Tag Archives: Rick Santorum

January 11, 2012 · 9:37 pm

After New Hampshire

I have just been defriended by an Australian lady on facebook, for making disparaging remarks about their national cuisine.  I’m sure Australia’s a lovely country.  Great beaches.  Cute little Koala Bears.  Kangaroos.

But Vegemite really does suck.  Sorry.

Anyway, that’s not my blog topic for this evening.  There seem to be two main schools of thought

You all know what Mitt Romney looks like. Here's a picture of New Hampshire.

in analyzing the results of the New Hampshire primary.  First, it’s a big Romney win.  He won in Iowa and New Hampshire, he’s pretty much got a lock on the nomination.  He’s got the momentum, he’s got the money, the ABR* crowd is splintered, that’s it, it’s all over but the shouting.

The other view is that Romney is toast.  He only won Iowa by  8 votes (that’s 0 percentage points) and he didn’t get over 40% in New Hampshire, where they supposedly love the guy.  This is despite spending massive amounts of money.

I tend toward the second view, but I’m not so sure as I was a couple of weeks ago.  39 percent is not 40%, but it’s still 17 points more than Ron Paul got, and Rick Santorum really didn’t do very well at all.  If Romney wins in South Carolina and Florida, he might very well win the nomination.

But here’s the rub:  a Republican candidate needs 1144 delegates to get the nomination.  37 have been chosen. (not exactly, because Iowa is complicated and the delegates elected at the precinct caucuses go to a county convention where they choose the delegates to the state convention where they choose the delegates to the national convention, but still, we have indications)  Of those, Romney has 20, Santorum 12, Paul 3 and Huntsman 2.  Four out of the 6 people still in the running have delegates.  Gingrich and Perry may  well pick up a few as the race moves south.  Southerners vote for Southerners.  Perhaps it’s local pride.  Perhaps it’s just that they feel comfortable with someone who has the same accent.  Perhaps it’s because they are stupid.

In any event, if Romney can’t get over 50% in any state (which is likely, since he couldn’t top 40% in New Hampshire), and nobody drops out and leaves him their delegates, then he goes to the convention without the required 1144 votes, and then we will see some desperate politicking, you betcha.

Romney might try to buy off Gingrich or Santorum with the vice-presidency.  Paul might try to make alliances, too, although he’s not generally very good at it.

We could get one of those really interesting conventions, which last for days and lead to massive verbal abuse and occasionally physical violence.  That would be fun to watch.

 

*anybody but Romney

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September 21, 2011 · 1:20 pm

Rick Santorum’s Other Google Problem

Some day, elections will be decided on the internet.  Whoever gets the most hits, the most “likes,” whoever can accumulate the most friends and followers, will win.  I’m not saying that’s a good thing, I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but I am saying that anybody who runs

Santorum's concession speech, when he lost his Senate seat

for public office in the future, in the U.S. or anywhere else, had better be internet savvy.

Witness the case of poor Rick Santorum.  He has this little problem with Google.  See, if you google “Santorum” the first thing you will see is a definition of the word santorum: The frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.

That frothy mix is, in fact, named after the ex-Senator and current Republican presidential candidate.  He is an anti-gay extremist who has compared gay sex to bestiality, and that is why columnist Dan Savage hosted a contest to find some disgusting thing to name after him.  The word stuck, partly because it was a substance in need of a word, and partly because gay people, on the average, are more internet savvy than Rick Santorum.  He didn’t notice the problem and start complaining about it until way after it was too late.

Recently, he made things worse by complaining to Google about it.  They said it wasn’t their fault, they just tally the number of hits.  And news of his complaint pushed the hits up even higher.  You’ve got to admit, it’s pretty funny.

I don’t feel too bad for Rick Santorum, but I do feel kind of bad for his family.  Especially when you think of Rick Santorum’s second google problem.  That is that when you go to Google images and type in Rick Santorum, you will immediately see the picture above.

I’m glad they will never be America’s first family, but really, Rick.  You should not only get out of politics immediately, you should probably move to someplace where nobody knows you (like maybe Guatemala or Azerbaijan) and change your family name.  For the sake of your children.

