Two views: Rick Santorum

Ashton Pittman writes:

Of all the GOP presidential candidates that have come and gone this past year, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum is one of the most sincere. Despite the party's insistence on small government, however, he only believes in small government to the extent that it should be small enough to fit in other people's bedrooms.

In an infamous 2004 interview in which he compared gay marriage to "man on dog," Santorum indicated that he would criminalize forms of sexual conduct he didn't like:

"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything," he said.

"You say, well, it's my individual freedom. Yes, but it destroys the basic unit of our society, because it destroys the basic unit of our society because it condones behavior that's antithetical to strong healthy families."

So Mr. Santorum believes that the types of sexuality he and his church don't approve of should be regulated by the government. One has to take pause to wonder if that would include incarcerating his opponent, Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, for numerous counts of adultery and divorce.

"The idea is that the state doesn't have rights to limit individuals' wants and passions. I disagree with that," Santorum said. "I think we absolutely have rights because there are consequences to letting people live out whatever wants or passions they desire."

In other words, we can assume that he would indeed incarcerate offenders like Gingrich.

This makes Santorum the greatest proponent of "big government" of all. Anyone who has read George Orwell's 1984 will recognize the theme of government enforced sexual repression. Of the totalitarian world of 1984, controlled by an entity called "The Party," Orwell wrote:

"The aim of the Party was not merely to prevent men and women from forming loyalities which it might not be able to control. Its real, undeclared purpose was to remove all pleasure form the sexual act. Not love so much as eroticism was the enemy, inside marriage as well as outside."

"The only recognized purpose of marriage was to beget children for the service of the Party," Orwell continued. "The party was trying to kill the sex instinct, or, if it could not be killed, then distort it and dirty it."

Who better to "distort and dirty" the sex instinct than Santorum? GOP voters, if your goal is a big-government moral crusader, look no further.

Tyler Hill writes:

It's narrowed down to the final four contestants in the Republican presidential primaries, and with over 45 states left to go, the nomination is easily up for grabs.

The "From Left to Right" series has compared nearly all the candidates in this election cycle. For the longest time, Rick Santorum was completely irrelevant, but since his near victory in Iowa, it's been impossible to ignore the Senator from Pennsylvania.

What helped him surge in Iowa? The answer is two-fold. The first factor that influenced his sudden appearance was Herman Cain suspending his campaign.

Cain gained traction because he and his message were enthusiastic, lively and appealing. After he dropped out, his supporters flocked to another enthusiastic message, which came from Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum.

The second factor is his evangelical influence. Iowan Republicans are known to be very evangelical, Christian conservatives, so he easily appealed to those voters, which catapulted him into second place.

The main topics of discussion prevalent in the United States is the economy, energy and defense. If Santorum would simply focus on promoting policies in the first two categories, economy and energy, he would become a more viable candidate. Overall, his plans for the economy and energy are an excellent path for conservatives to advocate, but his defense policies continue the expensive wars that have been hindering this country for a decade.

For the economy, a few of his plans include cutting $5 trillion of federal spending within five years, freezing defense and social program spending and passing a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution.

His energy policy may be the most productive of all the candidates. If elected, he would remove bans on drilling both onshore and offshore, eliminate all energy tax credits and immediately approve the construction of the Keystone Pipeline, which would produce approximately 830,000 barrels of oil per day while creating 20,000 jobs.

His detrimental vice doesn't come from any of these policies - it comes from his foreign policy. The problem with Santorum, along with many in the GOP, is his willingness to blow everything up.

The correct method to war includes identifying the target, attacking the target, killing or capturing the person responsible and "getting the heck out of dodge" as soon as possible.