The Republican Nomination For President: The Race For The Race For The White House

I did not watch much of the Saturday debate. I passed the TV at one point where Romney was asked about infrastructure, which question he bypassed to rant about Obama and government tyranny. Translation: Ain't no bridges getting fixed.

Well judging from the direction the "non-Romneys" took in the debate this morning, they heard from people like us wondering why they were letting Willard skate. They were taking some great shots at him.

About Rick Santorum:

Thanks to his surprising surge, which brought him within eight votes of winning the Iowa caucuses, Rick Santorum is the candidate du jour. With his front-runner status is bound to come a new level of scrutiny directed at his track record and positions. One place to start is his stance on public education, of which the former Pennsylvania senator is not a big fan. As he said while campaigning in New Hampshire back in March, when no one was taking him seriously as a candidate: "Just call them what they are. Public schools? That's a nice way of putting it. These are government-run schools."

Santorum has campaigned on the fact that his seven kids have been home-schooled, which has earned him a loyal following of foot soldiers within the evangelical movement. (The same goes for Rep. Michele Bachmann, who on Tuesday dropped out of the presidential race.) Over the past year, Santorum has appeared at a handful of home-schooling conferences. In April, he won the Home School Legal Defense Association's straw poll. There's even a "Homeschoolers for Santorum" Facebook page.

But Santorum wasn't always so opposed to government-run schools—especially one Pennsylvania cyber charter school that offered students free computers, internet service, and online classes. Between 2001 and 2004, that online school allowed the Santorum family to live in Virginia, while sticking Pennsylvania taxpayers with a $100,000 bill.

In 2004, Santorum spawned a minor scandal when news broke that he was no longer residing in the state that sent him to Congress and was living instead outside the Beltway in Leesburg, Virginia. Santorum owned, and still does, a house in Penn Hills, Pennsylvania, next door to his in-laws. The Santorums bought the three-bedroom house in 1997 for $87,800. But after Santorum got elected to the Senate in 1994, he bought a much larger home in Virginia that would accommodate his ever-growing family. Some relatives moved into the Penn Hills house, but Santorum continued to use it to claim residency in Pennsylvania, where he voted by absentee ballot.


Despite moving his family to Virginia, Santorum didn't enroll his children in a local public school. Nor did the Santorums simply home-school the kids. Instead, in 2001, they enrolled five of their kids in the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School, based out of tiny Beaver County, Pennsylvania. The school was founded by Nick Trombetta, a former wrestling coach who set up an online charter school in a depopulated part of the state and turned it into a financial powerhouse that rakes in millions annually in public education funds. (In 2007, Trombetta, a major Republican donor in the state, was the subject of a state grand jury investigation into his use of millions in public funds to build a performing arts center near the school's headquarters, among other things. No charges have been brought.)

Considered a public school, the online charter's students are required to take state-mandated assessments and meet other formal requirements not demanded of traditional home-schoolers. But it offers home-schoolers lots of advantages, notably free computers and internet connections. When Santorum enrolled his kids there, the local school district in Penn Hills was forced to pick up the tab for the cyber school, which cost the district $38,000 a year for the Santorum children.

After four years, the press got wind of this in 2004, and Democrats raised a fuss about the fact that their senator didn't actually live in Pennsylvania, much less the Penn Hills school district that was footing the bills for his children's education in Virginia. The local school board, which included a member who was the local Democratic Party committee chair, attempted to force Santorum to repay the district $100,000 in tuition.

When the scandal broke, Trombetta, the founder of the charter school, offered to let Santorum's kids stay enrolled for free if Santorum would pay the technology costs. In the end, with Democrats challenging his residency in the state, Santorum withdrew his kids from the school. He never repaid a dime. The state ended up settling with the school district and repaying $55,000 in tuition fees. (The Santorum campaign did not respond to a request for comment.)

Even today, nearly eight years after the charter school scandal, Santorum's residency issues continue to dog him. On the campaign trail, distancing himself from the dreaded Washington insider label, he has highlighted his Pennsylvania roots. In August, at a campaign event in Iowa, he handed out samples of "Pennsylvania Presidential Peach Preserves," which he claimed were made by his family from peaches they picked off their trees back home. But as the Roxborough-Manayunk, Pennsylvania, Patch pointed out on Tuesday, there's not a peach tree to be found anywhere near the Santorum home in Penn Hills. The web site speculated that the peaches must have come from elsewhere—Santorum's $1.26 million manse in Great Falls, Virginia, perhaps.

courtesy of Mother Jones

From my perspective as a Democrat, the best thing about Santorum is his support of the states' right to ban contraception, and his pledge to defund it on the federal level if elected. Republican women like their pill, too, and will likely feel cold feelings for a candidate who seeks to make them less available to them.

RCP's poll of polls in NH suggests that-
Romney is at 40%
Paul- 21%
Santorum- 11%
Huntsman- 9%
Gingrich- 9%
Perry- 1%
I am thinking that Romney will come in at 37% followed by Paul at 25%. Huntsman and Santorum will be ahead of Gingrich 11-8%.
Perry will likely withdraw from the race.
The NH primary is open to everyone. That will help Paul.

That sounds reasonable. However, I think that Ron Paul's star will likely fall a bit more quickly than you have indicated. That has been the pattern so far.

Agree, re Paul.

I agree that Paul has peaked and has nowhere to go but down. He had a bunch of bright eyed college kids in Iowa and New Hampshire and electorates who were sympathetic to his message.
But SC and FL are totally different. He will not do well in either of those states and will probably not compete heavily.
I remain convinced that he will run as an independent.

I sincerely hope you are wrong on the second point. Moreover I doubt very seriously that he will do that. Indeed he has come pretty close to saying so himself.

Anyone else here impressed with Huntsman's handling of Romney trying to make him sound deficient because of his service under a democrat?

Didn't hear that particular exchange but I've heard him defend it before. Nothing to hit him on there as far as I can tell.

The Huntsman response Snood mentioned struck me as sincere.
After that came a question to him about working for a socialist President.
And then came a discussion about whether the main goal of any opposition party is to be to bring down any sitting President and his party. I think I heard the answer as being yes.
If I heard that correctly, is it any wonder that congress has an approval rating of about 10%?

That makes sense to me, Thomas. R u a citizen ?





David

So now the Republican code word for Democrats is socialist? Those boys just wander further and further into fantasy land, and indulge more and more rhetorical hysteria.

They mean more socialist than they are I presume. It's fair game in politics. There's no call for a fantasy land burst of hysterical rhetoric about it.

U believe that it is NOT
the function of an opposition party???????





David

Not yet. Chances are I will barely miss the 2012 election.

Well, WELCOME, effective as of when your citizenship goes into effect!





David

I was just curious about the rest of the primary schedule (I knew Iowa was the 3rd, and New Hampshire is tomorrow, but couldn't remember the rest of it) and found this. Seemed useful so sharing it here:

http://www.2012presidentialelectionnews.com/2012-republican-primary-schedule/

The other Republican candidates are attacking Romney using a very populist angle these days...

Cycloptichorn