A fascinating detail in this Wall Street Journal article on billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. The billionare has provided a large chunk of the financial fuel for Newt Gingrich’s campaign — particularly the pro-Newt super PAC — and is apparently motivated not merely by a desire to help Gingrich, but in particular to halt the rise of Rick Santorum:
Mr. Adelson doesn’t oppose Mr. Santorum, but he doesn’t share the former Pennsylvania senator’s socially conservative positions, including his strong antiabortion views, associates said. Mr. Santorum was one of only two Republicans who didn’t meet with Mr. Adelson in October around the time of a candidates’ debate in Las Vegas, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Though he isn’t yet switching allegiance, Mr. Adelson is thought to be comfortable with Mr. Romney as the ultimate nominee, friends said. The two men met before the Feb. 4 Nevada Republican caucuses, according to a person familiar with the matter. That person described the meeting as a “warm” one.
Obviously, Adelson’s views are not Newt’s views, and Newt’s not responsible for the perspective of Adelson, one of the ten richest people in America who’s funding his super PAC to the tune of $11 million or so. But . . . it certainly might make some pro-lifers wonder why a guy who is, apparently, not that much of a social conservative can be so comfortable with Gingrich or Mitt Romney, candidates who would probably insist that they are indeed social conservatives.
Perhaps Adelson sees Santorum as a potential threat to his businesses. In an interview with Jon Ralston in Nevada, Santorum seemed to suggest that he is very critical of legal gambling.
Asked about the legalization of online gambling, Santorum responds:
I’m someone who takes the opinion that gaming is not something that is beneficial, particularly having that access on the Internet. Just as we’ve seen from a lot of other things that are vices on the Internet, they end to grow exponentially as a result of that. It’s one thing to come to Las Vegas and do gaming and participate in the shows and that kind of thing as entertainment, it’s another thing to sit in your home and have access to that it. I think it would be dangerous to our country to have that type of access to gaming on the Internet.
Freedom’s not absolute. What rights in the Constitution are absolute? There is no right to absolute freedom. There are limitations. You might want to say the same thing about a whole variety of other things that are on the Internet — “let everybody have it, let everybody do it.” No. There are certain things that actually do cost people a lot of money, cost them their lives, cost them their fortunes that we shouldn’t have and make available, to make it that easy to do. That’s why we regulate gambling. You have a big commission here that regulates gambling, for a reason.
I opposed gaming in Pennsylvania . . . A lot of people obviously don’t responsibly gamble and lose a lot and end up in not so great economic straits as a result of that. I believe there should be limitations.
Freedom's not absolute? The issue is that all of our rights as humans come from God (nature's God) and cannot thus be taken away or modified by Caesar (the state) without defying the absolute. Our forefathers understood this well when they told the King where to go and chose to die for freedom. However - those rights (including property) coming from our creator require that we behave in a manner consistent with being precious humans -so abortion, perverted sex, destruction of the family, and yes, contraception,- sex wasn't a gift for recreation - open attacks on God's Church -etc, are not the right of the state. We are our brother's keeper -not the nanny state, not are we (as say the eco-worshippers/biodiversity) just another species, since we have been created in God's image.
We need to understand the different between freedom and license or privelige -such as driving a car....
Freedom is absolute?? You mean, you do have the right to yell "fire" in a crowded auditorium? To hell with absolutists, whether of the left or right. Cordially, Bill
I don’t think people should worry so much about Romney’s (or, for that matter, Gingrich’s) lack of social conservatism. It’s not so much a matter of substance but rather of tone. Candidates who are pro-life or pro-choice tend to get the support of likeminded citizens even when they don’t stress the abortion issue. However, when people make a huge issue of their position, it awakens the opposition. I think this is also true on GLBT issues. I think it’s safe to say that neither social conservatives nor social liberals comprise a majority of the electorate. There is, I believe, a mushy middle that is ambivalent on these issues. Someone like Sheldon Adelson may be pro-choice, or he maybe is just indifferent to social issues and worries about Santorum’s outspokenness of social issues and how that may affect his electability. Either way, while I think the GOP should nominate a pro-lifer, I think we should welcome the support of people who may not share our views on social issues. Pres. Obama is easily the most pro-abortion president we’ve had, and his election was in large part helped because fellow pro-choicers weren’t scared off by his lack of emphasis on the issue or by pro-lifers who felt compelled to support him. I wish we were a more socially conservative nation, especially on the life issue. With Rick Santorum though, I always worry that he will alienate people who don’t agree with us and end up losing. We will do much better keeping the focus of this election on the economy and the size of government and religious freedom, issues that will unite social conservatives with those who are not. When it turns into a culture war, I’m certain we will lose.
