Santorum: Iowa owes the country an antidote to Obama

GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum is today’s guest at The Principal Financial group. About 175 people are in the auditorium.  Ron Paul last week, in the same room, had over 400 and Santorum began by stressing his foreign policy views on Iran, a sharp contrast with Paul.

His opening salvo, though, was to Iowans, urging them to make up their own minds about the candidates rather than listen to the media meme. “Were it not for Iowa, Barack Obama would not be president,” Santorum said. “…Now is your opportunity to provide the antidote.”

After that brief opening, Santorum talked about the “serious problems” the U.S. faces in the MidEast, specifically in the “radical theocracy” of Iran. Iran is a country, he said, that “has been at war with us for 32  years. That’s right — since 1979.”

According to Santorum, Iran has helped to kill more troops in the middle east than any other country because of the Iranian-made IEDs which are being used in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Santorum said both the Obama and George W. Bush administrations have “done very little to push back” against Iran.  He raised the spectre of a nuclear Iran (a topic Santorum and Paul quarreled about famously during a FOX News debate in Ames this past August).

Santorum said the “world as we know it” would be forever changes if Iran goes nuclear.  “We have to have a president who will make sure that doesn’t happen,” Santorum said, adding he had been speaking out for a decade, warning of Iran’s nuclear intentions. “…We can lo longer afford someone who is learning on the job.”

Santorum, unlike Paul and Newt Gingrich who appeared in this venue recently, did not choose to stand on stage behind the lectern in business suit and tie.  Instead, he roamed around at the front of the auditorium, not on stage, but in the small space in front of the first row of seats.  He also was more casual, matching the attire of the Principal employees in the room, wearing a sweater vest over his button-down-shirt, teamed with khakis.  He did not wear a tie ither.  I can see only three ties in a quick look ’round the room.

Santorum offered this analysis of the nation’s economic problems: “Why is this economy suffereing? Because it’s being ruled more for the top-down….Government is controlling and dictating to you how you’re going to operate…That’s the issue in this election. It’s affecting the economy. It’s affecting the morale of this country…We have a fundamental decision: do you believe in bottom up or do you believe in top down?…Our country…is teetering on the brink.”

Being away from his family is “killing me” Santorum told the crowd, gesturing a photo of his family that’s behind him on stage.  He concluded at 12:30 p.m. and opened it up for questions.

The first questioner made a joke about Santorum’s accomplishment of visiting all 99 counties, which prompted Santorum to reminisce about the tour.  He asked for a show of hands in the room, asking who could name the smallest county in Iowa. (Pick me! Pick me!  It’s Adams County.)

Santorum told the crowd it is, indeed Adams County. He described a visit to Kay’s Kafe in Corning, the county seat.  Getting to Kay’s requires a trip through the bar.  As Santorum was speaking with the five people who met him at Kay’s to talk, reporter Joe Klein walked in.

Santorum said he had used the  “of all the gin joints” line with Klein, but then Santorum told the crowd: “That’s just Iowa…It’s where things are happening. It’s where America is making its decisions…and that’s a pretty cool thing to be involved in.”

The questioner then asked his question of Santorum, a question about how to get things done in a politically-divided D.C.  Snatorum said he would be “someone who has the courage to go out and remind us who we are,” like Reagan.  “If we could all come togeter of who we are…it’s a lot easier to build consensus,” Santorum said. “…If there is anything this president has done is he’s divided us.”

The “class struggle” strategy came from Marxists, according to Santorum, who made an off-hand remark about the 99 percent argument from the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The second question came from a man who asked whether, given the status of the “income statement” of the United States, solving the problem might require raising taxes.  “It’s going to be harder to extract much more out of America,” Santorum said, detailing his tax cut proposals for the crowd. He argued that package of tax reductions would spur economic growth and result in more federal tax revenues.

Santorum joked he doesn’t speak, as other candidates do, in four-second sound bites. “I talk in four minute sound bites,” he said. “It’s why I don’t do very well at these debates.”