Santorum Digs Himself a Hole at GOP Debate Earmarks are one thing that all voters loathe, and the GOP crowd at the Arizona debate was no exception. When Santorum got deep in the weeds defending earmarks, the audience reacted with uneasy silence, in contrast to the loud applause that followed his previous demolitions of Romney. Even Santorum looked like he was thinking, “why the hell am I saying this out loud?” and started tripping over his words. “Earmarks” are “the wacky system whereby individual congresspersons can tack on unrelated spending to bills,” writes the Guardian’s Richard Adams, leading to bloated bills involving hundreds of lines of federal spending. Romney also came out of the tangle looking the worse for wear, after Gingrich got off a zinger about his double standards. Romney essentially said, “earmarks are bad when you guys do it, except for my earmarks, which were awesome.” GINGRICH: “I just think it’s kind of silly for you to then turn around and run an ad attacking somebody else for getting what you got and then claiming what you got wasn’t what they got because what you got was right and what they got was wrong.” The skirmish turned into a circular firing squad, with candidates shouting over each other and a lot of head-shaking and derisive laughter. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!” said Santorum to Romney. “I didn’t follow all of that,” retorted Romney. Watch it here (7:40).
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Santorum Digs Himself a Hole at GOP Debate

Earmarks are one thing that all voters loathe, and the GOP crowd at the Arizona debate was no exception.

When Santorum got deep in the weeds defending earmarks, the audience reacted with uneasy silence, in contrast to the loud applause that followed his previous demolitions of Romney. Even Santorum looked like he was thinking, “why the hell am I saying this out loud?” and started tripping over his words.

“Earmarks” are “the wacky system whereby individual congresspersons can tack on unrelated spending to bills,” writes the Guardian’s Richard Adams, leading to bloated bills involving hundreds of lines of federal spending.

Romney also came out of the tangle looking the worse for wear, after Gingrich got off a zinger about his double standards. Romney essentially said, “earmarks are bad when you guys do it, except for my earmarks, which were awesome.”

GINGRICH: “I just think it’s kind of silly for you to then turn around and run an ad attacking somebody else for getting what you got and then claiming what you got wasn’t what they got because what you got was right and what they got was wrong.”

The skirmish turned into a circular firing squad, with candidates shouting over each other and a lot of head-shaking and derisive laughter. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!” said Santorum to Romney. “I didn’t follow all of that,” retorted Romney.

Watch it here (7:40).

Source: topix.com