On the campaign trail, it's required that red meat be thrown to the party base on a regular basis to keep them in check. But when they call it red meat and it's really chicken disguised as red meat, it's just a lie. Here's Mr. Values Voter Choice Rick Santorum throwing a little lie-laced chicken out to his base about military spending at a town hall meeting on the campaign trail Sunday.

Note the play for the Southern bigot with the "President Obama doesn't think America is a source for good in the world." Let me ask, is there some reason we should believe our behavior over the past years gives us a reason to claim we're a source for good? George W. Bush's invasion and occupation of Iraq, his invasion and occupation of Afghanistan? How have those proven to be sources for good?

Let's also speak to Santorum's claims about defense spending and how the military budget hasn't increased over recent years. Here's a chart showing how much it's increased from 2000-2011:

Spending on defense is a huge agenda item on the neocon conservative "values voter" list. The more, the better. They justify this by saying the only true function of the Federal government is national defense, and not the general welfare of the people in this country. Santorum is willing to take that one step further and compare today's United States to the British Empire of 100 years ago, before finishing off his pack of lies with the claim that the President doesn't seek wealth redistribution, but "poverty redistribution", whatever that means.

I'm sure you can imagine what that might mean to the average white conservative South Carolinian voter, however. It's shorthand for "that black President is going to take it away from you and give it to other folks like him." I didn't include it in this video, but Santorum mentions that he served "under the tutelage of Strom Thurmond" a bit later in his rant, which puts an exclamation point on that point.

Out of curiosity, I wonder how many folks in that audience are collecting Social Security checks and had Medicare cards in their wallets.
Full transcript below the fold.

SANTORUM: What we need to look at is why is the President of the United States taking the area of the budget that is not growing and targeting that as the only place he's willing to cut? The only place he's willing to aggressively go after? About a half a trillion dollars so far, and now another half a trillion dollars he has proposed.

He's proposed shrinking the Marine Corps, shrinking the Army, cutting back on weapons systems. He is trying to manage the decline of the American military. Why?

Because he doesn't think America is a source for good in the world. He wants America to pull back because he believes, as he did on his apology tour, he believes America is not a positive influence in the world and that we would be better off and the world, more importantly would be better off without America as a major player in the world affairs.

That's what the President's policies indicate. And what he does believe is that the welfare state should get bigger and bigger and bigger. And you can't have a big military and a big welfare state. If you want to look at that, look at Europe.

100 years ago the British empire, the sun did not set. And look at the British empire - quote, empire - today. Why? Because just like so many countries, where you have leaders who have lost faith with the people we start to look inwardly instead of understanding how great we are and project out.

This is Barack Obama not managing the decline of the defense department as much as managing the decline of this country.

It's not wealth redistribution, it's poverty redistribution.