Santorum, Debate Moderator King Feud Over 'Social Issues' Questions
Following Wednesday night's presidential debate on CNN, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum took on the deliberate campaign on the part of Democrats and their media enablers to stigmatize him as purely a "social issues" candidate with limited appeal to Americans not as concerned about those topics.
Chatting with CNN analyst Gloria Borger following the GOP candidate contest, Santorum responded to Borger's question that he is "spending way too much time talking about divisive cultural issues" with a full-on rebuttal. "I understand the game," the former Pennsylvania senator said. "I do get these questions [...] and then the next question from the reporter is 'Why are you talking so much about social issues?' Full transcript of the exchange follows.
Full text of the Borger-Santorum exchange:
GLORIA BORGER: What do you say to those Republicans who say that you are spending way too much time talking about divisive cultural issues, that they don't want to get into a culture war and that this would doom you with women voters and, in fact, with independent voters. And you know that some of those voices are coming from pretty high places in Washington.
RICK SANTORUM: Well actually the Gallup poll says we're leading among women and we're doing well. People care about families, people care about what's happening to our society. But I do get these questions, as John King tried to do on contraception and other things that are sort of outrageous types of questions--and then the next question from the reporter is 'Why are you talking so much about social issues?'
So they ask, and then they say, oh but you're talking about social issues all the time. Look, I understand the game, and we're just going to go out and continue and stay on-message about what we're going to do to make this country more prosperous, to build up a strong foundation of our country which clearly is, as I've talked about before, we've gotta do something to strengthen the American family. And I'm going to continue to talk about those things.
Following Santorum's comments, CNN post-debate host Anderson Cooper then turned to King for an after-action interview with candidate Ron Paul. Instead of getting into his Paul conversation, however, King decided to take a shot at Santorum's critique:
JOHN KING: And Anderson, to respond to Senator quickly there, I understand the game as well and I don't think it's out of bounds to ask a presidential candidate about something they said during a presidential campaign. But that's how the process works.
Presumably, King was referring to the Republican candidates' much stronger pushing back on the media this cycle and their attempts to raise awareness of liberal bias on the part of debate moderators.
King's comments tonight echo ones he made earlier in a highly defensive Feb. 18 segment labeled "Keeping Them Honest" segments in which he attacked Santorum and the GOP candidates generally for going after media bias. In that segment, seen below, King derided "gotcha gang" Republicans for "working the ref--in this case, the news media--instead of making the play:"
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Comments
Wonderful! What a contrast to 2008
Submitted by krendler on Thu, 02/23/2012 - 12:23am.
Love seeing the candidates calling out these jerks, right on their own programs. This is the way these partisan jerks deserve to be treated. Everyone from Gingrich to Romney to Santorum is doing it now. If only Giuliani was in the mix. He's the master.
McCain thought he could win these Obama Worshipers over.
McCain thought they were his friends already
Submitted by Rover on Thu, 02/23/2012 - 4:28pm.
I don't think he thought he could win them over; he thought they adored him already. He got fawning coverage, for years, UNTIL he got the nomination.
As a Republican Senator who the media could rely on to say something derogatory about GOP policies, he'd been their darling. He must have thought it was because the actually liked him. Once he got the nomination, he became the enemy, and got treated the same way they treat the rest of the GOP. After that, he never seemed to adjust to the new reality. Either he never realized that he needed to push back and call them out on their partisanship, or else maybe it wasn't in his nature and he was incapable of it.
Oh for Heaven's sake.,....
Submitted by jdripper on Thu, 02/23/2012 - 12:31am.
Santorum please stop the whining. You had my sympathies at first, but now it is just whining constantly.
Jack
There's a difference between
Submitted by Newsbusterbrown on Thu, 02/23/2012 - 8:47am.
There's a difference between whining and defending yourself. Santorum was doing the latter.
“There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right.” - Ronald Reagan (1964 Republican Convention)
One Democrat complaining about gotcha
Submitted by tjc-illinois on Thu, 02/23/2012 - 12:35am.
Gee John, maybe it has something to do with you and your friends carrying water for the Democrats.
'Well, to tell the family secret, my grandmother was Dutch." Bart
I'm glad to see our candidates standing up to the overblown
Submitted by DaMav on Thu, 02/23/2012 - 12:37am.
media.
What's needed is a "Keeping Them Honest" for the lamestream media. (Hey, we can call it "Newsbusters"!) ;-)
The lamestreamers are getting hammered so badly that they
Submitted by gmaniac1 on Thu, 02/23/2012 - 2:46am.
are now creating a gotcha follow up, admittedly, to their own gotcha questions. Oh how genius of them to call themselves out. Some people are too ignorant to realize when they've lost the battle.
