condemned Israel’s actions. President Reagan and our entire congress, less one individual, condemned Israel. The only congressman to back Israel’s right to do as they please to protect their own sovereignty was RON PAUL. He took the floor in the House prior to a vote and defended Israel’s right to act independently in the area of foreign policy. Not only is Ron Paul pro-Israel, Ron Paul believes he is protecting Israel from being beholden to the United States and by cutting the cord with the U.S. it will make Israel stronger with true sovereignty; not artificial sovereignty under the thumb of the United States as they are today. Ron Paul’s stance has never changed and his stance will remain the same. Ron Paul believes it is not our job to police the world; that we need to focus on occupying our own land here at home and control our reckless over-spending habits. Congressman Paul adheres to the constitution and does not deviate from it. Our Founding Fathers never envisioned the level of greed by congress thereby the level of corruption and its associated untruths. They couldn’t understand that kind of congressional greed and corruption because there was a national understanding that servicing your country was not a career, nor was it an opportunity to make money; it was an American’s duty to ensure the integrity of the nation by dedicating their time to the worth-while charitable cause of public service.

There is also another tremendous misnomer. This one about Iran’s internationally controversial president, Ahmadinejad, and a statement he made in October 2005 while at the “World without Zionism” conference in Asia. The statement was translated to the English idiom of “Israel must be wiped off the map.” The story was published on October 25, 2005 by the IRIB News, an English-language subsidiary of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, a state controlled organization. This story “Israel must be wiped off the map” was picked up by the West and quickly made its way around the world in news headlines.

Arash Norouzi, an Iranian artist and co-founder of the Mossadegh Project, challenged this English translation indicating that Ahmadinejad did not make that statement as no idiom for that statement exists in the Persian language and then re-translated the original Persian to English resulting in “the Iman said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.” A University of Michigan Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History, Juan Cole, agreed with Norouzi’s translation and stated, “Ahmadinejad did not say he was going to ‘wipe Israel off the map’ because no such idiom exists in Persian. Instead, he did say he hoped its regime, i.e., a Jewish-Zionist state occupying Jerusalem would collapse.”

In June 2007, the U.S. House of Representatives reacted to the mistranslation of “Israel must be wiped off the map” and passed a resolution calling upon the United Nations Security Council to charge Ahmedinejad with violating the 1948 Convention on Genocide and the United Nations Charter. Congressman Dennis Kucinich attempted to include two of the independent translations of the speech—The New York Times and Middle East Media Research Institute—into the congressional record reading “the regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time” but members of the House objected and those translation inclusions were blocked and the measure passed without the inclusion of an accurate translation. This is an enormous misnomer with extraordinary global consequence and members of our own House of Representatives blocked the truth and moved the U.S. a glaringly ginormous step closer to war with Iran.

This misinterpretation has also created mass intellectual chaos—collective individuals believing in the same untruth, influencing their followers to do the same by stating this untruth over and over and over as if it were true because they truly believe it is true even though it is not—the red-light warning signal of pervasive ignorance. The news media, our elected officials who are the ones to declare war, and so many other Americans believe these untruths and are willing to go to war over them. It cannot ever be scarier than that but this is the reality we live today, what I like to call “ear thinking”. When one “thinks with their ears” they lose contact with the mind and independent thought thereby discarding the ability to recognize fact from fiction. “Ear thinkers,” like religious “faith believers” blindly believe what they are told and then pass it along, becoming simple minded information repeaters based solely on what flows through their ears. These foolish actions can readily be dismissed when it relates to something as idle as gossip but going to war is neither idle nor is it gossip; its irreversible death and destruction and in this case, without cause. Believing in untruths is the single greatest threat to the United States of America. Doing so continuously will erode our very existence and we will wither into crumbling ruins like every other foolish thinking empire that came and went before us.

Santorum is also a devout Catholic with strict religious views. His strict Catholic viewpoint is attractive to like minded people and not attractive at all to those who are far less religious. This is the area where I believe Santorum will take the biggest hit from his actions of the past. As I just pointed out, “ear thinkers” are like religious faith believers who blindly believe in something whether it is accurate or not. They believe it to be therefore it must be and you are wrong if you do not agree and more wrong if you point out facts that are contrary to their “beliefs.” It sounds ridiculous but this is what some “believers” can do and do (doodoo). A “belief” is not based on fact. My mother believed her tub over-flow plumbing was never connected when their home was built 48 years ago. She believed that for so long that even after the wall and ceilings were taken down recently to fix the leak (finally) and she was shown how the over-flow pipes were there in their solid cast-iron state, she still believes it is not connected. Even though your own thinking couldn’t be more wrong, when you believe in something long enough it becomes an unmistakable, undeniable reality to you and the stupid people who chose to believe you too. Scary but true. Rick Santorum has these same kinds of “beliefs” and that should scare the daylights out of all Americans. His own nephew, John Garver, has publicly supported Ron Paul and stated “Uncle Rick cannot fathom a society in which people cooperate and work with each other freely.”