As far as that mushy middle (and Gingrich's weak pro-life history) the guy in charge said clearly and unequivically that "you're either with me or against me."
So we can dismiss casually serious and grave evil down here, but sooner or later....
I’m not casually dismissing evil. I’m just acknowledging what I believe to be a political reality, which is that people (on either side) who stress abortion too much are more likely to lose than people who stress other issues. The most ardent pro-life candidate will do us no good if he or she loses. Our country desperately needs to replace this president.
We also need to acknowledge what a pro-life president can and can’t do. A president can reinstate the Mexico City policy. A president can appoint pro-life judges (i.e., judges who don’t believe in some phony constitutional right to abortion). A president can support pro-life legislation where federal law prevails. But so long as RvW is the law, a president is rather limited in what he can do. Judge appointments are what is important, and I don’t see how Romney would be any worse than Santorum on that front. (Or Gingrich although I’m not a fan of him.) The issue really becomes who is most electable. And I’m open to the idea that Santorum is more electable although I’m not convinced. My point is mainly that conservatives should not overestimate how conservative our fellow Americans are, especially swing voters in the middle, and that we should be set on nominating not just someone who shares our values but can also appeal to those who do not.
So what if Santorum opposed gambling? As long as there are "Seasoned citizens", there will be gambling. Who's going to push Granny away from the craps table?
Santorum ?...lol...gambling's all they have because the other two vices are well behind them.
So Santorum wans to ban online gambling too. Yet again proving that the modern social conservative movement is incompatable with restraining the growth of the federal gov't. The guy is the anti-Tea Party candidate, and used to (before his recent popularity) explicitly disavow and reject the "limited government" tendencies of the Tea Party.
Santorum is the one candidate who opposes the Tenth Amendment. Yet NRO finds him acceptable and Gingrich/Paul unacceptable. Seriously, would Buckley ever have supported such a nationalist moral scold as Santorum?
(remember, at the Ames debate, Santorum said that the states do not have the right to enact laws that conflict with the national "moral enterprise", 10th Amendment be damned).
Regulation of gambling, like regulation of prostitution, has been in place since the 19th Century if not earlier, and has required only a small amount of funding to enforce. I would not consider it to be a "big government" program by any stretch. And restricting online gambling is a fundamentally Federalist policy - it lets states that want to disallow gambling in their state, such as Utah, to continue to do so, while allowing states that want legalized gambling, such as Nevada, to do so as well.
I wish Santorum would stop trying to protect us from ourselves. If people are stupid enough to lose all of their money gambling online, they are also stupid enough to lose it some other, more legally protected, way.
Santorum is trying to win the GOP primary simply on social issues. I'm conservative on social issues, but we need a commander in chief and a reformer based in reality and solutions for the U.S. economy. He's going to win the battle and lose the overall war. Same with Romney.
Gingrich speech from 2010: Gingrich to Michigan: Change or Die
Won't post the link, speech is 45 min long. People can google if they choose, including the writer.
I was brought to this piece by a link at HotAir.com, which used this pull quote from the Santorum interview: "Freedom's not absolute. What rights in the Constitution are absolute?" Of course, Santorum's correct, and he's been just as open about his views regarding the overextension of ''freedom" as Ron Paul has been about there not being enough.
Now: Adelson's anti-Santorum because of "strong antiabortion views"? Nope, doesn't pass the smell test. Geraghty's right, it probably has more to do with how Santorum *might* regulate (or restrict the expansion of) gambling, something that we can reasonably presume would be a given if Gingrich is elected. It is only by Adelson's largesse that Newt's still got a pulse in this race.
I was brought to this piece by a link at HotAir.com, which used this pull quote from the Santorum interview: "Freedom's not absolute. What rights in the Constitution are absolute?" Of course, Santorum's correct, and he's been just as open about his views regarding the overextension of ''freedom" as Ron Paul has been about there not being enough.
Now: Adelson's anti-Santorum because of "strong antiabortion views"? Nope, doesn't pass the smell test. Geraghty's right, it probably has more to do with how Santorum *might* regulate (or restrict the expansion of) gambling, something that we can reasonably presume would be a given if Gingrich is elected. It is only by Adelson's largesse that Newt's still got a pulse in this race.
