Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Santorum Gets Romney to Show his Lack of Conviction

Many of the pundits I have heard following the Fox News Debate in South Carolina on Monday, January 16, 2012, have misinterpreted the point that Rick Santorum was trying to make with Mitt Romney when the topic of voting rights for convicted felons arose.

Santorum was actually quite masterful in this argumentation. In a very brief section of the debate he was able to highlight Mitt Romney's unwillingness to follow through on his beliefs/convictions or that Mitt Romney even has ANY solid beliefs or convictions. In addition, Santorum was able to broach a subject that would "play well" in South Carolina--which has one of the higher percentage of African Americans in the country (with Florida, perhaps a close 2nd in terms of sheer numbers). Also, it pointed out that Mitt Romney was being dishonest/dirty by not rejecting the supposed falsehoods in the superpac advertisements.

Instead of making the point about the voting rights of convicted felons, Santorum was pointing out that even though Romney said he was in favor of restricting rights of convicted felons to vote, he did nothing to block the granting of voting rights to felons in Massachusetts.

Santorum shows that he sees many sides of an issue, and has well thought-out, comprehensive positions on the issues. Santorum killed 3 birds with one stone, which many people are not sharp enough to realize--or are not paying attention. Santorum is simply masterful.