Rick Santorum was on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program Thursday to support Marco Rubio's presidential campaign, but couldn't name one accomplishment the Florida senator has achieved while in office.
"If you look at being in the minority in the United States Senate in a year when nothing got — four years where nothing got done, I guess it's hard to say there are accomplishments," said Santorum, who dropped his own GOP presidential bid after Monday's Iowa caucuses and promptly announced he is
endorsing Rubio.
"I mean, tell me what happened during that four years that was an accomplishment for anybody?" he continued. "It was complete gridlock."
But, show host Joe Scarborough shot back, Republicans have been in the majority in the Senate for two years, and wanted to know what Rubio accomplished in that time.
"Joe, the Republicans have been in the majority for one year and one month, of which, as you know, he was running for president primarily," Santorum responded. "The first four years he was in the minority, and nothing got done. And by the way, what happened this year under the Republicans?"
Scarborough argued back, telling Santorum to "list one accomplishment. Just one — that Marco achieved. Maybe a bill that he wrote. Maybe a moment in a committee."
Co-host Mika Brzezinski also offered Santorum a "finish the sentence" option: then jumped in to make it easier on Santorum, offering a fill-in-the-blank question. "Jeb Bush ran Florida. Donald Trump built a company, Marco Rubio — finish the sentence."
"OK, Marco Rubio was, No. 1, the speaker of the Florida House, which is not something that's a minor deal," Santorum replied. "I mean, he was elected by his colleagues to be the speaker of the House. No. 2, yeah, he spent four years in the United States Senate being frustrated like everybody else that nothing got done, and then you can't point to him and say well nothing got done and therefore he has no accomplishments."
He went on to call the argument "bogus," but Scarborough, challenging Santorum one more time, disagreed, and finally, Santorum admitted Rubio didn't have many achievements.
"I know he included something that went after the insurance companies in the most recent omnibus," said Santorum. "He fought for that, to stop bailing out insurance companies, that's one thing I'm familiar that I just saw recently. Again, he was on the campaign trail and accomplished that."
"The bottom line is there isn't a lot of accomplishments, Joe, and I don't think it's a fair question to say over the last four years nothing has happened and then blame one person because he didn't get accomplishments done," he concluded. "Neither did President [Barack] Obama."
Santorum said he dropped his own bid because the public changed how it supports candidates.
"They're not looking at someone with accomplishments and a track record, but someone who is considered an outsider, someone who could talk on the establishment in the case of [Donald] Trump and [Ted] Cruz," said Santorum.
"I think the case of Rubio, he is anti-Trump and anti-Cruz. He has a vision for this country that was like mine, which I appreciate."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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