As most of you know North Dakota is right in the thick of the Republican Primaries. So, naturally, Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney have shown up in Fargo over the past two months. My wife and I decided to go check it out. The first one I went to was Rick Santorum's event on February 15. Rick Santorum is a very strict Roman Catholic, if you haven't been able to tell by all the contraception talk. When we got to the Holiday Inn we could not believe how many people were there. I think it was somewhere between 1,000-1,500 people. We stood in line for about 10 minutes when we noticed that Santorum was going to walk right by us. I brought some anti-catholic gospel tracts with to give him. They just so the differences between Catholics and Christians like the eucharist, praying to Mary, etc. He finally made it to where we were standing and I gave him the tracts. He said, "Do you want me to autograph these?" I said, "No, there for you." He looked at me funny, shook a few more hands, and than walked into a side room to do a Piers Morgan interview.
Santorum's speech was amazing. My favorite part was where he talked about how when he was in the Senate he brought the Infant Born Alive Act before Congress and I believe he said it passed. He went on to say that the only state to bring a similar bill was Illinois. This bill would stop a baby from being able to be thrown in the garbage if it was meant to be an abortion, or put on a shelf to die. (There have been documented cases of this.) Santorum said that when this bill came to the floor the only state senator to say anything against it was President Obama. He said he could not vote for it because he thought it would affect Roe vs. Wade. The crowd gasped and booed.
After his speech I noticed that there were not that many people around Santorum so I approached him to get his autograph and a picture. He agreed, but the interesting part was he recognized me from earlier. He gave me a face that said, "Oh, you're the character that gave me those gospel tracts." So the moral of my story is if Santorum becomes president I can say that I tried to get him saved. I'll leave the rest up to the Holy Spirit.
My second experience with the Republican Primary was the Mitt Romney Campaign Event at Wrigley Mechanical in Fargo on March 1. As some of you know I have a real serious problem with Romney because he is lying about his positions on social issues. He has been in support of same-sex marriage in the past, and also was to the left of Ted Kennedy on abortion when he sought to defeat him in the Massachusetts Senate Race in 1994. Massachusetts was the first state to approve of same-sex marriages. This was while Romney was governor and he did not lift a finger to stop it. I recently purchased a book called, "Mitt Romney's Deception: His Stealth Promotion of "Gay Rights" and "Gay Marriage in Massachusetts."
So I got to the event fairly early, which was well attended by Mormons. I sat next to a lady who had brought her kids from Minot and had drunk the Kool-Aid on Romney's flip-flopping. She had no idea how bad he really is and had turned her brain off because he's a Mormon. I decided not to get into a theological debate and just have some polite conversation.
Romney gave a good speech and afterwards I approached him to get his autograph. The kicker is that I brought the book mentioned above for him to autograph! I wanted to get his reaction to it and maybe argue with him. Romney had five Secret Service agents around him and I raised a pen for him to sign, and they told me, sternly, to put it down. Naturally, I did. I had no intention to stab a potential future president. After that I folded the cover of my book over, budged in front of a few people, and handed it to Romney to sign. He took a look at it and said, "What to do we have here?", he than flipped the cover over and gave a surprised look. He than said to me, "You want me to sign this?!" I said, "Could you please just sign it?" He said, "No, I'm not going to sign something that isn't true and full of lies!" Now I don't remember exactly everything that was said, but that was the gist of it. So as the Secret Service were getting ever more pissed off with me, I decided to back down. I had just been lied to by a potential future president of the United States and was fairly ticked off but decided it wasn't worth it.
The book is full of direct quotes from Romney when he was governor on social issues. For example he says he has never been in support of homosexual marriage. If that is true why did he give an honorary homosexual marriage license to one of his advisors?! He also has many other quotes in it from the Boston Globe and Boston Herald saying that he would not stand in the way of gay rights.
I eventually made my way back to Romney to get his autograph on a campaign placard. Romney didn't recognize me and signed it. I went home completely disgusted with our political process. I pray God will give us some real gody candidates next time.
For those who are curious I will be voting for Santorum at the North Dakota Caucus today because I think he will take a stand for social issues and act like a real man if elected president. I do not think he will be bowing to Saudi kings and Chinese premiers like our current president loves to do. Well I think that's enought writing for one post. Hope everybody enjoyed!
