Rick Santorum is no Conservative Savior

Rick Santorum's virtual tie in Iowa has propelled him into the national spotlight overnight.

Just three weeks ago, Santorum was polling in the low to middle single digits in Iowa. Many people questioned why he was even in the race. I thought that he was probably running for Vice President -- someone who could give Mitt Romney credibility with social conservatives.

Now that Santorum has emerged as the latest front-runner among the GOP Presidential contenders, it's time to take a close look at who Rick Santorum really is.

Santorum was born in 1958 in West Virginia. His parents were government employees who worked at a VA Hospital in neighboring Pennsylvania. After graduating from college with a Law Degree, Santorum went to work for the government as a legislative aide to a Pennsylvania State Senator. He later served on a Pennsylvania government transportation committee.

Santorum was elected to the House of Representatives in 1990. In 1994 he was elected to the Senate as part of the Gingrich revolution. In 1996, Santorum served as Chairman of the Republican Party Task Force on Welfare Reform and he helped steer that important piece of legislation through the Senate.

However, during the Bush the administration, Santorum helped lead the GOP away from their principles, by concocting all kinds of government spending programs designed to create new government dependent constituencies that would be loyal to the GOP.

Rick Santorum voted for the first new federal entitlement program since LBJ (Medicare Part D), the largest federal intrusion into the classroom in history (the failed No Child Left Behind), the largest pork barrel infrastructure bill in history (including the infamous "bridge to nowhere"), thousands of earmarks, Bush's two ill-conceived wars in the Middle East, and much more. Santorum and his buddies turned a balance budget into huge deficits and set the stage for the Democrats to regain control of the Congress and White House.

Rick Santorum is the poster boy for everything that was wrong with the GOP during the Bush administration. As a result, he got booted out of office in 2006 along with the rest of the GOP Congress. He lost to a conservative Democrat by a whopping 59% to 41%.

During the 1980s, Ronald Reagan vetoed a transportation bill from a Democrat Congress because it contained 150 earmarks. During the Bush Administration, Santorum helped to Sheppard a transportation bill through a GOP Congress that contained over 1,000 earmarks (including the "bridge to nowhere"). Bush signed it. This alone should tell us all how much so-called "conservatives" like Santorum have veered off of the course set for us by Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan.

Santorum also endorsed liberal GOP Senator Arlen Specter over his conservative challenger Pat Toomey in 2004. Specter won the primary and the election. Thanks to Rick Santorum, Arlen Specter was around to cast the 60th and deciding vote for Obamacare in the Senate.

I've watched every GOP debate during this election cycle. One thing that really strikes me is that of all of the current GOP Presidential candidates, Rick Santorum seems to have learned the least from Bush's misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. Like Bush, Santorum seems to believe that the U.S. government can force a western civilization on a country like Afghanistan, where no reasonable civilization has ever existed before.

Earlier this week Rush Limbaugh was bellyaching about people questioning Santorum's conservative credentials. Limbaugh stated that "conservatives" actually do believe in big government -- just not the same kind of big government that liberals believe in. Oh really???

So sure, if our new definition of a "conservative" is someone who wants to conserve the growth of government over the last 80 years and the corrupt cronyism that it spawned, then Santorum is indeed a "conservative".

However, if our definition of a "conservative" is someone who wants to conserve the Constitution, limited government, the free market, and our individual liberty, then Santorum isn't even close to fitting the bill.

I hope and pray that the good people of New Hampshire take a hard look at Rick Santorum in the context of their state motto -- "Live Free or Die" -- and render their verdict accordingly.