January 7, 2012

January 7, 2012. Des Moines. Republican Presidential nominee Rick Santorum is suddenly in a whirlwind of controversy. After surging to the front of the pack in Iowa, the former Pennsylvania Senator has found himself under the microscope. But there are two surprises in store for Santorum’s critics. First, don’t be surprised if the Iowa Caucus announces there was a mistake and Rick Santorum actually won the election last week. And after listening to Santorum’s alleged Black comment, we’ve come to the conclusion he didn’t say Black. Read on to see the video and decide what he really did say.

Iowa Caucus results

Anyone who watched Tuesday night as election returns from Iowa came in knows how chaotic the vote count was in the middle of the night. With less than a dozen votes separating Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, the two men repeatedly traded the lead as each precinct vote total came in. Read the Independent Examiner article, ‘Midnight Chaos at Iowa Caucus’ to follow along for yourself.

Many believe there were election shenanigans going on Tuesday night in Iowa by Republican Party officials to insure former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney won the Iowa Caucus. We at Whiteout Press have received a number of emails asking us to look into the accusations. As one reader reminded us about our own Examiner article referenced above, “Read the line about Ron Paul and Des Moines.” The line in the article reads, “Then, as the night got later, Ron Paul slipped down to 21 percent. The area around Des Moines, which had been trending in Ron Paul’s favor most of the night, suddenly began coming in for Mitt Romney.”

Sure, Mitt Romney is the overwhelming choice of the Republican establishment. But that doesn’t mean the election is rigged, right? What if Iowa officials announce some time next week, after the New Hampshire primary, that Mitt Romney wasn’t the winner after all and Rick Santorum actually won? For a candidate like Santorum with no money, little momentum and no ground game, a win in the all-important first state of Iowa would have been a God-send for him.

To come from 2 percent and last place in the field to a surprise victory would have opened the flood gates of donations and given Santorum momentum into New Hampshire and South Carolina. Instead, Mitt Romney was all but declared the unavoidable Republican nominee. With that much on the line, we repeat the question – what if Iowa officials announce next week that there was a “mistake” and Rick Santorum was the true winner? We may just find out because word in the precincts is that’s exactly what’s going to happen.

In one specific example, a local Iowa Caucus official has come forward to announce that there was an error in the reporting of Mitt Romney’s vote totals in the precinct he was responsible for counting. According to Yahoo News and a number of other sources, 28 year-old election worker Edward True has come forward to say that an error in his own precinct gave Mitt Romney 22 votes instead of the 2 he was supposed to get. “That right there says Rick Santorum won Iowa, not Mitt Romney,” True said. Iowa officials have announced that if there is a reversal in the Iowa Caucus winner, they will notify the public when they certify the election results in two weeks.

The Santorum “Black” comment

For the past few days, every civil rights organization in America has been Rick Santorum’s “Black” comment while campaigning in Iowa last week. The videos have gone viral and even the candidate can’t seem to explain away his verbal gaffe. “I’ve seen that quote and I haven’t seen the context in which that was made,” Santorum told CBS when first asked about it. According to the national corporate media, here is the quote allegedly made by Rick Santorum:

“I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.”

But here at Whiteout Press, don’t believe that Rick Santorum said those words.

For one thing, we’re no fans of the former Pennsylvania Senator. Some of his views are extreme, but not so extreme that they would be race-based. Second, when you watch the video, notice Santorum stumble over the words. If he was stating the above sentence, he would have said it a little clearer. And it’s not as if he’s catching himself before the word “black” leaves his mouth. It’s more like when you’re talking faster than your brain is thinking and you squish two separate words into one – like supe-rific, fant-abulous, and other less memorable verbal trip-ups we’ve all had.

Here’s what we think Rick Santorum said

Consider that he was speaking to a room full of white people and in the sentence before, referred to the Democrats’ agenda of making, “more and more of you dependent on them”. Then, in this author’s opinion, Rick Santorum tried to say the following two lines at once:

“I don’t want to make a lot of people’s lives better”

“I don’t want to make people’s lives better”

Watch the video again and let us know what you think in the comments section below. We could be wrong. But there’s just something not right about the “black” comment as it’s being portrayed in the national media, just like the results of the Iowa Caucus.

