Richard John (Rick) Santorum is a 53-year-old former Congressman and Senator of Italian heritage who, in 2006, went down to the largest defeat ever for an incumbent Senator in the State of Pennsylvania. His record, both in the House (1991-1995) and in the Senate (1995-2007) was that of a political opportunist on economic matters, focused on reeling in the pork to his favored constituents, and of a Roman Catholic religious zealot on social issues. His speeches in his 2011 run for the White House display political opportunism of the highest order as he scrambles for the support of the right religious tail of the GOP voter distribution.
As far as I am able to judge from his speeches and from his record, Rick Santorum is a man of limited learning and poor political judgment. He offers nothing of value to the future of the United States. As such, he is completely unfitted for the Oval Office. His educational background in political science and his private sector work experience as an attorney-at-law make him a representative poster-boy for everything that is wrong with American politics at this time.
The fact that the Iowa caucuses have placed Santorum only 8 votes behind the vastly more experienced and electable Mitt Romney says a lot about the irrational attention paid by the United States media to a small and politically unrepresentative state that can only muster a total of 120,000 votes for the kick-off primary elections for a major political party.
As Iowa opinion polls have fired off a succession of briefly ignited Roman Candles – Bachmann, Perry, Gingrich and now Santorum – while downplaying the excellent performance of the only electable candidate in the field – Mitt Romney – far more important political signals from other states have been largely ignored and/or suppressed by a media obsessed with the Iowa mirage.
Post-Iowa, this no longer will be the case. Harsh political judgments on the political future of Rick Santorum are now about to emerge from the serious players in the 2012 election process. And the outcome is likely to be ugly. For Rick Santorum’s electoral base within the Republican Party nation-wide currently hovers around 6 per cent. And that base is composed almost exclusively among those Roman Catholics who forget the protection that once was accorded to them as they fled persecution elsewhere, but who now want to shut down the separation between Church and State and impose Catholic ideology against the wishes of a large majority of Americans.
There is insufficient space available in this column to take readers through the litany of bigoted statements and opportunistic change of position by a politician whose political career effectively died of natural causes in November 2006. If GOP voters fail to place Rick Santorum within the losing tail of the nation’s voter preference distribution, then President Obama will cruise to an easy victory with large coat-tails. And the future of the Republic will be grim indeed.
Evidently, the Iowa caucuses failed to identify that reality. That is why no one should pay any attention to Iowans in the Republican primaries.
Tags: 2006 Senate loss, Catholic bigot, pork-barrel politician, Rick santorum, unalectability
Charles Rowley's Blog 
January 7, 2012 at 5:06 am |
excellent post.
santorum is a big government conservative the drove hayek long ago to write why I am not a conservative.
santorum is a big government conservative who likes to push people around. A religious thug.
not a libertarian bone in his body and exactly the type of conservative that drove the classical liberals and libertarians out of the republican party in the mid-20th century
Newt is too shop-worn and rather thin-skinned too.
Willard Romney is what most republicans want: the candidate most likely to unseat Obama. That is their main priority is the primaries from now on.
Mitt should choose Bachmann as his running mate.
She will help bring out the conservative base, she knows the issues far better than Palin for debating and media purposes, and she and her social conservatism will get right up the noses of the democrat left and the liberal media.
Like Palin, every day spent campaigning against Bachmann is a day lost campaigning against Mitt and for Obama. In a close election, this will count.
January 18, 2012 at 10:35 pm |
I disagree with your assessment of Mitt Romney. If he became the preferred candidate you will end up with another 4 years of the stupid one.