Santorum alleges Sen. McCain unreliable on pro-life issues

Washington D.C., Jan 14, 2008 / 16:00 pm

Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum has attacked Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain of Arizona for hindering social conservative issues, arguing that McCain is a poor choice to lead the effort to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Speaking to radio host Mark Levine on Levine’s Thursday night radio show, Senator Santorum cited Senator McCain’s compromises in congressional debates about Supreme Court nominations as evidence the Arizona politician was not a strong pro-life candidate. Santorum, who is now a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, said of McCain, “this is not a guy who would give me a lot of confidence that he would appoint the judges who are necessary on the court to overturn Roe v. Wade, who would be strict constructionist judges.”

McCain’s largely pro-life record, Santorum claimed, concealed other problems, such as McCain’s support for embryonic stem cell research and his vote against a Federal Marriage Amendment. 

Further, Santorum alleged that during his tenure in the Senate McCain did not provide the necessary support to discuss and vote on social conservative issues on the Senate floor. 

Santorum disclosed what happened behind the scenes when he held meetings to gather votes for proposed legislation, telling Levine, “That discussion is held in private, where you’re jostling and jockeying to get your legislation into the queue so that you can have your time on the floor to get something done.”

“And I can tell you, when social-conservative issues were ever raised — whether it was marriage or abortion or a whole host of other issues — there were always the moderates who said ‘no, no, no, we can’t: they’re divisive, divisive, divisive.’ And more often than not, John McCain was . . . with them” in preventing votes on such issues.

Campaign finance reform was another area in which Santorum thought McCain was a weak candidate.  Santorum said that the McCain-Feingold campaign reform bill, whose regulations have hindered some pro-life political campaigns, was “an affront to personal freedoms and liberty.”

Santorum called Senator McCain “solid” on the Iraq conflict, but said to Levine that the Arizona senator “was the one who was out there blocking our ability to adequately question… detainees… He did not come down on the side of what I think is appropriate and proper for the kind of war we are fighting today.”

Senator Santorum also attacked McCain’s support for immigration reform, stricter environmental policies, smaller tax cuts, and medical drug re-importation.