Seeing the Future With Rick Santorum

Rick Santorum, short of money, with little organization, now seems to be the lone candidate standing between Mitt Romney and the Republican nomination for President. Will he be able to make a stand.

The odds would seem to be against it. The pundits surely do not think so. Still if Romney is not the candidate of choice for most Republicans is it possible Santorum is. Further, if by chance the former Senator from Pennsylvania were the nominee in the General Election is there a chance that he could defeat President Obama.

The first thing those on the left and even independents will know about Rick Santorum is that this is a man of faith who generally does not waver from his straight line views. He has stated that he would seek to annul all gay marriages, limit all civil rights for gay people and is of course strongly anti abortion. These issues matter to many people.

I myself have evolved into a position of supporting same sex rights and while I myself am strongly opposed to abortion I am not foolish enough to think that it will go away if we outlaw it.

Santorum does have appeal however. My greatest frustration with Barack Obama is that I am not sure where he stands or at least what he will fight for. The joke I heard about him is that when negotiating with Republicans he never fails to draw a line in the sand. Unfortunately that line is usually behind is own forces...in short he gives in to be liked and is still despised.

Rick Santorum knows what he believes and seemingly come hell or high water will continue to act on that belief. Like him or not one has to admire that.

He is a dedicated family man with a family the size of somewhere between a basketball and baseball team and he lives the way he talks. I read Santorum's tax plan today which calls for cutting taxes of course for businesses, corporations, and the like but also reduced the tax rate for most middle class families to 10 percent and interestingly for tripling the child tax deductions and credits.

I will say this. I believe that for all the talk of overpopulation and global warming and limited resources that the United States does not have enough people. Does anyone besides me think that one of the reasons India and China are kicking us around economically is because they have so many people. Truly they have 3 to 5 more times the people than us, they are like the Yankees signing bad free agents. No matter they will just move on to the next one. I do not intend to get into the whole issues of how this would make scarce resources, bring about more poor etc. That might well be true.

Pat Buchanon often makes his point that as America was founded and presumed as a Judeo- Christian nation. Now if you do or do not believe that does not matter, a good percentage of people do. They may not admit it but they do think it, sometimes, in their heads and they are not comfortable with the projections of whites being a minority in this country in a couple of decades.

Anyone who thinks Santorum's plan to encourage large families does not play into that is mistaken.

I would put the odds on Santorum winning the nomination at 20 to 1. I would put the odds on him winning the general election at 35 to 1. Anyone who does not think he would energize the base, win the South, and be a real threat to the President in the Catholic heavy midwest has not been paying attention.