Newt Gingrich has called Mitt Romney a liar. Rick Santorum has called Mitt Romney a liar. Mitt Romney's campaign has called both Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum liars, sometimes desperate liars. Nevertheless both Newt Ginrich and Rick Santorum have indicated that they would embrace the man they called a liar as his vice-presidential running mate.
If there's been one continuous theme in the Republican primary race, it is the observation that Romney just cannot excite the evangelical base which is Santorum's natural constituency. Thus, any Machiavellian Republican operative, (like Karl Rove), could see that pairing Romney with Santorum could be a marriage made in get-out-the-vote heaven. Strange bedfellows are the norm in politics, but can these reciprocally labeled liars really get into bed with each other?
Let's consider Newt Gingrich first. Newt Gingrich called Mitt Romney a bald-faced liar in January 2012. The Washington Examiner recorded this interview (click for the video & more transcript) with Gingrich:
O'Donnell: You scolded Mitt Romney, his friends who are running this Super PAC that has funded that, and you said of Mitt Romney, 'Someone who will lie to you to get to be president will lie to you when they are president. I have to ask you, are you calling Mitt Romney a liar?
Gingrich: Yes.
O'Donnell: You're calling Mitt Romney a liar?
Gingrich: Well, you seem shocked by it! Yes. I mean, why -
O'Donnell: Why are you saying he is a liar?
Gingrich: Because this is a man whose staff created the PAC, his millionaire friends fund the PAC, he pretends he has nothing to do with the PAC - it's baloney. He's not telling the American people the truth.
Still, Gingrich publically continues to angle for the vice-presidential spot and private tête-à-têtes between Romney and Gingrich to consider such a possibility are reported. However, with Gingrich's single digit poll numbers and paltry primary victories compared to Santorum's multiple primary victories, higher poll numbers, and great popularity among the Republican Party's evangelical base, Santorum is the likelier of Romney's choice among strange bedfellows. So let's review what Santorum and Romney have said about each other.
This is what Santorum had to say about Romney: SANTORUM: "For someone to go out and deliberately misrepresent his record, what he did at a very critical time when people were making decisions on the issue of health care, for him to go out and to recommend that to President Obama and then tell the voters in debate after debate that he never did any such thing, not only is his policy bad, not only did he recommend the wrong policy for the country, then he didn’t tell the truth about what he did." When the interviewer, Morgan, nudged Santorum several times into calling Romney a flat out "liar," he demurred but insisted: “He clearly did not tell the truth,” stopping short of calling Romney a liar.
Now Santorum has come out with an attack ad on Romney, verbally and pictorially claiming that Romney and Obama are equivalent when it comes to abortions, taxes, and deficits. The Washington Post has the following transcript available documenting the ad (Check out the video on this link to fully appreciate the brutality of Santorum's attack) :
"A tough new ad from former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum suggests former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is as bad as President Obama. The spot is airing in Wisconsin, in advance of Tuesday’s primary. “This Man” starts with a woman standing in front of a shot of the current White House occupant.
“What if I told you that this man’s big government-mandating health-care included $50 abortions and killed thousands of jobs. Would you ever vote for him?” she asks. “What if I told you he supported radical environmental job-killing cap-and-trade and the Wall Street bailout? And what if I told you he dramatically raised taxes and stuck taxpayers with a $1 billion shortfall?”
The woman gestures at Obama, “One more thing. What if I told you the man I’m talking about wasn’t him?” The shot of Obama morphs into Romney. “It’s him.”
“It is sad to see him completely lose his bearings and revert to patently false claims,” said Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul in a statement. “Senator Santorum is at a point of desperation that he will say or do anything.”
In two previous blogs on Santorum's blatant lies I have documented Santorum's inclination to attack his left-wing opponents with untruths that even minimal fact checking can disprove. I've also noted that such lies actually seem to increase his appeal to evangelical commentators and news outlets who repeat such falsehoods with enthusiasm. However, Santorum has not been accused of making "patently false claims" by fellow Republican bedfellows until now. Telling lies about Democratic opponents was winked at, but can Romney and Santorum flutter their eye-lids at each other, kiss and make up, and then get into bed together as strange bedfellows with the blessing of the evangelicals at their nuptials?
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