Saturday, February 25, 2012

Santorum: Another in a Long Line of Republican Oddities for 2012


The GOP candidates  for the Presidential nomination in 2012 seem generally to have a quota of quirkiness about them.  But, as I see it, most also  have signs of  outright mental instability about them. This goes beyond political preference to me--Ronald Reagan was a man I profoundly disagreed with on many subjects, but I little doubted he could pass a basic psychology  test in his adult prime and probably would have been an o.k. guy to have as a neighbor to wave hello to as one set out for work---the older retired Republican guy next door who actually thought that socialism was a real "threat" in American politics and for whom you quickly changed the subject  to baseball if he asked you about your views on global climate change  (Lest he decline to look in and feed your dog when you went away for a few days on a trip.) .


 His successor in the White House George H.W. Bush also seemed quite sane, if a little out of touch.  I guess coming from a banking family and living much of your adult life in a dry oil patch of otherwise joyless scrub-land called Midland, Texas  could do that to anyone. 

And I think Mitt Romney is sane.  I know some of a non-religious bent will take issue with that but he was, after all,  governor of Massachusetts, a state where if you can't play nice with Democrats you can't play.     He's got the heart of an investment banker but he's capable of a sensible thought even as I disagree with him on most points.   

  It could be as I get older I see fewer clothes on the political emperors. But it would seem that the GOP top ranks are now filled with "outliers" like Herman "9-9-9" Cain, Newt "Lunar Colony" Gingrich, Ron "Government? What For?"  Paul, Michelle "Mandatory Vaccinations are Evil" Bachmann  and now the latest quasi-front runner, Rick Santorum.    Are the ranks of conservative voters so desperate that they want to not only defeat Obama but also elect a  borderline personality to further drop America back into the status of a three-legged mule in the grand parade of great nations?


What is up with all the love Santorum is getting?    Does this guy seem Presidential to anybody? To me, he's a little moral tyrant looking for a throne.    He's like that  nerdy kid in the third grade who told on you for throwing a wad of paper when the teacher came back to class.  He's the guy somebody met in college who gets his bigger friends to jump you in the parking lot of a local bar for talking to his girlfriend---because he was  off playing video games with his nerdy pals  and she looks bored. He's the guy who gets your mom fired on the  job for forgetting to put gas in the company car after a trip---while he's off diddling with the boss' secretary! 

 
   Can a man who thinks that  birth control is morally wrong be elected?Can a chicken-hawk dweeb who speaks as if he is the second coming of Winston  Churchill of 1940 to his opponents' incarnation of Naziism really be nominated, much less elected.

 Even Alan Simpson, former Senator from Wyoming and a fellow Republican who served with Santorum in the Senate in the 90's had this to say about the guy in a recent interview with CBS News:

"He is rigid and a homophobic," Simpson said. "He said, 'I want a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage,' and they said, 'Well, what about the people who are already married?' And he said, 'Well, they would be nullified.' I mean what is, what's human, what's kind about that? We're all human beings, we all know or love somebody who's gay or lesbian so what the hell is that about? To me it's startling and borders on disgust."

 I'll say.  And this is Alan Simpson folks.  From the big red, white and blue state of Wyoming.   And he's not alone. He's not alone either.  Here's  Jeb Bush, a would-be power-broker in his  party, despite the disasters in the financial sector of the economy in 2007-2008 presided over by his big brother in the White House.  Jeb had this to say on the current crop of Presidential primary nominees.   



 "I used to be a conservative and I watch these debates and I'm wondering, I don't think I've changed, but it's a little troubling sometimes when people are appealing to people's fears and emotion rather than trying to get them to look over the horizon for a broader perspective and that's kind of where we are."       

There seems little to be cheerful about with Santorum, a man  who views modern life with the sort of disdain one would expect from a cloistered member of the clergy or a cold-hearted secularist demagogue like Mussolini who wants only to please the frightened enough to get his foot in the door and then strut around like a king. (Oh,no wait. That's Gingrich. Sorry Rick.)  

