Santorum - Eager to defend Israel, but not American workers

Probably out of fear that a Ron Paul forest fire might sweep out of Iowa and ignite the GOP Presidential contest into a referendum on America’s Middle Eastern military burden, the MSM has started a controlled burn – lavish positive coverage of Rick Santorum. They hope to suck the oxygen out Paul’s campaign just as the Perry declaration did to Michelle Bachmann’s. (A benefit of the 2011 Presidential debate process was the emergence of documentary proof that the MSM campaign coverage focus is opinion management. )

Huge positive publicity for any consumer product will work in the short run, and it is doing so for Santorum.

For patriotic immigration reformers, this is appalling news. With a NumbersUSA Presidential Hopeful rating of D, he is as bad as Rick Perry. (Only Newt Gingrich (D-) and (alas!) Ron Paul 2012 version (F) are worse.)

Considering Santorum’s superficially respectable B- NumbersUSA Congressional record the reason becomes depressingly obvious: he is firmly owned by the Cheap Labor/Slave Power Lobby. Businessmen who want floods of cheap labor are not necessarily in favor of a disorderly and random influx. So Santorum can get away with supporting more effective border controls and mildly negative noises on Amnesty – but not on reducing the flow. Just like House Majority leader Eric Cantor.

NumbersUSA’s Roy Beck discussed this in detail on Friday in As Santorum Surges In Iowa, A Pause To Check His Immigration Profile

Sen. Santorum tends to act like our country has a worker shortage…In debates and interviews this year, Santorum has talked of the need to increase the number of immigrant workers in this country, at a time when 20 million Americans who want a full-time job (at every skill level) can't find one.

Noting that Santorum has a terrible record on E-Verify efforts, Beck concluded:

Sen. Santorum's remarks on immigration suggest to me a person who is intensely uncomfortable dealing with the issue. His constant references to his immigrant relatives generally are unhelpful for understanding what he would do on policy and make him sound afraid to set real boundaries on immigration…

Santorum's immigration platform is far inferior to that of candidates Romney and Bachmann

Needless to say, Santorum is a noisily sycophantic servant of the Israel Lobby.

For me, the unforgivable Santorum moment came with his disgusting performance on Meet The Press during his losing 2006 Senate campaign “debating” his eventually victorious opponent Bob Casey. Although Santorum had previously shown some signs of raising the immigration issue he entirely avoided the matter. As I noted in Senator Santorum: A rat but our rat...I guess, most of the debate was a puerile contest in Middle East bellicosity.

At the time I thought RNC funding might have been the problem, but in the light of what we since have learned, the MSM condition for choosing to feature this race over the others was probably silence on Immigration.

This on Santorum’s part was not only craven but politically incompetent. Senator Casey has subsequently compiled an F- Numbers USA voting record. Drawing him out on the issue would have done him damage – as the Santorum campaign obviously earlier sensed.

I have a bad feeling credulous Iowa Evangelicals are about to give us our next Vice President.