Santorum promises to be “Johnny One Note”

The coffee of the day was hazelnut at the Corner Sundry Store in Indianola, but GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum opted for something cold to start his latest campaign day in Iowa.  About a dozen people were gathered in the shop as Santorum answered questions on a variety of topics.

“What do you think of the debt deal?” was among the last questions asked of the candidate.

Santorum answered it this way: “Was it a bad deal? No, in the sense that Republicans can say that, ‘Well, we didn’t have a tax increase and we did do some spending cuts.’ But, yeah, we got some spending cuts — a few — and the future spending cuts may be out of defense, which I am very much against, and there may be tax cuts in the future.  That does not make me feel very comfortable that we got a deal that was the best deal.

“Why didn’t we get a good deal? Number one: because we didn’t have leadership; we didn’t have a clear message and we didn’t define the terms to the American public from the very beginning. I tried and I said that what we should not be talking about is the McConnell plan or some sort of other plan, even — I supported cut, cap and balance and that was fine. The problem is really what we should be talking about is balance. I mean, cut, cap is great, but everybody knows that you can play games with all these cuts. ‘Oh, we’re going to cut $3 trillion, $4 trillion over 10 years.’ Yeah, well, but $3 trillion of that is in the last three years of the 10 and it’ll never happen.

“And so what we needed to focus on from the very beginning is to tell the American public, ‘Look, we got to get on a path of fiscal sustainability.’ We’ve got to accomplish the two things that were necessary, that the American public supports us on and that we could have just been singularly focused on that which is balancing the federal budget through a balanced budget amendment to the constitution (which is) very popular in America. Every state does it but one. We can do it in congress.  Balance the budget and — this is part of the balanced budget amendment that was in the senate that 47 of our most liberal senators signed off on — balance the budget every year and limit the size of government to 18 percent of the overall economy, so government can only be 18 percent of the entire economy.

“What does that guarantee?  It guarantees your freedom.  Right now government is 25 percent of the overall economy and under Barack Obama’s budget it was going to 40 percent of the overall economy. That’s even bigger than European-size governments. We needed to guarantee the American public that we would not have a huge fiscal burden on future generations and we would limit government so people could be free. That’s the principles we needed to go out and articulate from day one and make the debate about that.  We didn’t and so we ended up arguing about how many angels on the head of a pin, by $10 billion, $20 billion, $30 billion and we’re looking at $1.5 trillion dollars in debt, so that’s how I would have handled it.

“As president, I will be a ‘Johnny One Note’. I will be out across America, talking to Americans about getting their members of congress to vote for a balanced budget amendment to the constitution so we can secure freedom and secure financial profitability and stability for the future of our country.”

Santorum made a strong Straw Poll pitch to the crowd, offering to buy them $30 tickets to the August 13th event in Ames.  Santorum told the group they could help him be “on the short list that comes out of Iowa…shock the heck out of the political establishment…(and) really stick it to the pundit class.”

It wasn’t until I walked and talked with the candidate to his waiting car that Santorum took a direct swipe at his rivals who currently serve in congress.  “Where are the folks who say they want to lead the country who are running for president who are in congress and they can’t even lead the congress? I mean, I haven’t heard anything from any of these guys who are the three members of congress who are running for president and say they want to be the leaders of the free world, I didn’t see their input at all on this whole process,” Santorum said as he opened the door to the vehicle.  “So how can you say you want to be the leaders of the country if you can’t even lead the congress?”

As for that reference to Johnny One Note, that’s the title of a song from “Babes in Arms” — a 1937 Rogers and Hart musical.  However, Johnny One Note has become a common phrase to refer to someone who focuses on one topic.  The urban dictionary uses words like “tired” and “shrill” in its description of the phrase.