If Santorum is against gambling, why did he go "ALL IN" in Michigan?
I kind of like his opinions and principles. Senator, ok, but not President. There is too much at stake to make the election about social issues and make the illiterate voters unfocused.
Jim - why do all of your recent posts come across as "leave Rick alone". You're a really smart guy and tuned into the GOP hierarchy, so - and I mean this sincerely - please tell me by what scenario Santorum gets from here to the White House?
We all know the main stream media doesn't like conservatives, but they absolutely hate social conservatives and Santorum wears his So-Con-Creds as a badge of honor. You can mess with the MSM with politics, but you do not mess with their culture. Just ask Sarah Palin.
So after the MSM has destroyed him where does he get the money to win over the independents? The major money people on our side are mostly libertarian and are mushy on social issues. The narrative so far is that Santorum is the Social Conservative; so if he is your guy you better start doing what you can to change that narrative or he will be forever living off the individual donors.
Again, NR has been quite good at giving us the play by play (Robert Costa), but please give me some analysis and by what means does Rick wins the big prize. I'll be waiting.
Very interesting. Also, it appears from the 2010 info below, that casino magnate Sheldon Adelson has made an offshore calculated bet with Newt Gingrich while Donald Trump went with Mitt Romney: Which market will the ChiComs open up first? Mainland casinos or internet betting? Which corporatist will get there first? Furthermore, with such large sums in PAC money from gaming network endorsements to be had, is it any wonder that Jon Huntsman and Newt Gingrich spent considerable time bashing China during their exclusive New Hampshire debate together? And Mitt has taken to aping Trump's tough talk on China's currency manipulation and counterfeit manufacturing. In fact, Huntsman's presidential candidacy, and even his time as Obama's ambassador to China, makes all the more sense when the tribal businessmen who live off insider government regulation are united in a dull drone of China being the fly in their oligarch soup. Meanwhile, the man on Main Street wants their government to stop spending and pay down the debt because higher taxes will only be paying for China's continued military build up. It appears Rick Santorum is the only one not willing to pay-to-play, and I value his consistent conservative principles all the more for it.
+ "Gambling is illegal in China, but the Chinese Centre for Lottery Studies estimates that more than $87bn is gambled by Chinese punters through offshore betting networks."
+ "There are booming casinos in Macao, the former Portuguese colony that neighbours Hong Kong and is the sole corner of China where gambling is allowed. Set up in 1987, they raise 100 billion yuan (£90 million) a year in revenue for Beijing."
+ Gambling has been outlawed on the Chinese mainland since the Communist Party took power in 1949, and regarded by the authorities as a serious social evil with increasing numbers of addicts for it is more widespread than ever between foreign internet betting websites and private gaming hells.
+ In 2009, "some 600,000 people were arrested for gambling, while anyone who admits publicly they need help faces the prospect of being confined in a mental hospital" for there are no municipal government treatment centers.
+ "There are just two officially sanctioned lotteries in China. But an estimated one trillion yuan (£900 million) is also wagered illegally each year in China – equal to the entire economic output of Beijing. It is a staggering figure for a country where 700 million people – more than half the population – live in rural areas with an average of just 4,700 yuan (£415) a year."
Breathing is still free........for now.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFreedom's not absolute? The issue is that all of our rights as humans come from God (nature's God) and cannot thus be taken away or modified by Caesar (the state) without defying the absolute. Our forefathers understood this well when they told the King where to go and chose to die for freedom. However - those rights (including property) coming from our creator require that we behave in a manner consistent with being precious humans -so abortion, perverted sex, destruction of the family, and yes, contraception,- sex wasn't a gift for recreation - open attacks on God's Church -etc, are not the right of the state. We are our brother's keeper -not the nanny state, not are we (as say the eco-worshippers/biodiversity) just another species, since we have been created in God's image.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWe need to understand the different between freedom and license or privelige -such as driving a car....
