Mitch McConnell VS Rick Santorum
Mitch McConnell
Addison Mitchell McConnell Jr. (born February 20, 1942) is an American politician serving as the Senate Minority Leader since January 20, 2021. A Republican, McConnell is currently serving as the senior United States senator from Kentucky, first elected in 1984. McConnell is the second Kentuckian to serve as a party leader in the Senate, the longest-serving U.S. senator for Kentucky in history, and the longest-serving leader of U.S. Senate Republicans in history. McConnell was first elected to the Senate in 1984. During the 1998 and 2000 election cycles, he was chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. McConnell was elected as Majority Whip in the 108th Congress and was re-elected to the post in 2004. In November 2006, he was elected Senate minority leader; he held that post until 2015, when Republicans took control of the Senate and he became Senate majority leader. McConnell holds conservative political positions, although he was known as a pragmatist and a moderate Republican early in his political career. He led opposition to stricter campaign finance laws, culminating in the Supreme Court ruling Citizens United v. FEC that partially overturned the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold) in 2010. McConnell worked to withhold Republican support for major presidential initiatives during the Obama administration, having made frequent use of the filibuster, and blocked many of President Barack Obama's judicial nominees, including Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland. During the Trump administration, Senate Republicans, under McConnell's leadership, broke a record for largest number of federal appeals court judges confirmed during a president's first two years; among those nominees were Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, all of whom were confirmed to the Supreme Court. After the 2020 United States Senate elections, McConnell returned to the position of minority leader, as the 50–50 tie in the Senate can be broken by Vice President Kamala Harris. In January 2021, McConnell indicated that he believes the second impeachment of former President Trump is justified due to his role in inciting the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol.
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Rick Santorum
Richard John Santorum ( sann-TOHR-um; born May 10, 1958) is an American politician, attorney and political commentator. A member of the Republican Party, he served as a United States Senator from Pennsylvania from 1995 to 2007 and was the Senate's third-ranking Republican from 2001 to 2007. Santorum ran for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, finishing second to Mitt Romney. In January 2017, he became a CNN senior political commentator. Santorum was elected to the United States Senate from Pennsylvania in 1994. He served two terms until losing his 2006 reelection bid. A Roman Catholic, Santorum is a social conservative who opposes abortion and same-sex marriage and embraced a cultural warrior image during his Senate tenure. While serving as a senator, Santorum authored the Santorum Amendment, which would have promoted the teaching of intelligent design. He was a leading sponsor of the 2003 federal law known as the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. In the years following his departure from the Senate, Santorum has worked as a consultant, private practice lawyer, and news contributor. He ran for the Republican nomination in the 2012 U.S. presidential election. Before suspending his campaign on April 10, 2012, Santorum exceeded expectations by winning 11 primaries and caucuses and receiving nearly four million votes, making him the runner-up to eventual nominee Mitt Romney. Santorum ran for president again in 2016, but ended his campaign in February 2016 after a poor showing in the Iowa caucuses.