Santorum: Fishing in the Crab Pot

There is a disturbing tendency among a lot of people to equate suffering with virtue, to equate ignorance with “common sense,” and to equate sacrifice with value.  It appears that Rick Santorum is treading these well-worn boards on the campaign trail.

It should be noted that Santorum earns hundreds of thousands of dollars a year as a lobbyist, a corporate consultant, and one of Fox News' gunsels-for-hire (go ahead . . . click on the link to find out what the word “gunsel” really means).  It should also be noted that his tax plan, were he to be elected president, would actually add about $6.5 trillion to the national debt, mostly by cutting taxes for corporations and the richest 1%.

Yet despite the fact Santorum is an unapologetic mouthpiece for the plutocracy, in two recent campaign speeches he can be seen attempting to garner working-class votes by telling voters they are the backbone of America and the salt of the earth -- even as he works to screw those people over.  Unfortunately, a great number of these Americans pay almost no attention to politics and therefore have no idea what Santorum's policies really portend, so when they hear someone like L'il Ricky give a speech lauding their willingness to work hard for little pay they naturally think:  Hey, he appreciates me.

No, no he doesn't.  He appreciates the fact that some of these people will vote for him even though he does intend to make them work harder for much less compensation, and he appreciates that some of the people that vote for him can be persuaded afterward that because they will then be suffering even more they will have somehow proved themselves to be "better" than people (like Santorum) who don't have to suffer at all.  Simply stated, Santorum is trading on the propensity people have to turn themselves needlessly into martyrs.

  

One Last Iowa Thought . . .

I spend a lot of time complaining about the sheer inanity of the US political press.  But after the Iowa caucus results last night, I think it may have hit a new low.

Until last night, Rick Santorum was a joke candidate.  Best known for the result one pulls up on Google when running a search on his last name, this is a man who has recently declared that the government should prohibit US citizens from using any form of contraception, and that no one should be having sex unless it is for the purposes of procreation.

You get that?  His official presidential policy is:  No Americans Are Allowed to Have Sex Just For Fun.

None of that has changed.  And yet . . . I've been scanning the political punditry all day, and I've yet to see anybody claim other than that Rick "Frothy" Santorum is a credible candidate for the US presidency.

Are.  You.  Fucking.  Kidding.  Me?

Either the world's gone insane or I have, but there is just no way in hell a guy whose presidential platforms is:  The proper role of the government is to regulate your sex lives, Americans is anything other than a joke. I don't care if he did only lose the Iowa caucuses by 8 votes.

It simply boggles my mind that under the modern rules of political punditry they actually have to take this guy seriously.

Instant Iowa Analysis

UPDATED BELOW:


I’ve been biting my tongue the past few weeks while being told repeatedly not only by the TeeVee Talking Heads (who do little but spew Conventional Wisdom) but also by most of the independent political bloggers whom I respect, that Newt Gingrich’s campaign to snag the Republican nomination is over and done with.  Looking at the Iowa results, I still can’t see that.

Here’s my fast-n-loose assessment of what went down last night and yet more shameless speculation about "what it all means" going forward:

Rick Perry's Ad Signals Republican Ragnarok

Surely by now you’ve seen the Rick Perry YouTube ad that is the latest faceplant his campaign has engineered for him.  The rocket scientists in charge of his run at the Oval Office forgot to turn off the YouTube “like/dislike” button, and so far the odious thing’s received the second most “dislikes” YouTube ever has recorded. The only thing the American public hates more than this Perry ad is Justin Bieber’s video for “Baby.”

(In all honesty . . . I think that is the correct call.)

The ad features Perry, all saddle-faced and aw-shucksin’ it in an outdoor scene shot somewhere in Deutschland, explaining that he loves him some Baby Jeebus and he hates him some gays.  He especially hates them military gays that volunteer to fight and risk their lives for America.  Just thinkin’ ‘bout them gays makes him shudder and feel all icky inside.  The thing might almost be a Stephen Colbert parody but Perry apparently intended for it to be taken seriously, so others have been forced to provide the parody for which the thing so desperately cries out.  The meta-parody, as it were:

"Joepaw"

“Immediately before the advent of the white man, eastern Pennsylvania was inhabited principally by groups belonging linguistically to the Algonquins, who occupied a more extended area than any other linguistic stock in North America.”  By an extremely odd coincidence, the Pennsylvania Algonquin language had a word that they pronounced “joepaw.”

It meant “pedophile enabler.”

[WARNING - GRAPHIC DESCRIPTION BELOW THE FOLD]

Rick Perry's Debate Debut: Handicapping the Candidates

I watched the debate via Internet, but I assume the sound quality was the same for those watching on the TeeVee – boy!  did that suck!  The amount of reverb present whenever anyone was talking gave me a headache and sometimes made it next to impossible to figure out what was being said.  I don’t know if that was a problem with the audio equipment or somehow resulted from the fact the debate appeared to have been held in an airplane hangar, but it was extremely annoying.  Almost as annoying as the hagiographic video they ran of St. Ronald Reagan and his missus.

As for the GOP base audience, I took notes of the things to which they seemed to react/applaud.  These included:

--Newt Gingrich’s charge that the “liberal media,” acting as the debate’s moderators, were “carrying water for Obama”;

--Michele Bachmann’s claim that the Affordable Care Act constitutes “socialized medicine”;

--Jon Huntsman’s charge that Obama should “get out from behind a teleprompter;”

--Santorum’s announced goal of cutting way back on food stamps and housing assistance; and

--Rick Perry’s assertion that Social Security was “a monstrous lie” that “won’t be there” for our children. 

But by far, what drew the loudest and longest applause was Brian Williams attempt to ask Rick Perry about the record number of people he has executed as Governor of Texas.  The really chilling thing about this applause is that it started before Williams could even finish setting up the question.  He got as far as saying “Governor Perry, you’ve presided over the executions of the largest number of people of any modern governor –” when the audience broke into sustained and spontaneous applause.  They were applauding Perry for killing a lot of people.  If you wanted evidence of the bloodthirsty nature of the GOP base . . . There it is.

Individual assessments of each candidate's performance are below the fold.

Thoughts on the Seven Dwarfs Debate

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.