This version of the comment comes from the political right. None of the text or effects are added by Whiteout Press. The poster of the video does come to a very similar conclusion to ours.

Rick Santorum’s downside

While the Republican candidate for President has been the victim of some very bad luck the past week, it’s nothing compared to what he’s in store for now that he’s one of the race’s three front-runners. Santorum’s fellow GOP candidates have already unleashed a tidal wave of criticism. Just today, we at Whiteout Press received a very harsh campaign piece from the Ron Paul campaign. Calling former Pennsylvania Senator Santorum a “Conservative fraud”, the mailer goes on to provide a laundry list of examples of “Rick Santorum’s Big Government voting record.“

The Ron Paul campaign lists:

• Padding his own wallet as a corporate lobbyist at the expense of taxpayers;

• Voting to raise the debt ceiling five times;

• Voting to double the federal Department of Education;

• Voting with liberals like Ted Kennedy on multiple occasions in support of Big Labor’s radical agenda;

• Urging more federal involvement in housing with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac;

• Voting to create a brand new, unfunded entitlement, Medicare Part D, the largest expansion of entitlement spending since President Lyndon Johnson – creating $16 trillion in unfunded liabilities;

• Endorsing liberal Big Government RINO’s like Arlen Specter over conservatives. Of course, Specter later became a Democrat and worked hand-in-glove with President Obama to pass his radical agenda;

• Voting for Sarbanes-Oxley, which imposed dramatic new job-killing accounting regulations on businesses;

• Supporting raising taxes on oil companies, which directly costs Americans more money out of their pockets at the gas pump;

• Voting for gun control;

• Voting to give Social Security benefits to illegal aliens, while voting against an additional 1,000 border patrol agents;

• Voting to give $25 million in foreign aid to North Korea;

• Voting to send hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to Planned Parenthood – the nation’s largest provider of abortion – and hand out hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign aid to enemies of Israel.

Keep in mind, the above Ron Paul mailer is targeted toward the people voting in their Presidential primary – Republicans. In reality, there are a few items in the above list that would appeal to not only Democrats, but independents as well. In a Republican race however, gun control, raising the debt ceiling, enlarging the Dept of Educations and the other charges, are all weights Rick Santorum will have to carry throughout the remainder of the race.

Rick Santorum’s response

The former Pennsylvania Senator was quick to respond to Texas Congressman Ron Paul’s above criticisms. The Santorum campaign released its own statement saying, “The attempt to attach a ‘big-government conservative’ label to Rick Santorum for some rare wanderings from the conservative reservation makes about as much sense as arguing that record-breaking Drew Brees of the Saints is a poor quarterback because he threw 14 interceptions this season. The reality is that Rick Santorum’s instincts and intellectual choices consistently tend toward freedom.”

That last word, “freedom”, may have been a direct shot at Rep. Paul. Ron Paul’s number one campaign issue is freedom. Further on in the Santorum campaign’s statement, they take a more direct shot at the Texas Congressman, “As for overall spending and his much-discussed history of support for ‘earmarks’ (a position also shared by tightwad Ron Paul), conservative groups’ ratings show that Santorum was better than the average Republican, despite representing a state far bluer than those of most of his Republican colleagues.”

Rick Santorum may be proven to be the actual winner of the Iowa Caucus and he may eventually be cleared of using the word “black”. But it’ll be a tough sell for the former Pennsylvania Senator to expand outside of his ‘Christian conservative’ base to attract Mitt Romney’s ‘corporate millionaire’ supporters or Ron Paul’s ‘libertarian Constitutionalist’ followers.

If Santorum is somehow successful in capturing the GOP nomination, he’ll have an even more difficult time recruiting liberals and independents to his ranks in large enough numbers to defeat President Obama. It wouldn’t be impossible though. In fact, back in September when Rick Santorum was hovering around 1 percent in the polls, we predicted he would eventually win not only the Republican nomination, but the race for the White House. Read the Whiteout Press article, ‘Prediction – President and Emperor Santorum’ to find out how it could happen.