I hope that the candidates get this!
Submitted by Fredy on Thu, 02/23/2012 - 2:50am.
For the next debates, whether they are with Democrats or Republicans, the rules must be changed.
Each candidate must bring their own moderator. Each moderator can ask any question they like in a round robin manner.
Take the game of absolutely biased moderators, with axes to grind and political favors to make, out of this process!
"King derided 'gotcha gang'
Submitted by G L on Thu, 02/23/2012 - 4:18am.
"King derided 'gotcha gang' Republicans for 'working the ref--in this case, the news media--instead of making the play'"
Gosh, Mr. King, for the past two weeks, we've been reading about how Media Matters, a supposed media watchdog organization, but, in reality, yet another thinly disguised set of George Soros-funded leftist operatives, has been, among other things, meeting weekly with the White House to coordinate messaging, keeping an enemies list that includes many members of Fox news and the Republican party, actually writing the news for NBC, and using significant amounts of Soros and other dollars to fund and engage in active smear campaigns against Fox news and the Republicans.
This only adds to the Journolist scandal that blew up in 2009, and the Dan Rather fiasco during Bush II's reelection campaign, to show us all how much the media is no longer separate from the story.
So, sorry Mr. King, but the media is, in fact, the play. They have been for a long time now, only folks are finally paying attention. You guys aren't fooling anyone anymore.
Nice try at deflecting, though.
King needs to realize that Santorum answered the question
Submitted by Quasi-socialist on Thu, 02/23/2012 - 9:25am.
The question was about the proportion of time he spent. King mischaracterizes it as if he's avoiding answering about some thing he said. His answer is that he gets two types of questions often: social issues and "why are you talking so much about social issues" (both on the topic of social issues).
And the Dem media gotcha games go on....
Makes you wonder why the
Submitted by Sude23 on Thu, 02/23/2012 - 11:33am.
Makes you wonder why the media didn't respond this way when they asked Obama about the Health Mandate for the Catholics and his response was, "Come on guys..." It's always funny they never see their double standards.
OT, but...
Submitted by SickofLibs on Thu, 02/23/2012 - 11:13am.
I kinda half-expected Santorum and Gingrich to show up with ashes on their foreheads.
Would've been a powerful in-your-face gesture IMO.
They did but were quickly
Submitted by Sude23 on Thu, 02/23/2012 - 11:35am.
They did but were quickly tackled and forced to remove it before they were able to spread their out dated cult beliefs on the rest of America...
"Out dated cult beliefs?"
Submitted by G L on Thu, 02/23/2012 - 2:26pm.
"Out dated cult beliefs?" Seriously? Catholicism?
I'm hoping that was tongue-in-cheek, because that kind of humor doesn't come across particularly clearly in this medium.
Pretty sure it was sarcasm
Submitted by Denny Crane on Thu, 02/23/2012 - 11:17pm.
But note to Sude23, you should always put a sarc tag, no matter how obvious you think the sarcasm is.
We Are The 53%
With the exception of BOR.....
Submitted by connman on Thu, 02/23/2012 - 1:39pm.
....all the other questions asked of Obumbles regarding the Good Rev were more along the lines of "Gee... what were you thinking?" " If you had it to do over would you have...?" or "Do you think the Rev loves America as much as you do Senator?" Etc..etc....etc.. Still just a bunch of Obummer A$$ kissers IMO.
King's question to Santorum was absolutely appropriate...
Submitted by Jer on Fri, 02/24/2012 - 4:38am.
He and the candidates had just finished a full forty-five minutes on economic issues. The subject turned briefly to birth control issues, in connection with which Santorum while campaigning in Iowa had assured evangelists that [paraphrasing] as president he would for the first time in history speak up about the "dangers of contraception". It was certainly fair to ask him about the implications of that statement. He was permitted, without interruption, to offer a glancing response and then launch into yet another indictment of Obamacare and the current president's assault on religious freedom [both of which policies the other candidates quickly joined in denouncing].
Santorum has actively courted the support of the social conservatives. The leaders of that constituency met in Texas and anointed Rick their guy. As such, it's absurd to suggest he should be immune from questions regarding social and religious issues, particularly with respect to a public remark on that very subject he had made earlier in the campaign. In any event, King certainly didn't badger him, and after each candidate had finished bashing the administration moved on to the next segment--immigration policy.
If the candidates and Republican viewers were upset with that format and King's moderating, there is nothing which will satisfy them.
Jer