Freedom is absolute?? You mean, you do have the right to yell "fire" in a crowded auditorium? To hell with absolutists, whether of the left or right. Cordially, Bill
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHow would candidate Santorum apply this line of thinking to gun control?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI don’t think people should worry so much about Romney’s (or, for that matter, Gingrich’s) lack of social conservatism. It’s not so much a matter of substance but rather of tone. Candidates who are pro-life or pro-choice tend to get the support of likeminded citizens even when they don’t stress the abortion issue. However, when people make a huge issue of their position, it awakens the opposition. I think this is also true on GLBT issues. I think it’s safe to say that neither social conservatives nor social liberals comprise a majority of the electorate. There is, I believe, a mushy middle that is ambivalent on these issues. Someone like Sheldon Adelson may be pro-choice, or he maybe is just indifferent to social issues and worries about Santorum’s outspokenness of social issues and how that may affect his electability. Either way, while I think the GOP should nominate a pro-lifer, I think we should welcome the support of people who may not share our views on social issues. Pres. Obama is easily the most pro-abortion president we’ve had, and his election was in large part helped because fellow pro-choicers weren’t scared off by his lack of emphasis on the issue or by pro-lifers who felt compelled to support him. I wish we were a more socially conservative nation, especially on the life issue. With Rick Santorum though, I always worry that he will alienate people who don’t agree with us and end up losing. We will do much better keeping the focus of this election on the economy and the size of government and religious freedom, issues that will unite social conservatives with those who are not. When it turns into a culture war, I’m certain we will lose.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAs far as that mushy middle (and Gingrich's weak pro-life history) the guy in charge said clearly and unequivically that "you're either with me or against me."
So we can dismiss casually serious and grave evil down here, but sooner or later....
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI’m not casually dismissing evil. I’m just acknowledging what I believe to be a political reality, which is that people (on either side) who stress abortion too much are more likely to lose than people who stress other issues. The most ardent pro-life candidate will do us no good if he or she loses. Our country desperately needs to replace this president.
We also need to acknowledge what a pro-life president can and can’t do. A president can reinstate the Mexico City policy. A president can appoint pro-life judges (i.e., judges who don’t believe in some phony constitutional right to abortion). A president can support pro-life legislation where federal law prevails. But so long as RvW is the law, a president is rather limited in what he can do. Judge appointments are what is important, and I don’t see how Romney would be any worse than Santorum on that front. (Or Gingrich although I’m not a fan of him.) The issue really becomes who is most electable. And I’m open to the idea that Santorum is more electable although I’m not convinced. My point is mainly that conservatives should not overestimate how conservative our fellow Americans are, especially swing voters in the middle, and that we should be set on nominating not just someone who shares our values but can also appeal to those who do not.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSo what if Santorum opposed gambling? As long as there are "Seasoned citizens", there will be gambling. Who's going to push Granny away from the craps table?
Santorum ?...lol...gambling's all they have because the other two vices are well behind them.
( Yawn )
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSo Santorum wans to ban online gambling too. Yet again proving that the modern social conservative movement is incompatable with restraining the growth of the federal gov't. The guy is the anti-Tea Party candidate, and used to (before his recent popularity) explicitly disavow and reject the "limited government" tendencies of the Tea Party.
Santorum is the one candidate who opposes the Tenth Amendment. Yet NRO finds him acceptable and Gingrich/Paul unacceptable. Seriously, would Buckley ever have supported such a nationalist moral scold as Santorum?
(remember, at the Ames debate, Santorum said that the states do not have the right to enact laws that conflict with the national "moral enterprise", 10th Amendment be damned).
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseRegulation of gambling, like regulation of prostitution, has been in place since the 19th Century if not earlier, and has required only a small amount of funding to enforce. I would not consider it to be a "big government" program by any stretch. And restricting online gambling is a fundamentally Federalist policy - it lets states that want to disallow gambling in their state, such as Utah, to continue to do so, while allowing states that want legalized gambling, such as Nevada, to do so as well.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI wish Santorum would stop trying to protect us from ourselves. If people are stupid enough to lose all of their money gambling online, they are also stupid enough to lose it some other, more legally protected, way.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSantorum is trying to win the GOP primary simply on social issues. I'm conservative on social issues, but we need a commander in chief and a reformer based in reality and solutions for the U.S. economy. He's going to win the battle and lose the overall war. Same with Romney.
Gingrich speech from 2010: Gingrich to Michigan: Change or Die
Won't post the link, speech is 45 min long. People can google if they choose, including the writer.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI was brought to this piece by a link at HotAir.com, which used this pull quote from the Santorum interview: "Freedom's not absolute. What rights in the Constitution are absolute?" Of course, Santorum's correct, and he's been just as open about his views regarding the overextension of ''freedom" as Ron Paul has been about there not being enough.
