Rick Santorum, haunted by the Specter of debate

Seems Rick Santorum heeded publisher — and former GOP presidential candidate — Steve Forbes’s advice that he stop talking about Satan. A close study of the transcript reveals absolutely no mention of Satan — or the devil or Lucifer — at any time during the GOP debate Wednesday night.

Forbes’s counsel, as we noted Wednesday, was offered via a telephone interview with an unknown radio reporter as Forbes took the Acela to Manhattan.

Loading...

Comments

• Weigh In
• Corrections?

Personal Post

Archive

• E-mail
• RSS

Unfortunately, Santorum didn’t fill the time talking about jobs — never said the word once, our colleague Felicia Sonmez reported.

Instead, with an able assist from Mitt Romney wingman Ron Paul, he lapsed into unfortunate blather about earmarks, the budget process and such.

And just when you thought it couldn’t get worse, Santorum plunged into a detailed explanation of his views on the one thing that truly concerns all Americans, rich and poor: his support of former senator Arlen Specter. Specter’s name came up eight times that evening — as opposed to “children,” which came up 15 times.

Specter, repaying Santorum Thursday for that support, disputed Santorum’s version of events.

The pundits instantly panned Santorum’s performance. Remains to be seen, though, how much it will affect the vote in the critical Michigan primary on Tuesday. (The debate was seen by only 4.7 million people, far fewer than the 5.4 million who watched the Florida debate last month.)

What might be of more significance is the Michigan Democratic Party’s move Wednesday to officially encourage Democratic crossover voting in the GOP primary. As our colleague Aaron Blake reported, Democratic Party Chairman Mark Brewer sent an e-mail to supporters encouraging them such voting.

Of course, they may end up voting for Newt Gingrich.

The coast is not clear

There was plenty of truth-stretching in Wednesday’s GOP debate — along with a few outright whoppers. But one slip-up from Romney, we assume, was a simple matter of geographical confusion.

The former Massachusetts governor, talking about the threat from Iran, mentioned Syria, which he said was Iran’s “only ally” in the Arab world. Well, maybe not. There’s Iraq, reduced to pretty much a vassal state of Iran these days. But let’s give that a pass.

Then Romney, in highlighting the ties between the two countries, claimed that Syria “is also their route to the sea.”

Um . . . that seems unlikely, unless the Iranians are taking a pretty convoluted path. In fact, Iran itself has direct access to waterways, with about 1,520 miles of coastline along the Arabian Sea. It doesn’t even share a border with Syria, so this “route to the sea” that Romney spoke of would involve cutting through Iraq before cutting through Syria to get to the sea. The journey from Tehran to Damascus is about 1,000 miles.

Not exactly an easy jaunt.

Syria has a measly 119 miles of coastline fronting the Mediterranean.

Suzanne Maloney, a senior fellow at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution, says Romney probably was referring to the fact that Syria is Tehran's “most heavily used logistical route for resupply of Hezbollah and Hamas.” But, she says that’s got nothing to do with water. “That relationship has little if anything to do with acccess to the Mediterranean,” she says.