Anyway, I am hopeful that the voters of Michigan will select Mitt Romney as their candidate and save us from the thereat of an "outlier" candidate who, given the price of gas or the situation in foreign affairs, just could sneak into office  and do much more mischief than the "establishment" or the people could bear.   



19 comments:

  1. as a Democrat I would say I'd love to see him get the nomination but I don't trust the intelligence of the voters since the 2010 midterms, hell they just might elect him...

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think Santorum is too into theology and getting women back into the days of "being in the kitchen" and "having babies" rather than letting them be productive members of society and help bring in the bacon to make things better in the family household.

    And like Mike says, with the mentality of the voters these days, they just might vote him in and then we will be in a world of shit!!!! I am hoping the people out there see exactly where this country will be if he is our president, the women for sure will have to twist some arms unless they want to go back to the dark ages of our country.

    Sick nuts all of them! Old, hard headed with no heart!

    ReplyDelete
  3. My sentiments exactly Mike! Well put.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yes, he talks like a guy who grew up in a "Leave it to Beaver" style sit-com, Marty.

    My hope would be that GOP women who hold jobs and want family planning will come out in the primaries just to vote against this guy.

    Head-headed is right.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Of what I have seen of him Doug, he does seem like one which seems like he just came out of university you know one that has not matured to the extent of what it would take. I would forcast that Romney will come to be the leader of the party. I have seen Santorum speak and it's hard to really take him serious. I ponder on what President Obama is thinking. As it stands, I believe Obama really is feeling very well as he watches the Republican debates.

    I was just doing some reading here and this may be of interest from the New Yorker:

    http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2012/02/senator-santorums-planet.html

    ReplyDelete
  6. I bet he is hooting with laughter and rolling on the floor when he sees what they have going against him...lol

    ReplyDelete
  7. He is staying rather quiet when it comes to his own campaign Marty.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I agree there is kind of sophomoric nit-picking about Santorum, Jack.

    And Ricky's peculiar and politically self-serving theology is well analyzed by that article by Mr. Wood you linked to. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  9. I hope we'll all here be laughing and happy in November, Marty.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Well, I can change my fictional timeline. If Santorum is selected by the Republicans only the names will change.

    http://spacestevie.multiply.com/journal/item/907/Revised_Theocracy_Timeline

    ReplyDelete
  11. I believe there's a point that's being missed here, Doug - and it's a big-assed Elephant in the Room....

    You're assuming he's an 'outlier'. He's not.

    He represents a large and growing bloc of voters - semiliterate; economically marginalized in the main - but many are actually educated by some standard (if not enlightened) and well-off. These people are actually pretty powerful, focused and determined voters - and they're well-organized.

    They've had since the '60's (if one counts Rushdoony's advent; earlier if we look at the beginnings of the AG and Foursquare churches) to gradually build their power base.

    They had their first real flirt with power under Richard Vigurie and the Moral Majority - the result was the election of Ronald Reagan. If not for their influence, Bush II would never have had a chance.

    Don't count these people out, Doug - there are several caucuses and primaries which Santorum has hanging from his belt which prove he's more than an 'outlier', and speaks for far more people than himself.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Yeah. Will, I don't want to give the impression I don't think these people aren't a threat. They are. Is Santorum and the bunch really "outliers"? Good question. In the broad of modern national American politics I think so, but in many places they are very powerful. So I get where you're coming from.

    The Moral Majority has been beaten back before--nationally at least--in 1992, 1998, and the 2006, and 2008 elections. Part of the reeason was the non-social conservative voter got spooked by the sulphur and brimstone coming from the mouths of people like Palin, and went with other candidates. I hope that's what's going to happen this time.

    But, no, I don't know that.

    I mean Richard Vigerie was off his nut in my view for critizing Reagan meeting with Gorbachev over arms limitations. If his spirit is what's driving more voters on the right, then "Yikes!"

