GOP contenders comments...

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there's been quite a few asinine comments just this past week, so I figured I'd make a thread to get them all, since these are the ones that might be on the ballot in 2012.

First up, Rick Santorums insane comments about abortion and SS.


(CNN) - Potential 2012 presidential candidate Rick Santorum said the "abortion culture" in America is to blame for the failing Social Security system.

In an interview with WEZS Radio in Laconia, New Hampshire, Tuesday, the former Republican Pennsylvania senator said abortion rates are influencing the number of children born in the United States and there are therefore not enough children to support the program long-term.

"The Social Security system in my opinion is a flawed design, period. But having said that, the design would work a lot better if we had stable demographic trends," Santorum said. "A third of all the young people in America are not in America today because of abortion."

Santorum, an outspoken opponent of abortion, made the comments in response to a caller who said abortion rates are to blame for the problems with Social Security and Medicare.

"We have seven children so we're doing our part to fund the Social Security system," Santorum said. "I want children to be living in America and contributing. America's greatest resource is our people and we're denying America what it needs, which is more Americans."

Santorum was in New Hampshire, the first-in-the-nation primary state Tuesday to meet with voters and headline a GOP dinner in Concord.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com...cial-security/

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He says the nation will be a secular-atheist one, but then says it will be run by radical muslims? lmao


Likely Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has regularly been warning that Democrats are trying to impose a "secular-socialist" agenda on the country, in part because of a "relentless anti-religious bias."

He has also warned of the risk of radical Islam, as in a film called "America at Risk" that is grounded in the notion that "we are at war with radical Islamists - and it is a war we are losing."

But the former House speaker seemed to conflate the two arguments over the weekend, suggesting that his grandchildren could eventually find themselves "in a secular atheist country" that is potentially dominated by "radical Islamists."

Here's the full quote, via Politico: "I have two grandchildren -- Maggie is 11, Robert is 9. I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they're my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American."

Gingrich spokesman Rick Tyler told Hotsheet that Gingrich did not mean to suggest America could become both Islamist and atheist, but simply left the word "or" out of his comments.

Gingrich, who converted to Catholicism two years ago, made the comments at Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, a megachurch led by evangelical Rev. John Hagee. You might recall that then-presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain rejected Hagee's endorsement in 2008, after learning that Hagee had suggested that Adolf Hitler was a "hunter" who was exercising God's will by incentivizing Jews to return to Israel. (Hagee said his comments were taken out of context and that he has "always condemned the horrors of the Holocaust in the strongest of terms.")

In his remarks, Politico reports, Gingrich complained that courts have grown "steadily more secular and steadily more anti-religious." He said "everyday folks" in churches and synagogues will have to show the bravery that "elites" in the media and academia will not to return the nation to its founding Christian values.

Gingrich, who has been aggressively courting social conservatives, said Sunday it wasn't hypocritical of him to lead impeachment proceedings against President Bill Clinton in the 1990s. Gingrich, who was involved in an extramarital affair at the time, said the impeachment push was "not about personal behavior."

The former speaker, who has been married three times, has expressed regret about his past personal behavior, which he suggested was driven in part by his passion for the country.

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_1...#ixzz1IEHHvkov

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Lol does he actually believe the shit he says?

Wasington (CNN) - Top Obama advisor David Plouffe Sunday laughed off suggestions Donald Trump will ever be a serious presidential candidate, but the business mogul says he is actually the Obama campaign's "worst nightmare."

"I am leading a lot of polls and doing very well," Trump told Fox News Monday as part of his weekly segment for the network. "I can tell you I am their worst nightmare."

The comments come after Plouffe joked on ABC's "This Week" that he would love to face off against Trump in a general election match-up.

"I saw Donald Trump kind of rising in the polls. Given his behavior, and the spectacle of the last couple of weeks, I hope he keeps on rising," Plouffe said with a smile. "There's zero chance that Donald Trump would ever be hired by the American people to do this job."

But Trump contends the opposite is true:

"I am not the person they want to run against," he said. "They know it, and I know it, and I know it for a fact. Because I have a lot of people that, frankly, are contributors to him and they tell me, 'Donald you are not the person you want to run against.'"

Trump has not led the potential GOP field in any major poll. But a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showed "The Apprentice" host and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee are tied for second place with support from 17 percent of likely GOP voters, behind former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney with 21 percent.


http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com...rst-nightmare/

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(CNN) - Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin supported Donald Trump's decision to hire investigators to examine President Barack Obama's birth, but stopped short of embracing the birther wave.

"I appreciate that the Donald wants to spend his resources in getting to the bottom of something that so interests him and many Americans. You know, more power to him," Palin said Saturday on Fox News. "He's not just throwing stones from the sidelines, he's digging in, he's paying for researchers."

Trump's media rampage over the president's birthplace continued Sunday in an appearance on CNN's "State of the Union," where he once again implored the president to produce his birth certificate. Thursday on NBC, the real estate mogul said he sent a team of investigators to Hawaii.

In 2008, the Obama campaign released a copy of the certificate, saying the serial number was blacked out for concern over Hawaiian procedure. Since then, many news organizations and the Annenberg Fact Check Project saw the original with the serial number, an embossed seal and a stamped signature.

But when asked about her views on the issue, Palin said she thinks the president was born in Hawaii.

"Well, you know, I think that he was born in Hawaii because there was a birth announcement put in the newspaper," Palin said. "But obviously if there's something there that the president doesn't want people to see on that birth certificate that he's going to great lengths to make sure it isn't shown. And that's kind of perplexing for a lot of people."


http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com...birther-issue/

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Washington (CNN) ? Michele Bachmann just may be a one-term president.

That's what the Minnesota Republican is pledging should she ultimately decide to run for president and win the White House, providing she can "turn things around" in that time frame.

"I'm a principled reformer, and my goal is to see the country turn around," Bachmann told the Des Moines Register in an interview published Monday. "I'm also committed to being a one-term president if that's what it takes in order to turn things around, because this is not about a personal ambition."

"It's about getting our financial house in order and to become respected again in the world on an international scale," she added.

Bachmann's comments come the same day she is in the Hawkeye State to deliver a speech to social conservatives in Pella.

On Monday, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and Texas Rep. Ron Paul will deliver speeches in Iowa, she to social conservatives in Pella and he to a Family Leader group in Sioux Center.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com...t/#more-153866