Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Santorum The Apparatchik…

By Matthew@The Lunatic's Asylum

RE: Rick Santorum’s rise in the polls, winning a few caucuses without delegates and the revision of the Iowa Beauty Contest in his favor: I will not make the argument that Rick Santorum is a bad man, but I will argue that he is a bad candidate for the Presidency.


All of his “I’m the only goddamned Conservative Beast up here!” chest-thumping aside, one is hard-pressed to find a single, solitary achievement of note in Santorum’s resume. What one does find is a long string of “me-too!” conservative viewpoints, a lot of sounds-conservative-but-is-it-really soundbites, a recitation of all the right talking points, and a long history of ticket-punching.  Santorum would have you believe that he was a solitary voice in the Senate, leading a righteous crusade in that moribund body to see the Conservative view (as it stands today, it leaves much to be desired) against a variety of societal and political forces which, on the whole, saw that particular brand of so-called Conservatism strangled in it’s cradle.


It's the Rape of the Sabines all over again.


What does it matter if Santorum, the staunch fiscal conservative, helped balance the Federal Budget back in the 1990’s; What happened to all that Fiscal Conservatism in the Age of Bush II? What does it matter if Santorum led the fight for the Right to Life movements goals; all they had to show for it during Santorum’s tenure were marginal gains, and ultimately, a misguided, no-brainer Senatorial proclamation passed in the middle of the night, that didn’t keep anyone from removing a brain-dead woman’s feeding tube.

It has become apparent -- to this writer, in any case -- that Santorum’s rise is a natural result of the fall of Gingrich, Cain, Bachmann, Perry and Pawlenty. In other words, as these people have floundered, Santorum has picked up the votes of the died-in-the-wool ideologues and doofuses who have been panicked into believing that they have “No Place Else To Go”. In this case, the No-Place-Else-To-Go voter may, in a backhanded way, be helping to achieve something that a few weeks ago I would have thought impossible:

They may be helping to engineer the race into a contest between the Apparatchik Obama and an Apparatchik Santorum.


Look, this page bears no great love for Mitt Romney -- and already begins to see signs that Romney is petering out -- and is greatly saddened by the now-looking-inevitable self-destruction of Newt Gingrich, but Santorum as your GOP nominee? Have we gone that far down the Road to Perdition that even an underachiever of Santorum’s ilk seems to some superior to the grossly underachieving Obama? A Santorum-Obama contest is sort of like that episode of South Park, in which the school kids are given a choice of voting on a new name for their school teams: Giant Douche or Turd Sandwich?

Santorum talks the talk, but doesn’t walk the walk – except on the Right to Life Issue. That is, in effect, the main case against Barack Obama from the Left over and above the fact that he couldn’t find his own ass with both hands and a flashlight. The recent brouhaha over forcing the Catholic Church and other religious institutions to pay for birth control benefits for their employees might have been the one stroke of genius the Obama Titanic Team has had in nearly four years: they may have succeeded in ensuring that the guy they probably cannot beat (Romney) is in turn defeated by the one guy they reasonably can (Santorum).

And they would have done it by splitting Conservatives in the process with a bullshit issue, which makes it a doubly-delicious thing. Talk about baiting a hook?

However, I think Obama and his people aren’t really that smart; if recent history is any indication, it would appear that this is perhaps the dumbest White House at least since the Carter Administration, and sothis state of affairs must have begun to evolve completely by accident. The Obama people, by pressing a non-issue (contraceptives are readily available to anyone with $10 and half-a-brain, in your local CVS, and the provision which makes it mandatory being – as they know – unconstitutional and unconscionable), might be unwittingly engineering a more favorable electoral climate for President Knows-and-Does-Nothing. The recent passage of same-sex marriage bills in Washington and (soon) New Jersey are simply more of the same, and have much the same aim; stampede Conservatives away from Romney/Gingrich, and into the arms of the ineffectual Santorum.


Ann Coulter would like you to believe that Mitt Romney is suddenly some sort of Ur-Conservative (after she has spent a decade-plus savaging him on everything from State-run healthcare systems, to taxes, to Family Values issues), he is at least more honest about what he truly is – a pragmatic politician – than Santorum ever was.

Romney at least talks up Capitalism, which makes him infinitely preferable to either Santorum or Obama; wherein the former sees the state of the economy as a decidedly secondary issue, the latter pretends as if the Capitalist system (when it doesn’t benefit him and his friends, that is ) is a cancer. In both cases, we have a man who has put his religion – the Judean-Christian god on the one hand, the Religion of the State on the other – ahead of more practical concerns. Each is advocating for his own special form of Heaven; Santorum’s Ultimately Useless kind which would succeed in mandating the Ten Commandments be printed on condom wrappers, and Obama’s Utopian Socialist brand. You pick your poison in either case. One would use the power of the state to foster a disguised and ultimately futile Semi-Theocracy, the other to usher in Communism by a different name. Either way, the result is the same: focus upon narrow issues which leave most people disaffected, more stupidity, fewer solutions, and eternal, politicized debate about hills of beans.
Santorum is an empty suit with a list of questionable achievements of nearly 20 years vintage that he can’t stop talking about, assuming, as he does, that anyone actually gives a crap, or is even listening. He is the undeserving recipient of the fruits of an accident of history, vis-a-vis Gingrich.