Santorum’s devout religious views prompt his adamant pro-life stance except when supporting other candidates who can help his political career such as pro-choice Arlen Specter and pro-choice New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman. This is when “pro-life” goes out the window and the only thing that is considered sacred is Santorum. It is a classic case of hypocrisy, or better put like this: as a friend once said to me, “They’re so religious they’ll run someone over just so they’re not late for mass.”

Santorum faced serious criticism about his pro-life position. At the time he was debating “partial-birth abortion” in the Senate making efforts to see the unconscionable practice abolished, he endured ugly accusations from his opposition accusing he and his wife of aborting their fourth child Gabriel in October 1996, who died two hours after his premature birth.

On April 18, 2005, Mark Leibovich wrote “Father First, Senator Second” a lengthily piece on Rick Santorum from an in-depth interview he conducted prior to Santorum’s re-election. It is a very good article and much of it paints Santorum as a pretty decent guy, I highly recommend reading it. During the interview, Santorum spoke of what transpired after his fourth son Gabriel died. According to the article, “Upon their son’s death, Rick and Karen Santorum opted to not bring his body to a funeral home. Instead, they bundled him in a blanket and drove him to Karen’s parent’s home in Pittsburgh. There, they spent several hours kissing and cuddling Gabriel with his three siblings, ages 6, 4 and 1½. They took photos, sang lullabies in his ear and held a private Mass”. He further goes on to say, “He and Karen brought Gabriel’s body home so their children could ‘absorb and understand that they had a brother,’ Santorum says. ‘We wanted them to see that he was real,’ not an abstraction he says.”

This matter first came to my attention the other day while watching a panel discussion on the “Jon Scott” show on Fox News. I didn’t know if it were actually true so I googled it and discovered the Mark Leibovich article and I was flabbergasted when I read it, then I actually considered those actions and played it out in my head. I then wondered how that event would impact a 6 year old who was old enough to understand death, and even the 4 year old, who, too, was old enough to understand death. I wondered if Rick Santorum had gone off his rocker due to the grief coupled with his over-religious views. I wondered if it were really true, I mean, can you legally take the deceased home with you if you choose to? So, I started googling. I then found an article on the Fox News Talk Radio website written prior to Rick Santorum’s official run for president, where former Bush Advisor Mark McKinnon stated that he was scared at the thought of Santorum’s possible run. He said “Santorum represents, in my view, much of what is wrong with the Republican Party. While I disagree with him on some fundamental issues, I am much more concerned with his lack of character.” “I’m a pretty tolerant guy, but beyond his ideology, some of his behavior is just a little bizarre. For example, Santorum has six children. In 1996, he had a son born prematurely who lived for only two hours. He and wife brought the child home and introduced the dead infant to the rest of the children as ‘your brother Gabriel’ and slept with the body overnight.”

One must honestly ask themselves; is that the action of an individual of sound mind? If it is not the action of an individual who is of sound mind then why in the world would anyone want that person in the White House? He gets over-emotional over religious issues displaying his short flaring-temper, he wants to destroy Iran with other parent’s children, and he thinks it is perfectly normal to take a deceased baby on a road trip to visit relatives and spend the night. Does anyone want this guy’s finger hovering over the red button? Heck No! And that’ll be why Santorum’s support will plummet.

Once Santorum’s support disintegrates, Huntsman’s will be on the rise. Perry and Bachman will then step out of the race. Gingrich will be on the outs, too. Where do all those anti-Romney votes go? They’ll go to anyone but Romney. The last man standing against Mitt Romney will be Ron Paul. The establishment has convinced the ear thinkers that Ron Paul is an anti-Semitic, fringe lunatic who wants to see Iran “wipe Israel off the map,” but the “anyone but Romney” people will find a way to see past that in their own principled way. “Die-Hard Republicans” don’t need a principle to stand behind; they are committed and will vote for anyone in the gop to oust Obama. Couple that with the fact that Ron Paul has the ability to draw the independent vote, and pull democratic votes away from Obama. Then, just do the math. Once anyone who decides to look at the unadulterated truth does, they will see the reality that Ron Paul is the ONLY gop candidate who will beat Obama.