Chicago, IL (MMD Newswire) March 15, 2012 -- Rick Santorum, polling closely with Mitt Romney for Tuesday's Illinois presidential primary election, today received the endorsement of Steve Baer, the former gubernatorial candidate and president of the United Republican Fund of Illinois. Baer also announced the commencement of millions of robo-calls, emails and video-laden text messages into Illinois to ensure Romney's defeat.
"Santorum is by far the GOP's best hope for rebuilding the Reagan coalition for victories this fall," said Baer, who as a libertarian-leaning conservative garnered 34% in the 1990 Illinois gubernatorial primary against Jim Edgar, the eventual governor. Today an investor involved in film, humanitarian and philanthropic projects, Baer said, "I'm backing Santorum because over recent months, he's proven a real willingness to forsake the kind of big-government outlook which still characterizes most Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill."
Baer said, "Rick's imperfect, but he blows-away Romney and Newt Gingrich as a conservative. Those two have favored CO2 regulation, forced insurance purchasing and TARP bailouts. Romney signed 'Gay Youth Pride Day' proclamations and supports the so-called ENDA law, making it illegal to fire a man who wears a dress and lipstick to work, even if he's your kid's kindergarten teacher. Santorum not only resisted those RINO temptations, the nation's debt crisis has driven him much closer to Ron Paul's stance, whose economics I love, but who can't win the White House. "
Pursuant to an intimate family dinner with Santorum in Des Moines on November 18, Baer said "we've been elated to see Santorum embrace, for the first time in his career, Right to Work legislation to eliminate the federal mandate that enables union bosses to fire workers who decline to pay union dues. Santorum has also taken new stands to get the U.S. Department of Education out of K-12 schooling and end U.S. subsidies for pro-abortion groups."
Baer said, "The biggest change we've seen is Rick now showing the brass to go for about $1 trillion in cuts against our debt-inflating federal budget - Ron Paul-scale downsizing. We've obtained private scoring of Rick's economic plan by a former top government economist, and it shows federal spending as a percentage of GDP dropping below 15% from the current 25%. Santorum's Catholic faith seems to help him admit where he was wrong in the past, to repent of it, and to then do the right thing going forward. His Judeo-Christian theology helps him manfully correct course when he realizes he has been off."
Baer, who captured 240,000 votes in his 1990 anti-tax campaign and takes libertarian stands on school choice, amnesty for most non-violent drug offenders and a "no-doubt" evidentiary standard for the death penalty, said Santorum originally got his attention when he became the first man to sign The Marriage Vow last year, an Iowa caucuses "hetero-monogamy pledge" also signed by U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and Texas Gov. Rick Perry.
Santorum bravely chose sound science over political correctness, Baer said, because the Iowa document cites "anti-scientific bias which holds, in complete absence of empirical proof, that non-heterosexual inclinations are genetically determined, irresistible and akin to innate traits like race, gender and eye color" and "anti-scientific bias which holds, against all empirical evidence, that homosexual behavior in particular, and sexual promiscuity in general, optimizes individual and public health."
The vow Santorum signed, which rules-out gay marriage demanded by the left, polygamy favored by rightist Muslim and Mormon sects, and adultery favored by plenty of GOP and Dem pols, also cites "the overwhelming statistical evidence that married [heterosexuals] enjoy better health, better sex, longer lives, greater financial stability, and that children raised by a mother and a father together experience better learning, less addiction, less legal trouble, and less extramarital pregnancy."
Baer, a self-described "GOP Jeffersonian" and "Natural Law libertarian" who has supported Democrats like U.S. Rep. Dan Lipinski (an ObamaCare opponent) and the Rev. James Meeks (who pushed school vouchers when he ran against Rahm Emanuel for Chicago mayor), said Santorum's embrace of Creator-endowed human rights as cited by the Declaration of Independence and The Marriage Vow helps set the stage for conservative "Reagan Democrats" to cross-over for Santorum on Tuesday in Illinois, in later primaries, and next fall versus President Obama. Baer said Santorum's commitment to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and to de-fund anti-Israel organizations receiving US monies, would also win him bipartisan electoral support. He added, "If Romney is the nominee, GOP activists this fall will be pulsing with all the passion they showed for John McCain, Bob Dole and Bush I's re-election. That is, not much."
Baer, who led the United Republican Fund of Illinois from 1984 to 1991, resides in suburban Cook County with his family of 12, and has since been involved in investment and philanthropic projects related to malaria control in Africa, film finance, and politics. The Baers made multiple trips to Iowa to help launch Santorum to his 34-vote victory over Romney there. "We felt so badly for Rick when we dined with him on November 18. He's a decent man who, at the time, was polling at 3.8 percent and had virtually no national nor Iowa endorsers," said Baer. "When we celebrated his Iowa showing in Des Moines on January 3 with friends like Foster Friess, another non-Iowan who sacrificially backed Rick, we felt like Heaven might indeed have some big plans for him."
The Rev. Cary Gordon, a Sioux City pastor and early Santorum endorser, said "Rick simply would not have won the Iowa caucuses had it not been for a few men like Foster Friess and Steve Baer. My video endorsement of Rick would not have gotten text-messaged to 800,000 Iowa cell phones. Seven figures of robo-calls would not have occurred. Gingrich or Romney would have won Iowa, but not Rick. I was there."
Rev. Albert Calaway, another Iowa pastor and early endorser, agreed, "Without the Baers, I can't imagine Rick would have made it alive out of Iowa. Key endorsements were on the very brink of going to Gingrich, and Steve swung them to Rick." Judd Saul, president of Iowa's Cedar Valley Tea Party, said, "Those pastors are right. If Rick Santorum wins the GOP nomination and the presidency, it will be a tribute not only to his own great courage and effort, but because of what Steve, Foster, the pastors, [Iowa pro-family leader] Bob Vander Plaats and a small band of brothers, inside and outside of Iowa, did to lift Rick to victory here."
Baer announced today that millions of anti-Romney and pro-Santorum robo-calls, emails and video-laden text messages similar to those blasted in Iowa, Colorado, Ohio, Mississippi and Alabama would be hitting Illinois by next Tuesday. One such text message contained a viral punk rock video that labeled thrice-married as "the Kim Kardashian of the GOP." Baer said that a new Illinois-centric video critical of Romney by the same artist, Molotov Mitchell, would be delivered to the cell phones of registered GOP and potential Democrat crossover voters by Tuesday's vote.
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