that violation of senate ethics rules around the lobbying gig is what forced john ensign to quit his senate seat in the midst of a big aggressive senate ethics investigation. the way this came to light, in june 2009, doug hampton, who s the husband of the woman senator ensign had been sleeping with, doug hampton sent this e-mail to senator ensign s friend. senator ensign s friend named rick santorum. the letter said, i am reaching out to you because i would like your help. i do know about you and your relationship with john ensign. i m also aware of the man you profess to be and the positions you have taken publicly with regards to family, integrity and ethics. i am sending this note along to you because of your affiliation with fox news. what i have put in motion with the letter i have sent megyn kelly and fox news. i ve tried for one year with john and others to resolve an unbelievable set of actions john initiated and perpetuated bringing great destruction to me and my family.
conseconservatives. small government conservatives, fiscal kvbtives. they intermix. i love that that is the way you see it because if you re thinking about that represents mainstream republican thinking on that, that means nobody s taking ron paul seriously. that means those votes are still out there absolutely confusing the process. ron paul is taken very seriously. i think, you know, right now if these candidates are smart, they would be making whatever appeals that they can to the ron paul supporters out there. particularly because they re young, energetic individuals who have engaged in the political process. so don t take what i m saying as, you know, not taking ron paul seriously. what i m saying, there s not this big wall of divide as you d like to paint. there are points of disagreement. independent candidates have specific issues where they say, he wants to be for earmarks but
they re supposed to be in marriage, supposed to be for purposes that, yes, but also procreated. that s the perfect way that it should happen. rick santorum would like to use the government to dictate the perfect sexual union for all families in america. because he knows what it is. contrast that with ron paul who would happily legalize prostitution, and, hey, even heroin, too. senator, are you suggesting that heroin and prostitution are an exercise of liberty? you know, i probably never used those words. you put those words someplace. but, yes. on foreign policy, rick santorum is an unapologetic fire breathing neoconservative, interventionist and military expansionist. he believes we should use our military to solve every problem east of the atlantic and west of the pacific. every bad guy who doesn t like america should be met with the full force of our military, if
people s confidence in what the administration is able to do on basic economic issues. well, i think what you ve seen is this president is going to fight very hard and i think the most divisive decision is when the president committee sided he was not going to allow the debt limit to be extended for six months so we d right now be going through the threat of default again. he stood firm on that. that allowed him to stand firm and strong in fighting for the payroll tax cut for unemployment insurance and, again here he tried to work with the congress. he wanted to get richard cordray confirmed but, as you said, you said something very important. they weren t challenging his credentials. they were trying to essentially nullify a law that was passed to protect working families. this was the law of the land and they are saying we re going to block anyone as a way of nullifying that law and what the president is saying is that if they are going to create obstacles like that, that help
is, you know, ron paul and half of it is represented by rick santorum. i think that you find that, you know, that libertarian portion of the gop is smaller than a lot of people think it is. not that much smaller in iowa. well, iowa 25, 25, 21. iowa, well, keep in mind, the iowa vote wasn t just republicans voting. okay? so those weren t republicans voting for ron paul? you had independents who signed up to vote in the republican primary. you ll see the same thing in new hampshire. you cannot take the open primaries and say that s a reflection your reaction to this thesis is you really should not count the ron paul people. no, no, i m not saying that at all. you re saying that s only a tiny sliver of the republican you re trying to say there s a one for one equality that, you know, that the party is so split in half that you have half the folks on this side of the room and half the folks on this side of the room. it s not that way. there are points of disagre