TAMPA, Fla — The runner-up to Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney took on welfare and the idea that Americans should rely on government in his Republican National Convention speech Tuesday night.
Championing his story as a first generation American, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum offered his idea of the American Dream — working for success.
“My grandfather, like millions of other immigrants, didn’t come here for some government guarantee of income equality or government benefits to take care of his family,” he said. “In 1923 there were no government benefits for immigrants except one: Freedom!”
To Santorum, in Obama’s America the guarantee is a government handout, not the dream.
“Under President Obama, the dream of freedom and opportunity has become a nightmare of dependency with almost half of America receiving some government benefit,” he said. “It is no surprise fewer and fewer Americans are achieving their dreams and more and more parents are concerned their children won’t realize theirs.”
The former Pennsylvania senator explained that Obama’s plan has spelled harm for America.
“The result — massive debt, anemic growth and millions more unemployed,” he said. “The president’s plan didn’t work for America, because that’s not how America works.”
A former candidate known for his social values, Santorum mentioned his plan for a successful life.
“Graduate from high school, work hard, and get married before you have children and the chance you will ever be in poverty is just two percent,” he said. “Yet if you don’t do these three things you’re 38 times more likely to end up in poverty!”
Santorum spelled out his concerns about the dissolution of the foundation of marriage and the expansion of government in its place, noting that Romney and Ryan are focused on rebuilding the pillars he sees as the foundation for a successful society, as well as restoring children’s education to remain under the purview of parents and community.
Santorum was especially forceful when revisiting the Obama administration’s decision to weaken work-requirement central to 1996 welfare reform — which he noted he helped to craft.
“We all know there is one key to success that has helped people overcome even the greatest of obstacles — hard work. That’s why work was the centerpiece of the bipartisan welfare reform law,” he said, going on to note that Obama’s decision this summer to allow states to get a waiver for the work requirements “showed us once again he believes in government handouts and dependency.”
Santorum reflected on his time as a candidate, getting poetic about his time on the campaign trail.
“[A]s my family and I crisscrossed America, something became so obvious to us,” he added. “America is still the greatest country in the world — and with God’s help and good leadership we can restore the American Dream.”
Daughter Bella also made an appearance in the former candidate’s speech, using her story of childhood struggle to reassert the point he made often in his political life, the need to protect life, specifically that of the unborn child.
“I thank God that America still has one party that reaches out their hands in love to lift up all of God’s children — born and unborn — and says that each of us has dignity and all of us have the right to live the American Dream.”
He concluded that Romney and Ryan will be the choice to “keep the dream alive.”