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August 5, 2011 · 8:40 pm

The Anti-Education Party

Unemployed Republican and world famous shitstain (google it) Rick Santorum is running for President again, of course, because there are just some people who do that every chance they get (see also Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich).  Anyway, at a speech in Iowa the other day he made an

Not only doesn't he have any class, he's opposed to having class

incredibly stupid statement, which is not at all unusual for Rick Santorum, or any of the other Republican candidates for that matter, but he is one of the more comical ones.

“Of course, the government wants their hands on your children as fast as they can,” Santorum said. “That is why I opposed all these early starts and pre-early starts, and early-early starts. They want your children from the womb so they can indoctrinate your children as to what they want them to be. I am against that.”  Santorum home schooled his 7 children up to the eighth grade, but that’s partially because there was some scandal about using public funds and lying about his primary address to send his kids to expensive private schools, I forget the details.

Anyway, I’ve got a lot of problems with that statement.  Mostly, it’s just hysterical.  Pre-school is about singing songs, playing games and learning how to go to the bathroom by yourself.  Sure, it’s indoctrination, but it’s pretty necessary indoctrination.   As Robert Fulghum wrote, everything we really need to know in life we learn in kindergarten.  No hair pulling, no name calling, taking turns, asking permission, stuff like that.

All education is indoctrination, in a way.  These are positive and negative words for the same thing. One question is, who do we want teaching the next generation – nutcase teabagger creationist hatemongers or the public school system?  I prefer the public school system, even in those cases where the nutcase teabagger creationist hatemongers happen to be the children’s parents. We’re all going to have to live with these kids in 18 years or so.

Also, pre-school serves a pretty important function for those parents of young children who are not  so wealthy that they can get away with not having a full time job.  Don’t criticize the school system as being “mere” baby sitting.  Baby sitting is damned important.

Rick Santorum is unlikely to win the Republican nomination, but you never can tell.  They aren’t exactly the best educated voters in the world.

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July 13, 2011 · 3:40 pm

Pink is Not Always Cute

As is often the case, there are numerous nominees this week for the Richard, the weekly award we award every Wednesday to the evillest, most callous hearted Republican of the week, someone who has shown such total disdain for the most basic norms of Western civilization and, in fact, humanity that they have managed to sink even below the abysmal depths to which that once noble (well, O.K. 150 years ago) party has already sunk.

Arizona State Senator Lori Klein (R-of course)

I decided to call it the Richard, not necessarily after Richard Nixon, who established the principal that whatever the president of the United States does is legal, or at least pardoned, nor after ghoulish puppetmaster Richard “the dark one” Cheney, who spent his time in the vice presidency scowling and shooting people in the face, but just because it always goes to the biggest Dick.  This week, interestingly enough, the biggest Dick is a lady.  First, however, the nominees:

Presidential candidates Michele Bachman and Rick Santorum are nominated for signing that weird marriage vow, which says they will always fight against gay rights and appoint only judges who hate gay rights, but the original language also had that one really weird line about how African American babies who were born into slavery had so much of a better chance at a good life than babies today.  The line has since been removed,  in a clear move to CTPA but neither Bachman or Santorum ever actually denounced it.

However, we’re going to be hearing about Bachman and Santorum plenty for the next year or so, and they are both so easily mockable that I want to give some lesser knowns a chance, and also I, like most sports fans, despise a tie.

Then there’s Paul Ryan, who was caught red handed drinking bottles of $350 dollar wine at a posh D.C. restaurant.  Although it’s quite Marie Antoinettish of him, he probably didn’t do anything  illegal.  There’s his little financial issue, though, the way he stands to profit if the U.S. economy tanks, but he’ll probably evade prosecution on that, too, blind trusts, yadda yadda yadda.  If they couldn’t prosecute Cheney for his connections to Halliburton, this will probably come to nothing.

Our winner, however is Arizona state senator Lori Klein who, while explaining her view of gun rights to  reporter Richard Ruelas from the Arizona Republic , pulled her little pink gun from her purse and pointed the red beam of her laser sight right at his chest.

“Oh, it’s so cute,” she said.  The safety was not on because that particular gun does not actually have one but, Klein says  “I just didn’t have my hand on the trigger, god.”

Guns are not cute, not even if they are pink.  They are, even at their best, instruments of death.  Klein could have killed the reporter.  Nothing cute about it.

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