The Republican Party is "very divided," former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum said Sunday, and needs a "positive vision."
But he told NBC "Meet the Press" host David Gregory during a panel discussion Sunday that a divided party is not necessarily a bad thing.
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"We're having really good debates within the party about our position on national security, our position on immigration, a whole lot of other things," said Santorum, who ran for president in 2012.
Santorum explained that one of the reasons he wrote his new book,
"Blue Collar Conservatives: Recommitting to an America That Works" recently was to provide a "positive way" for the conservative party.
"Right now we're arguing about a lot of things that are not, in my opinion, core to where the American public's concerns are," he told Gregory. "The American public's concern is that middle income Americans, lower income Americans, aren't rising [and] aren't seeing the opportunities. And that's what we have to focus on."
The panel discussion, which also included former Michigan Democrat Gov. Jennifer Granholm, Wall Street Journal editorial board member Kim Strassel, and Stephen Henderson, the editorial page editor of the Detroit Free Press, also discussed the current immigration situation.
Santorum, disagreeing with a comment made by Strassel that Republicans are making a "phony" claim that the border is not secure, argued that "it's obviously not secure. I mean, you have a half a million [who] are coming this year."
Santorum pointed out that in addition to the illegal immigrants coming in, the nation is also "accepting more legal immigrants than we ever have," through "chain immigration" that is "tied to people who are already here."
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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