The winner is in!

Well the results are in. I did my homework and ultimately I decided the best candidate is Santorum. He is the most conservative, has a good voting record and is just a solid all around choice. Paul finished solidly in second. I thought about choosing him for a while but ultimately it came down to Paul’s foreign policy that I decided to go with Santorum. Paul favors isolationism which I’m not even sure is possible in this day and age.

I rated each of the nominees on five important areas and on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the best. I then averaged the five scores and got my winner. You can see my scores and a brief explanation below. I got 90% of my research from ontheissues.org so check it out if you’re curious. The rest of my research I picked up from debates, the news, and various other places.

Mitt Romney- 6.4/10 Not bad

Abortion- 6/10 I have a couple problems here that left him with a seven. He used to be pro-choice and then suddenly switched to pro-life in 2006. Since then he has been pretty open about being against abortion. However, his voting record doesn’t support this. He supported the abortion law; however he also said he would be for overturning Roe V. Wade (That’s confusing). He committed to change the abortion law in his home state as Governor but he never did. He did veto the bill for emergency abortions for rape victims and stem cell research bill (that surprised me). Ultimately he has been a little flip floppy and he really makes me nervous on this.

The Economy-7/10 He has some ok ideas here. First he wants a cap on how much government can spend as percentage of GDP, which I’m not sure is the best solution, better than nothing. He believes in focusing on the middle class which he believes has been hurt the most, which is probably true. His biggest plan for helping them is to allow the middle class to save money tax free, which could help some people, but I don’t think it would make a huge difference. He talks a pretty big game about cutting government spending and programs. Ultimately I think he could help but I’m not sure he is the revolutionary conservative we need so bad.

Foreign policy- 6/10He doesn’t like isolation. Take that as you will, but personally it makes me nervous. We have to much going on at home to be to worried with the rest of the world. He has strong feeling against Iran but then again who doesn’t? He wants to free Cuba. Uhhhhhhhh… Man I don’t know but I just don’t feel like that is highly important right now is it just me? He wants to cut off trade with China unless they follow international rules. Something tells me neither of those things will happen. He seems to think China doesn’t want a trade war with us but I think it’s the other way around. They have already declared war and it is us that doesn’t want to fight.

Health Care – 4/10 Yeah we all know he sucks on this. Romney created the blueprint for Obama care. He claims it’s different since his was in a state and not on a national level, but the real difference is Socialism in small and socialism in big. He wants to remove health care back to the states. This sounds like he really isn’t going to do a whole lot to it. In the end he is going to get eaten alive on this issue if he wins the primary. Obama is going to stick it to him hard in the debates.

Immigration- 9/10 He wants to force immigrants to self deport by really making some harsh employment laws, which might work if they are really inforced. He supports English as the official language.  He also is another supporter of the great wall of America. Hey if it worked for the Chinese all these years (and lets face it, sometimes they seem ahead of us in many departments) then it can work for us.

Rick Santorum- 8.4 A good choice

Abortion-9/10 Holy cow! I’ve never seen somebody so tough on this running for president. His only slip is in the case of rape/ incest and I can get past that if he really will go in and be tough on this if he becomes president. He has never voted on the wrong side of an abortion issue. He is pretty straight forward on his views here and I love that.

Economy- 8/10 He wants some big cuts here. He also is for an amendment requiring a balanced budget which could be revolutionary, but I think people would find a way around it. The guy has also voted 100% with businesses. He is a real conservative here. However his views haven’t been highly expressed beyond his voting record so I’m a little nervous about that. However when ranked on his voting record against others he ranked in the 90% of conservative voting and was rated a “hard-core conservative”, which is hard to do.

Foreign Policy-7/10 He really likes free trade this guy, having never voted against it. He even voted to continue trade with China if they started selling weapons. He has made it clear he wants to win the war on terror. Ultimately he hasn’t revealed his views here much either. All we can go by is his voting record which is spotless, except maybe that China thing, but I can get past that.

Immigration- 9/10 This guy likes the wall too! He also so has voted to increase legal immigration in every possible way and voted against every crazy Liberal bill trying to give people who come here illegally rights. He is really solid here.

Health care- 9/10 I’m going to rank him high just because he is one of the possible nominees that doesn’t support socialist health care. He has 100% voted against public health care and has spoken out against Obama care.

Newt Gingrich 5.6/10 Hardly Conservativestuff. Take that as you will.

Abortion- 6/10 He hasn’t spent as much time on this issue like the previous two, which always makes me nervous. He wants to reward virgins who graduate high school, which if done correctly could be a good thing. He has said he would impeach Judges who didn’t follow the constitution, but that’s about it…. I don’t think he has very strong views on this.

The economy-7/10 He does like tax cuts… He says he would balance the budget…. Other than that he doesn’t seem to have any great ideas here. What he does have is a good history with this, so one would hope he could repeat that.

Foreign policy- 6/10 Newt talks a big game about this but doesn’t seem to set down any big plans he has. He talks a lot about screwing up with Iran and North Korea. I don’t see anything that makes me excited but nothing that scares me either. He just sticks too typical republican stances on this Immigration- 6/10 He disagrees that the way to go is self deportation. He wants to deport all immigrants that don’t have any ties here…. Most have ties here after being here for a while, I hate to tell you. Also if you could deport most of them it would be extremely costly. I don’t know if this is the best solution.

Health Care-3/10 He is highly hypocritical about this. He raises all kinds of heck about Obama Care but for years he has liked Hillary Care. He also likes a short term version of socialized health care, which anyone who knows history knows that social security wasn’t supposed to last more than a few years but we still have it now (not against social security just making a point).

Ron Paul 7.2 Strong second place

Abortion –8/10 He wants to switch the laws to show life begins at contraception and would like to see abortion completely outlawed. He believes the more laws we have on abortion the worse the problem becomes. His voting record shows this and he hasn’t 100% voted against abortion. He often voted against various laws trying to put restrictions on abortion. I have decided I buy his excuse here.

Economy- 7/10He wants to audit the fed and take a lot of their powers away including setting the interest rate. He is for cutting funding to the wars as a budget cut. He also would like to see us allow Italy and others fix their own messes. He is surprisingly harsh about how Bush handled the economy, not just Obama. I like most of these stances, though I’m not sure we should cut all spending on fighting terrorism.

Foreign Policy- 4/10 Paul is extremely anti-war. He called America’s views on Muslims wartime brainwashing, which I suppose is kind of true, people do have horrible opinions of Muslims now, but we cant forget many of them want to kill us. He would like to cut all aid to Israel, which I believe to be a big mistake. Ultimately he wants us to take on isolationism.  

Immigration- 9/10 He blames incentives largely for our illegal alien problem which has some truth. He is against sending illegals home and believes the people who say they will send them home are nuts, I agree. He likes giving the illegals a limbo status and building a wall. I like his stances here.

Health Care- 8/10 This guy blows my mind. He is so opposite of everyone in Washington. He thinks Bush was as socialized as Obama Care! Anyways he really hates government health care. He would like private medical savings outside of government meddling. I like that he actually has some ideas on how to fix health care not just wanting to beat up Obama for having the wrong idea.