Courage of Conviction

Those are the words spoken by Mr. Casey during the second US Senate debate yesterday.  I find those words interesting.  Sen. Santorum was pressing Casey on the fact that Casey doesn’t show up to work about half the time.  Santorum did a great job of sticking on message for this line of questioning. 

Casey’s answer says alot more than he realizes.  Casey did not answer the question, because he knew it would not look good.  It’s human nature to not want to look bad.  What we do in response to that is typically point the finger at someone else, blame them, and hence make ourselves a victim.  That’s what Casey did with that answer.  He wasn’t able to tough it out with someone who would not relent in his questioning, who would not stray from his message.  Mr. Casey became weak. 

Is that someone who we really want in the US Senate?  Do we Pennsylvanians want a Senator who will back down, blame someone else, and start name calling when the going gets tough.  Politics is a contact sport, someone famous once said.  It really is too.  Why, because politics and policies matter - they directly affect people’s lives.  We’re talking about people and their freedom here. 

Santorum understands this and that is why he is as passionate as he is.  He understands that politics and policies have an impact on people’s lives.  And so, you have to be passionate when you dealing with people’s lives - you have to fight, sometimes verbally with your opponents to ensure that the people you represent do not get screwed.  Being nice is fine for a party - but holding your ground and being able to look someone in the eye and fight with them for what you believe is right is a strength in the arena of politics.  You have to have a backbone and take the onslought that will be thrown against you and come back with both barrels loaded and ready to fire.  We have too many politicians who are more concerned with being nice and being liked than we have who come to Washington, or Harrisburg who are more interested in actually making some changes and willing to fight for the people they represent.  And yes, they are in both parties - I can think of a few that represent me in various levels of government.

What Sen. Santorum showed in the debate was that he gets it.  Mr. Casey showed that he doesn’t.  Mr. Santorum is ready to go back to Washington to get things done for the people of Pennsylvania.  Mr. Casey is ready to go to some cocktail parties with other elitists in DC and be liked. 

The choice is yours now Pennsylvania.  Choose wisely.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 13th, 2006 at 8:01 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.