Santorum and Casey have Heated Debate

On August 22nd, Bob Casey Jr. accepted an invitation to engage in four debates with his opponent, a Republican incumbent, Senator Rick Santorum. The first of the debates was held Sunday on Meet the Press. The moderator, Tim Russert, asked questions covering a spectrum of important issues such as the war in Iraq, deficit spending, social security reform, abortion, and Casey's record in state government.
Tim Russert began by exploiting comments Casey made about the war in Iraq that seemed to contradict each other. Bob Casey never directly stated during the debate if he would vote yes or no for the war now; he added that with the information we had today he felt there would have been no vote at all.

CASEY: If a lot of Americans ... knew then what they know now, they would have thought that this war was the war that shouldn't have been fought, based upon the misleading of this administration.

Casey sat side-by-side with Santorum and often addressed Rick personally. Casey demanded several times that Santorum either pledge support for, or "denounce" several unpopular Republicans.

SEN. SANTORUM: I think Secretary Rumsfeld has done a fine job as the defense secretary,...

SEN. SANTORUM: I think [Bush] has been a terrific president, absolutely.

Statements of approval, such as these, could prove fatal to Santorum, who has been trying to distance himself from the unpopular president throughout his campaign. Throughout the debate, Casey worked to associate Santorum with Bush, who Rick votes with 98% of the time.

CASEY: When you have two politicians in Washington that agree 98 percent of the time, one of them's really not necessary. We could have a machine have that kind of vote. We need someone who's going to be truly independent, who has the character and the integrity to stand up to his party and his president, especially at a time of war.

Santorum criticized Casey for giving "No specifics, no answer" to solve social security, in response Casey said:

CASEY: I had a much better answer than yours, because yours is what The Philadelphia Inquirer called "snake oil." They called his so-called guarantee "snake oil." His proposal is to privatize. His proposal drains a trillion dollars out of the trust fund. We agree that we shouldn't drain the trust fund.

Casey continually showed a quick-witted, humorous side in his responses, though at times he was smothered by Santorum attacks on his failure to stop the Pennsylvania State legislature pay-raise.

SEN. SANTORUM: You didn't do anything when you could have stopped it, Bob. Why didn't you try to stop it?

Just hours after the debate, Casey's Webpage http://bobcasey.com posted a quote from Brett Lieberman, a Patriot News reporter, proclaiming: " if there was a winner of this morning's debate, it was Casey." That is yet to be seen.

The Final Casey-Santorum Debates:
-October 12th, in Pittsburgh-cosponsored by KDKA and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
-(2 debates)October 16th, in Philadelphia-one on radio KYW-AM(1060) and one cosponsored by 6ABC (channel 6) and the League of Women Voters