    It's like an old B Western where you think the villians who rode in and burned down part of the town and drank all the whisky in the saloon and made really uncool passes at the local school marm are safely in the state prison...but then the governor pardons the lot and here we go again. "Ain't that America", as John Cougar Mellancamp might say?

    Thanks for your comments Will.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Still one of the scariest and most compelling outlines for a--hopefully--"alternative history" of America. You remind me why I live in Oregon.

    Great work, Stephen.

    ReplyDelete
  14. You need to stop holding back and tell us what you really think! I did not vote for our current President. I did not think he had enough experience at the time. With the cast of characters they are parading around as of the late they will give me no choice but to vote Mr Obama. He is head and shoulders above the band of nutters running around on the Republican side.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Well Doug, Rick Santorum is clearly a warped right wing nutter with ties to black magic and secret brotherhoods and all that guff ad nauseum.

    For starters how could anybody vote for a fellow whose name sounds like sanatorium? If I was standing against him I'd change my name to Aaran Antibiotic, just to show how things have moved on since people thought like that.

    We get some measure of where Dick Sanatorium is coming from alarm bells start ringing when we discover that he traveled in 2002 to Rome to speak at a centenary celebration of the birth of Saint Josemaría Escrivá, founder of Opus Dei.

    It gets worse, besides being a member of this obsessively secretive pro-Nazi coven of Catholic self flagellators (Gasp)...further evidence of Rick's unhinged penchant for the occult is the fact that he and his wife were invested as Knight and Dame of Magisterial Grace of the Knights of Malta in a ceremony at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York on November 12, 2004.
    You can see where this is all going can't you Doug a self flagellating neo-nazi landlord with a dressed-up fantasy world of chivalrous Knights and Dames and we can get a snapshot of how truly deranged Rick actually is.

    So it is perfectly logical when we consider the Alice Through the Looking Glass world Santorum inhabits that he should accuse his opponents of beling "Nazis" (takes one to know one Rick) ....its all part of the narcissistic personality disorder that has him believing he is Richard the Lionheart or something honourable like that......

    The Pennsylvania Knight at the Court of King Arthur, anointed by a secret pro-Francoist underground fascist cult - this is a man with only a very tenuous grip on reality.....is someone proposing we give this man the nuclear trigger?

    Obviously a right wing Catholic is going to be oversensitive about homosexual paedophilia, its only natural, the term has painful resonances for those of Rick's persuasion, but he should take his existential crisis to the confessional and not spew it out all over the mass media, that's just attention seeking. I suggest we ignore him and he'll go away to play Puff the Magic Dragon of Wall Street......bye Rick :-)

    ReplyDelete
  16. Just because contraception didn't work for him, it doesn't mean it hasn't prevented a lot of dickheads from getting through.

    ReplyDelete
  17. LOL! I did get a little carried away there, Fred. Thanks for reeling me in there a bit. Your voting criteria seems more based on reason than a lot of the "person-on-the-street" types you see in newspaper columns. I didn't vote for Obama in the Oregon Primary for the same reason.

    But since he just attacked Obama for promoting college education (?), it's clear Rick has gone demagogic. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  18. LOL ditto!

    It's true that many politicians seem to have had early childhood problems that we all have payed for in their middle years, AA.


    Rick Santorum may have been a planned baby, but IMHO he's a lousy candidate.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Wow, Rick Santorum and Opus Dei---why didn't I see that connection???

    I mean I read the "DaVinci Code" so you'd think I'd be a kind of expert with a degree in the Dan Brown Theological Book of the Month College. ;-)


    I fully agree the guy is dragging a lot of theological baggage--some of it quite hypocritical and some of it just plain what nobody stable would bring to public office--and using it to try and create a kind of Vatican/Evangelical Sanctuary out of the White House. I trust this will just not do with average voters.

    ReplyDelete