Run, Rick, Run

On the Papist front, former Senator Rick Santorum (Loser-PA) is foaming at the mouth. Again.

Santorum's pitch is reductive. It assumes that his audience is angry that Republican candidates aren't passionate enough about explaining and defending what the party stands for. This makes a kind of sense. A Republican voter can watch Fox News, listen to talk radio, read the Drudge Report, and then listen to the people claiming to lead the party who don't seem nearly as worried as they do. Not so with Santorum.

"Why do you think the left wants to get your kids at two, three years of age?" he asks. "Why do they want early, early, early, early education? So they can get you quick! So they can convince you to just turn them over to them!"¹

These answers start to have their intended effect: Santorum seems reassuringly worried. So the crowd listens.

"The Democrats' argument against the Medicare reform is that seniors simply can't take care of [themselves]," Santorum says. "They say, 'You can't give seniors choices! You can't give seniors options! You can't have them make decisions and take responsibility. You've got to do this for them!' As if when you turn 65, your brain capacity goes away! My mother's 92! She got an iPad a couple months ago, OK, and she's whizzing away on an iPad!... Are there people who can't? Sure. But don't, don't structure a system for people on the margins who can't. Structure it for the rest of them, and help those who can't."

Vouchers! Then all the decisions & all the responsibility are theirs. Yay freedom.

Policies, strawmen, death panels & freedom vouchers are fine, but an analysis of Rick's telebision appeal is primary here; no matter the message, the low-information voter gets her information straight from the screen.

Santorum's smile [...] contains most of the essential elements of a grimace ...

Ain't that the truth? Easily his creepiest feature, his mouth seems stuck in a permanent half-sneer. Many other examples. We liked this one w/ his god nailed up behind him.

Note illegal knock-off of Old Glory.

Also unattractive: The one-time Senator bristles w/ resentment.

The Rick Santorum show is a continuation of the campaign that ended on Election Day in Pennsylvania in 2006. Santorum knows why he lost, but his anger at the unfairness of the loss simmers like radiation whenever he starts to answer a question.

(Granted, an angry Italo-Catholic isn't as frightening as an angry African-American of unknown religion, but certainly Santorum's farther down list of people w/ whom America would like to have a brew.)

Santorum goes on at length about this. That's his answer to a potential softball question: a lecture/sermon about disabilities and the miracle of life.

The crowd leaves impressed; the woman who asked about Medicare writes Santorum a check for $35. Later, he'll appear at the state GOP's Silver Elephant Dinner in Columbia, and because every other candidate declined to accept an invitation, he'll get to give a long version of his speech to a captive crowd. Only a couple of people leave before he's done. The people who stay give him a standing ovation.

"I like him," says Dean Allen, a mutton-chopped Tea Party activist from Greenville. "I don't think we need to wait for anyone else. They're retreads."

Republicans participate in a straw poll after the dinner's over. Four hundred and eight of them cast ballots before heading into the warm night. Santorum wins in a walk.

Santorum/Cain 2012! Don't think it can happen? Apply that bookmark now!

On an equally serious note, we are amused by the faithful giving their straw votes to the first or only buffoon who shows up to pay attention to them or echoes their concerns, whatever exactly those concerns are beyond the FOX/Drudge concern of the day.

¹The editorial staff's maternal grandmother, pretty much a right-wing drooler, once advised the then six or seven-yr. old editor that in Russia the commies took children from their parents & brain-washed them. This certainly sounds like a good idea (If only because it will piss off the reactionaries.) & may have inspired some of our editorial positions.