Rick Santorum Iowa Caucus, January 3, 2012, Meet the Press interview, Santorum interview impressive, Citizen Wells endorsement

Tonight, January 3, 2012, the Iowa Caucus will be held. Rick Santorum has been surging in the polls, close to the front runner , Mitt Romney.

I have been listening to Rick Santorum being interviewed for years and have always been impresssed with his solid, consistent answers. Santorum was interviewed on Meet The Press on Sunday, January 1, 2012. It is clear from the interview that Rick Santorum is the right man to be the Republican candidate and President. The antidote for Obama.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RopLl_Kz95I]

Watch the entire interview and read the transcript here. If the interview disappears, let me know.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45840626/ns/meet_the_press-transcripts/t/meet-press-transcript-jan/#.TwMZmNQV33c

From the transcript:

“it’s funny. i haven’t asked anybody. and the reason i haven’t asked anybody, i’m sitting at 3% in the national polls. and i really haven’t gone out and asked any united states senator, i haven’t asked a single one to endorse me. but i felt like i had to earn it first. that i had to go out and prove to — you know, i lost my last race. and the general consensus was, you know, we like rick, but, you know, you can’t — who goes from losing their last senate race to winning the presidential nomination? my answer to that was, well abraham lincoln. but other than abraham lincoln, this is not a common occurrence”

“if people want to endorse me, i’d love their endorsements. but i’m not coming to be buddies with my — with, you know, my friends in the senate and house, i’m coming to change the entire nature of washington, d.c. it’s one — one of the benefits, frankly, of being out and looking in, and seeing what, you know, sometimes you said i was running as a consistent conservative. there are votes that i took, not that i advocated these things but i voted for some things and look back and say, why the heck did i do that? you get involved in sort of the the — the idea that well, you got to make things happen, and you forget sometimes, you know, sometimes making some things happen is not — you’re better off”
“what i’ve said is your role as a member of congress, if you look at the constitution, is to appropriate money. of course if you appropriate money you’re going to say where that money’s going to go. and historically congress has taken the role of, you know, allocating those resources, and jim demint who led the charge on pork barrel spending, earmarked things for years and years. so what happened, after i left congress, was budgets began to explode. when i was in the senate, i voted for tough budgets, i voted for restrictions on spending, and made sure that that didn’t happen. and as president, i propose cutting $5 trillion over five years. i propose we’re going to balance the budget in at least five years, hopefully sooner. so if you’re looking for someone who’s voted for tough budgets, voted for spending restraints, and”

“well, what changed was who he’s running against. at the time, that was five days or four days before super tuesday, it was after florida. it became clear to me that there were two candidates in the race at that point. i thought mike huckabee– i would have loved to have mike huckabee out there. but i made the political judgment, right or wrong, that the best chance to stop john mccain, which was what my concern was, i had served 12 years with john mccain, i like and respect john mccain immensely personally, and he’s done a lot of great things, obviously, for this country. but i did not think he was the right person, based on my experience and deep knowledge of his record, that he was the right person to be the nominee”

“of course my background is to find compromise. that’s what you have to do in order to get things done. but you don’t compromise on your principles. i use welfare reform as an example. i — i went out and helped author the welfare reform bill that became the contract with america bill, and then when i was in the united states senate, i managed that bill as a first-term, first-year member of the united states senate. i went up against daniel patrick moynihan and ted kennedy and battled over two vetoes of president clinton and was able to get it done. did i make compromises? you bet. but the compromises i made were not fundamental to the transformation that was important in welfare. which was to end the federal entitlement, the only bill that i’m aware of, only law that’s actually ever ended a broad-based federal entitlement. i was the author and manager of the bill on. and we put time limits on welfare. and we put a work requirement in place. those were the things that i believe were transformational. was i willing to compromise on day care funding? yes, i was. was i willing to compromise on transportation to get folks from welfare to work? yes, i was. but what we did was something that was moving the direction of a more limited government, and in order to get the necessary votes to get that done, you have to make compromise. but, we did a direction of limited government, maybe less than what we wanted to. but we weren’t going in the direction of more government, and getting less of more. that’s where republicans have been in error for so many years. and that is, compromising on just a little less big government, instead of saying no. no more compromises and less big government. we’ll compromise on less-less government. but, not going the other way.”

“you have to have someone you can work with. and this president has done more to divide than any other president that i’ve ever witnessed in my lifetime. this president goes out and gives speech after speech after speech trying to divide america between class, between income group, between racial and ethnic groups. this is the great divider in chief. and it’s very difficult when you’re being led by the president on a regular basis, not just as a party but individually, to then — and the president, who i don’t believe has met with boehner or any of the republican leadership, and now six months, hard to compromise and work with someone who won’t meet with you. who won’t sit down and try to negotiate things and try to talk. so i’m not surprised at all that republicans are having a difficult time with someone who has no interest”

“number one, he didn’t support the pro- democracy movement in iran in 2009 during the green revolution. almost immediately after the election — i mean, excuse me, like within hours after the polls closed ahmadinejad announced he won with 62% of the vote. within a few days, president obama basically said that that election was a legitimate one.”

“i understand why the president announcing a minute after the polls close he won, he comes from chicago, so i get it. the problem was this was an illegitimate election, the people in the streets were rioting saying please support us president obama, we are the pro- democracy movement. we want to turn this theocracy that’s been at war with the united states, that’s developing a nuclear weapon, that’s killing our troops in afghanistan and iraq with ieds and the president of the united states turned his back on them. at the same time, a year later we have the same situation where muslim brotherhood and islamists are in the streets of egypt opposing an ally of ours, not a sworn enemy like iran, but an ally of ours like mubarak and he joins the radicals instead of standing with our friends.”
“we know by the israelis. we don’t have any evidence, if you look at what’s being done, most of the evidence to actually trails back to the israelis and the methodology that they use. there’s no evidence the united states is at all complicit in working at that. that’s what — i would be very direct that we would, in fact, and openly talk about this. why? because i want to make sure that iran knows that when i say that iran is not getting a nuclear weapon, that we will actually affect out policies that make that happen. this president has not done that. he has opposed tough sanctions on iran, on their oil program. why? because he’s concerned about the economy and his re-election instead of the long-term national security interests of this country. i would say to every foreign scientist that’s going in to iran to help them with their program, you will be treated as an enemy combatant like an al qaeda member. and finally i would be working openly with the state of israel and i would be saying to the iranis you need to open up those facilities, you begin to dismantle them and make them available to inspectors or we will degrade those facilities with air strikes and make it very public.”

“iran would not get a nuclear weapon under my watch.”

“yes, that’s the plan. i mean you can’t go out and say, this is — this is the problem with this administration. you can’t go out and say this is what i’m for and then do nothing. you become a paper tiger. and people don’t respect our country. and our allies can’t trust us. that’s the problem with this administration.”

I was pleased to hear Rick Santorum make the following statement:

“i understand why the president announcing a minute after the polls close he won, he comes from chicago, so i get it.”

I continue to endorse Rick Santorum for the Republican nomination and the presidency. He is the breathe of fresh air that this country needs.