Rick Santorum has made some foolish remarks recently, but until last night none of them really undermined his Tea Party credibility. His “taking one for the team” comment at the debate is finally giving Mitt Romney an attack line that will resonate with the conservative base:
“When you’re part of the team, sometimes you take one for the team for the leader, and I made a mistake,” Santorum said in what was dubbed by most analysts as the gaffe of the night. “You know, politics is a team sport, folks. Sometimes you’ve got to rally together and do something.”
Romney immediately seized on those remarks during his first campaign stop on Thursday.
“I wonder which team he was taking it for,” Romney said, addressing a conference of the Associated Builders and Contractors. “My team is the American people not the insiders in Washington.”
Santorum’s comment revealed a candidate who is still getting used to his frontrunner position, and who’s still unseasoned when it comes to defending his own weaknesses. At this point, he seems unprepared to face President Obama, and because last night’s debate may be the last, he may not have time for improvement.
Then there’s the damage Santorum may have done to his image with Tea Party voters. Phil Klein notes that Santorum’s comment was revealing:
This gets at the heart of the problem with Santorum, which I wrote about the day he announced he was running for president — he was the quintessential Bush era Republican. As the number three Republican in the Senate, he was a loyal soldier and went along with Bush’s big government policies, from NCLB to the Medicare prescription drug law. The very problem with the Bush era was precisely that too many Republicans decided to be team players rather than push back against the president when he was violating conservative principles. It’s this very “team player” mentality that the Tea Party movement, in part, was created to combat. Santorum spent the early part of his debate touting his opposition to the Wall Street bailout, but his argument tonight about taking one for the team leaves little doubt that he would have voted for the bailout had he still been in the Senate in 2008.
Santorum handed Romney a bludgeon last night. The question now is whether it’ll be enough to make a difference in Michigan between now and next Tuesday’s primary.
I think Romney is the better general election candidate, but it's infuriating that his statement was a "gaffe". He's totally right. That is the way Washington works, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. If you want to get any part of your agenda passed, you need to sometimes (at least) support the agenda of your teammates.
Romney is dead right on that issue. nSantorum can call it being a "team player" – he did it for the team that is bleeding America dry: 1) bleeding taxpayers by jerking their heart strings, but pouring the money into waste that fattens only certain powermongers and did NOTHING for education; 2) by the team that is seeing to it that taxpayers moneys spent on Public Schools is guaranteed to NOT help the STUDENTS at all – and contribute to BRAIN DRAIN. nThe first Law of Dictators is to gain and UNEDUCATED and DISEDUCATED General Public. n nSantorum enabled the Nation Bashers, and hurt Team America for Ted Kennedy – the Author of the "No Child Left Behind" bill. n nOther things that Santorum cannot claim he did to "take one for the team": n nVoted to impose a uniform Federal mandate on states to force them to allow convicted rapists, arsonists, drug kingpins, and all other ex-convicts to vote in Federal elections. nVoted to strike marriage penalty tax relief and instead provide fines on tobacco companies. nVoted for the Specter “backup plan” to allow campaign finance reform to survive if portions of the bill were found unconstitutional. nVoted to allow illegal immigrants to receive the earned income credit before becoming citizens nSponsored An amendment to increase Amtrak funds by $550 million nVoted to give $18 billion to the IMF. nVoted to raid Social Security instead of using surpluses to pay down the debt. nVoted to allow states to impose health care mandates that are stricter than proposed new Federal mandates, but not weaker. nEtc, Etc, Etc, Etc, Etc….ad nauseum…