On Saturday at the Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans, former Pennsylvania Senator and 2012 GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum said one of the biggest problems the GOP faces is that their prominent donors try to push moderate and liberal policies that are out of touch with the party’s base.
That rift, Santorum said, does not exist on the left, and that is why they have been more successful in national elections.
Appearing on Breitbart News Saturday with Breitbart News Executive Chairman and host Stephen K. Bannon, Santorum said Republicans and their friends who have emigrated away from the GOP are the ones “trying to dictate the future.” He said these donors live in New York and Washington, D.C. and do not know that conservative values, even though they are under assault, are “alive and well.”
Santorum, who recently authored Blue Collar Conservatives, said that in addition to being a pro-growth party, the GOP also needed to be a “pro-worker party” that represents business owners and job holders.
Santorum said it is a huge problem when the GOP’s funders “are not conservative” while the base is decisively so. In contrast, he said liberals and all of their interest groups and donors are all on the same page when it comes to politics and liberal values.
Santorum, who runs Patriot Voices and EchoLight Studios, which produces faith-based and family-friendly movies, said Republicans cannot be quiet on pro-life and pro-family issues on the national stage, especially when Democrats continue to shine a huge spotlight on them.
He blasted the “experts” that told the last two failed GOP presidential nominees — moderate establishment Republicans Mitt Romney and John McCain — to surrender the playing field to the left on those issues.
“Look how that worked out for us,” Santorum said. “People care about life. People care about the family.”
Santorum said too often the message coming from establishment Republicans is that the GOP does not care about these issues. What’s worse, according to Santorum, is that the Republican politicians seem like frauds when they are silent on pro-life issues that are firmly in the party’s platform.
“And who’s going to vote for a fraud?” he asked.
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