The New York Times, speaking of Rick Santorum's attempts to reach a broader base:
Addressing an audience of several hundred in this town outside Toledo, Mr. Santorum covered a lot of ground: taxes, manufacturing, energy. At one point, he even tapped a black rock on the lectern to make a point about oil trapped in shale. “This rock leaches oil,” he said, accusing President Obama of delaying aggressive energy exploration.
But what really excited the audience was Mr. Santorum’s appeal on social issues, including a revival of his recent salvos on college education and the separation of church and state.
Lord, is this rock going to be a standard part of the Santorum stump speech now? Look at this rock, America. Feel the rock. Taste the rock. Here's hoping Santorum gives a hands-on demonstration of fracking by putting it and a magical mix of chemicals into an aquarium, separating out the oil, and drinking whatever's left. Yes, we get it. It's a very important rock. So is asbestos, but we seem to be getting along just fine without that one.
Santorum just seems awkward when talking about issues other than his personal brand of morality. It feels insincere. His audience doesn't warm up to it. He does a poor job of pretending he knows what he's talking about. If you are a Republican who cares at all about the economic situation, Rick would seem to be among your least credible choices. He is a preacher, and one of a particular sort, and that is what the people have come to see.
On the eve of Tuesday’s primary, Mr. Santorum held a rally at a Christian academy in Kalamazoo, Mich., that had the feel of a revival meeting, especially as he railed against the president.
But Mr. Santorum was surely preaching to the converted. His loss in Michigan raises the possibility that he has hit a ceiling with Republican primary voters; he may even have damaged himself with some by a string of controversial comments, particularly his assertion that President Obama is a “snob” for advocating that every American have access to a college education.
Hmm. I wonder about that.
Whatever happens to the reverend Rick, it is clear that the Republican Party has lost its mojo on economic issues. The payroll tax extension was a fiasco—and an especially egregious one, coming from a party that apparently never saw a tax cut they didn't like until someone proposed one that wasn't specifically tailored to the rich. The deficit battles have not been going well for them; their most pressing concern at the moment is getting out of a defense-cutting agreement they themselves cut only a few months earlier. Whether the economy has been doing better or worse, Republicans can claim no significant credit for having done anything about it.
Instead, we have moved back to the preaching. Now, apparently, we need to re-litigate birth control, an issue most of us thought was settled somewhere around a half-century ago. The disputed role of religion in politics is nothing new, but the premise that religion should supersede American laws smacks of discussions from even farther back. Have we backslid that much? Or is every generation just doomed to refight the same battles, with different players?
The most difficult part of suggesting Democrats foul the primary a bit by voting for Rick Santorum was that he really is just a gigantically odious character. He is the personification of what an American Taliban would entail, or at least how it would start: a general premise that women are an inferior gender, or at least should be encouraged to take on only certain roles; a general muttering about the immoralities of people doing certain things in their own homes, based explicitly on an assertion as to what God wants; and then demands that those things be catered to, if not enshrined outright, in legislation. The party as bloc has sliced Christian morality into two segments, the segment related to sex and the segment related to absolutely everything else, and adopted the former as holy Republican writ while ignoring and even belittling the latter. Rick is so confident in his morality—and so unaware of how narrowly he has transcribed it. But like the whole party, it is only when talking about who should be blamed, or who should be coddled less, or who is undeserving of societal support that a fire shows in his eyes.
Well, that and the rock that holds oil. If carrying around small chunks of shale in your pockets becomes a new conservative thing, a new touchstone for who is a true believer and who is only pretending at walking the (now more uncomfortable) walk, I will be a little surprised. But only a little.
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2004:
The feuding and backbiting that plagued the Howard Dean campaign had turned utterly poisonous. Behind the facade of a successful political operation, senior officials plotted against each other, complained about the candidate and developed one searing doubt.
Dean, they concluded, did not really want to be president.
In different conversations and in different ways, according to several people who worked with him, Dean said at the peak of his popularity late last year that he never expected to rise so high, that he didn't like the intense scrutiny, that he had just wanted to make a difference. "I don't care about being president," he said. Months earlier, as his candidacy was taking off, he told a colleague: "The problem is, I'm now afraid I might win."
As Dean was swallowed by the bubble that envelops every major candidate, he allowed his campaign to sink into a nasty civil war that crippled decision-making and devastated morale. In the end, say some of those who uprooted their lives for him, these tensions hastened the implosion that brought Dean down. [...]
Tweet of the Day:
I don't often agree with Rick Santorum, but when he boasts that his economic plan is SIMPLE, I can't take issue with that.
— @UnshackleUS via web
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