When it comes to the Republican Presidential leadership race it’s been about as volatile as John McCain’s famously short temper. We’ve had numerous leadership contenders be it Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney and the latest being Rick Santorum. All have had their flaws and some like Cain and Perry have disappeared from the race, whilst Gingrich perhaps for personal vanity if nothing else has limped on. For those legions of Ron Paul supporters I haven’t forgotten you and I think the media’s coverage of his campaign is seriously lacking, but in reality Ron Paul’s best shot in the Republican race is to come second. This means the race in effect is between Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum. Whilst I’m not a massive fan of Mitt Romney, in part because of the number of times he seems to flip flop on policies I think he’d be a far better presidential candidate then Rick Santorum.

Rick Santorum is someone who is opposed to free trade being one of the few republicans who voted against NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement). How someone can consider themselves to be an effective president and a Conservative whilst being anti free trade is beyond me. I’m not saying NAFTA is perfect, personally I want the whole world to be one large free trade area, but NAFTA was a step in the right direction for supporters of free trade, who realise that free trade leads to free markets that leads to prosperity. This is something the economically illiterate Santorum doesn’t seem to understand. In fact the only reason that many can find for Santorum’s opposition to NAFTA was to appeal to steel producers in his Pennsylvania Congress and later to be Senate seat. In other words he is a statist who would keep the steel tariffs that damage free trade across the world and inside the United States. This may explain why he voted for steel tariffs in 1999. It’s not just tariffs that Rick likes he’s addicted to subsidies to prop up inefficient industries and damage competition. This is why he voted to protect milk subsidies in 2005 and compounded it in the same year by showing his disdain for competition by voting to impose a tax on imported honey. This shows that Santorum is nothing but a protectionist. Protectionism does nothing but damage national economies and the entire world economy. Read a history book or a bit of Hayek and you’ll understand this. However, Santorum doesn’t seem to understand this. As someone who strongly supports free trade and from personal experience believes most young Republicans do too, there is a no way that I believe Rick Santorum would be a good Republican Presidential candidate.

Rick Santorum’s opposition to free trade is just one in a long line of policies which would just replace the statist socialist government intervention and spending policies of Obama, with Santorum’s version of the same thing. Whoever would win between the two if there was a presidential race between them, socialism would be the winner. In all of this the American dream already damaged due to the socialist spending policies of both George Bush Jr and Barack Obama, would become an endangered species. Santorum’s own record demonstrates this. He supports mass intervention in schools across the American education system trampling both over the principle of localism as well as meritocracy. This is shown by the fact that he supports national standards for every school in America alongside his championing of No Child Left Behind. Both these policies centralised education in America and increased the Federal Government’s involvement in education and by default increased wasteful spending in this area. In other words he’d just carried on the failed Bush and Obama policies in education that is spend, spend, spend, centralise everything and stuff individual and parental choice. Consequently, it is with disbelief I hear people saying that Rick Santorum is the true conservative challenger to Mitt Romney. Please tell me when has being an interventionist in education made you a conservative?

Both Obama and Bush have tried to spend their way out of a recession, racking up the debt in the process and ignoring that the best way to run an economy is through low spending and low taxes to create growth. Hong Kong is a shining example of this in action. Santorum though is a fan of wasteful and pointless spending, meaning the orgy of spending would continue if he became President. For instance he voted for the 2005 highway bill, which included the Bridge to Nowhere, whilst he is also a defender of earmarks, the practice of adding stuff on to congress bills to increase your own state’s spending as part of the Federal pot of goodies. Yet whether it is for your local state or at the federal state level, the USA is spending too much not too little. Therefore if Santorum became president the U.S. would continue to live beyond its means.

Rick Santorum is not what the Republicans need. He’s fiscally irresponsible and a statist when it comes to education and other areas. America has already had enough of this under George Bush Jr. And Barack Obama. At least give them a choice at the next election between the failed policies of Obama and the new ideas of a Republican who shows a modicum of economic sense. Rick Santorum is not that and Americans deserve better than a choice between Tweedledee and Tweedledum for the Presidential elections!