Posts Tagged ‘Tea-Party’
All Aboard the Santorum Subway
Yesterday, campaign season officially began. Mitt Romney narrowly defeated Rick Santorum and the rest of the Republican candidates in the 2012 Iowa Caucus. The Romney campaign tried to spin the eight vote victory as a significant achievement, and is attempting to leverage the victory into momentum as they head to next week’s New Hampshire Primary.
However, the close second place finish by former Pennsylvania Senator Santorum mustn’t ignored. (Quick thought, does anyone take immense pleasure in the thought of millions of Americans googling Santorum for the first time this morning? Because I do.) Romney spent about $150 per vote to Santorum’s $20, which refreshingly shows there’s actually something to be said for his strategy of visiting every single county in Iowa and meeting face-to-face with thousands of potential voters. In essence, Santorum’s runner-up finish might be considered a victory by any reasonable measure. With his star suddenly rising, let’s take pause and ask ourselves if Santorum is an actual legitimate contender.
pause/
Nope. He’s not.
/pause
If you are currently inclined to hitch a slide on the Santorum Subway, then a few people named Bachmann, Perry, Cain, and Gingrich would like to have a word with you. It seems obvious to me that Santorum’s accomplishments last night is merely a result of fortuitous “anyone but Romney” timing, coupled with fundamentalist Iowa evangelicals rallying behind the last unstained social conservative in the race. I doubt Santorum takes this momentum into the New Hampshire (1/10) and South Carolina (1/21) primaries, where he is still polling in the single digits.
With that being said, can we all just step back and really bask in awe that 30,007 people actually voted Rick Santorum for the Republican presidential nominee? Rick Santorum, the anti-science creationist who proposed Intelligent Design be taught in public schools. Rick Santorum, the intolerant bigot who stated that homosexuality should be illegal and compared it to bestiality and pedophilia. Rick Santorum, the partisan hack who said that liberalism was at fault for the molestation of altar-boys. Rick Santorum, the insensitive reactionary who equated Senate Democrats to Adolf Hitler. Rick Santorum, the warmonger who advocates bombing Iran. Rick Santorum, the intrusive crusader who believes that there is no right to privacy in the United States Constitution.
In time, Santorum will stumble under the media pressure and his star will fade. Like I said above, his current popularity is merely the result of a logical progression as far right Tea-Party extremists continue their search for an “anyone but Romney” candidate. I predict that once Santorum goes down in stains and Newt Gingrich’s number slide down the toilet, Ron Paul will get a bump in the polls. The paradox being that Ron Paul, the granddaddy of the modern-day libertarian movement, has yet to be embraced by so-called Tea-Party libertarians.
Personally, I’m hopeful for the possibility that once Gingrich, Santorum, and the rest of the pack fail to dislodge Romney as top Republican contender, Ron Paul receives the “anyone but Romney” support just as Romney is nominated by the party establishment, leading to a mainstream/libertarian split of the Republican party at their convention. My mouth waters at the thought, but that’s for another blog post entirely.
Update: Just as I thought I was going a little harsh on Rick Santorum (Have you heard that he has seven kids? Yeah, so did I), a good friend of mine sent me an article in which Santorum states that the 45,000 Americans who die from lack of health insurance every year do so not from lack of coverage, but from their own poor decisions. If that doesn’t get your blood boiling then you’re missing the point about this whole life thing entirely. But unfortunately, this kind of thing doesn’t matter to more and more Republican voters. These are the same people that cheer the extensive use of the death penalty and the thought of the uninsured dying.