We have already suffered three-plus years of the Reign of the Marketed President, and I don't think anyone with sense would make the case that another such candidate, only professing a diametrically-opposed ideology, would be considered much of an improvement.


________________________________________

4 comments:

  1. You are correct, Santorum is a crap candidate

    Obama would beat him like a rug

    ReplyDelete
  2. From my perspective, Santorum has no real political or private enterprise accomplishments upon which to base a run for the presidency. It's as simple as that.

    Gingrich, for all his personal shortcomings (and there are many) clearly understands how government runs and the politics involved. Romney has a good mix of political and private enterprise experience. It becomes a question of Romney's proven stand on conservative principles. He didn't get that "flip flopper" reputation for no reason.

    I, too, wonder why Coulter jumped on the Romney bandwagon so quickly, considering some of her past comments regarding Romney, which were less than complimentary or supportive.

    Unfortunately, it looks like the we are seeing the Republican "B" team at play, when we need the "A" team to soundly spell out the many failings of Obama and precisely what needs to be done to remedy those horrendous failings. Instead, all we see is a food fight among Republican candidates. Perhaps that's why we see such weak Republican candidates. Good people see the low brow campaigning tactics and have to be turned off to such behavior exhibited by the Republican party.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I would ask you both, then, the following question:

    Assume for a moment that Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich could put a stop -- for purely political reasons -- to their little He Said/She Said pissing match, and combine forces. Instead of selling a single candidate that one hopes could beat Obama, the GOP would be selling a team that is greater than the sum of it's parts;

    * Gingrich's experience in governmental affairs, the know-how to deal with Congress, the Conservative chops, the ideas about reforming government, the historical frame of mind that puts issues in a certain, logical context which then draws lessons from the past.

    * Romney's economic accumen, business experience, and central-casting looks and demeanor, combined with his pragmatic political style...and loads of campaign cash.

    Would such a combination spell the end of Obama? I think it would.

    Do you believe that:

    a) Either man is capable of doing it? and

    b) will the Old-Guard, fire-and-brimstone-don't-vote-for-anyone-that-hasn't-visited-Bob-Jones-University-got-their-reservation-for-the-Rapture-bite-their-nose-off-to-spite-their-face conservatives (small 'c' intentional) reject such an idea as the next, best thing to marrying their daughters off to Osama Bin Laden?

    Would like to hear your opinions. Thanks.

    Matt
    Chief Lunatic-in-Residence
    The Lunatic's Asylum

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ultimately I am in the Anybody But Obama camp. I will vote for the proverbial ham sandwich, if necessary, to save our republic. Anyone on the right of center, who sits out the 2012 presidential election for their political principles not being met, is an idiot.

    Now on to the candidates.

    Romney's first two tax plans from his website:

    Maintain current tax rates on personal income.

    Maintain current tax rates on interest, dividends, and capital gains.

    MAINTAIN??? Romney, the venture capitalist, would fire a CEO who said this. Maintain the status quo? I don't think so. IMHO Romney needs to exhibit more of his venture capitalist management style. Show more fire in the belly to attack Obama and all of Obama's many failings and there are so many.

    If someone were really serious about stimulating the economy they would seek to lower or eliminate interest, dividends and capital gains taxes. I would jump at the chance to invest even more of my capital, knowing I would receive greater returns on my investments. Every investor is a mini venture capitalist and that is what drives our economy by providing the capital necessary for entrepreneurs to move forward and expand their operations.

    Maintaining the current tax structure is untenable going forward. I know it would take time to achieve an overhaul of the tax system as so many people are tied into their favorite little loopholes, but Romney has to at least push hard for his vision of what the tax code should look like.

    I admire Gingrich's political savvy and acumen gained through years of elected experience, but he often steps on his own toes by going off the reservation with some outlandish idea thought up on the spur of the moment. Newt is an excellent policy wonk and has great ideas...most of the time... when he thinks them out before opening his mouth. One positive comment that Newt made that stands out for me was when he announced he would, if he became president, ask John Bolton to become Secretary of State. That impressed me. A president is only as good as the people he surrounds himself with.

    Jimmy Carter tried to personally micro manage the country and especially the economy and we all know what that lead to in a word...disaster.

    Rick Santorum seems like a good and decent person, but he needs to step up and beyond being merely a social conservative. He needs to move beyond what the left wing MSM has tried to box him into and that is as a social radical who wants to end Roe v. Wade. The MSM wants to make Santorum a one trick pony. Important as social issues may be, they are not in the top ten concerns for most voters today, who are concerned about all the various economic issues that face individuals and the government.

    That's enough for now. That said, I will get out and vote for the Republican candidate and I will encourage others to do the same, no matter who the Republicans put up as the party flag bearer.

    ReplyDelete