Now: Adelson's anti-Santorum because of "strong antiabortion views"? Nope, doesn't pass the smell test. Geraghty's right, it probably has more to do with how Santorum *might* regulate (or restrict the expansion of) gambling, something that we can reasonably presume would be a given if Gingrich is elected. It is only by Adelson's largesse that Newt's still got a pulse in this race.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI was brought to this piece by a link at HotAir.com, which used this pull quote from the Santorum interview: "Freedom's not absolute. What rights in the Constitution are absolute?" Of course, Santorum's correct, and he's been just as open about his views regarding the overextension of ''freedom" as Ron Paul has been about there not being enough.
Now: Adelson's anti-Santorum because of "strong antiabortion views"? Nope, doesn't pass the smell test. Geraghty's right, it probably has more to do with how Santorum *might* regulate (or restrict the expansion of) gambling, something that we can reasonably presume would be a given if Gingrich is elected. It is only by Adelson's largesse that Newt's still got a pulse in this race.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSo exactly how is it that Santorum's outlook differs from that of Nanny Bloomberg, Cass Sunstein, and Obama himself?
All of them believe that they should be able to restrict our civil liberties for our own good.
Santorum even wants to engage in social engineering with manufacturing, exactly as Obama did with Solyndra.
And this is the "real" conservative?
Right.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf Santorum is against gambling, why did he go "ALL IN" in Michigan?
I kind of like his opinions and principles. Senator, ok, but not President. There is too much at stake to make the election about social issues and make the illiterate voters unfocused.
Jobs, jobs and foreign policy.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAdelson is another former Democrat of lingering leftist sensibilities. 'Nuff said.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJim - why do all of your recent posts come across as "leave Rick alone". You're a really smart guy and tuned into the GOP hierarchy, so - and I mean this sincerely - please tell me by what scenario Santorum gets from here to the White House?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWe all know the main stream media doesn't like conservatives, but they absolutely hate social conservatives and Santorum wears his So-Con-Creds as a badge of honor. You can mess with the MSM with politics, but you do not mess with their culture. Just ask Sarah Palin.
So after the MSM has destroyed him where does he get the money to win over the independents? The major money people on our side are mostly libertarian and are mushy on social issues. The narrative so far is that Santorum is the Social Conservative; so if he is your guy you better start doing what you can to change that narrative or he will be forever living off the individual donors.
Again, NR has been quite good at giving us the play by play (Robert Costa), but please give me some analysis and by what means does Rick wins the big prize. I'll be waiting.
Very interesting. Also, it appears from the 2010 info below, that casino magnate Sheldon Adelson has made an offshore calculated bet with Newt Gingrich while Donald Trump went with Mitt Romney: Which market will the ChiComs open up first? Mainland casinos or internet betting? Which corporatist will get there first? Furthermore, with such large sums in PAC money from gaming network endorsements to be had, is it any wonder that Jon Huntsman and Newt Gingrich spent considerable time bashing China during their exclusive New Hampshire debate together? And Mitt has taken to aping Trump's tough talk on China's currency manipulation and counterfeit manufacturing. In fact, Huntsman's presidential candidacy, and even his time as Obama's ambassador to China, makes all the more sense when the tribal businessmen who live off insider government regulation are united in a dull drone of China being the fly in their oligarch soup. Meanwhile, the man on Main Street wants their government to stop spending and pay down the debt because higher taxes will only be paying for China's continued military build up. It appears Rick Santorum is the only one not willing to pay-to-play, and I value his consistent conservative principles all the more for it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse+ "Gambling is illegal in China, but the Chinese Centre for Lottery Studies estimates that more than $87bn is gambled by Chinese punters through offshore betting networks."
+ "There are booming casinos in Macao, the former Portuguese colony that neighbours Hong Kong and is the sole corner of China where gambling is allowed. Set up in 1987, they raise 100 billion yuan (£90 million) a year in revenue for Beijing."
+ Gambling has been outlawed on the Chinese mainland since the Communist Party took power in 1949, and regarded by the authorities as a serious social evil with increasing numbers of addicts for it is more widespread than ever between foreign internet betting websites and private gaming hells.
+ In 2009, "some 600,000 people were arrested for gambling, while anyone who admits publicly they need help faces the prospect of being confined in a mental hospital" for there are no municipal government treatment centers.
+ "There are just two officially sanctioned lotteries in China. But an estimated one trillion yuan (£900 million) is also wagered illegally each year in China – equal to the entire economic output of Beijing. It is a staggering figure for a country where 700 million people – more than half the population – live in rural areas with an average of just 4,700 yuan (£415) a year."