Erick Erickson Does Not {Heart} Santorum
Via Jonathan Bernstein at WaPo’s Plum Line, a little sweet schadenfreude for those of us in the Reality-Based Community tribe [RedState link]:
No Surprise, Iowa Social Conservatives Are About To Shoot Us All in the Foot Again
I’m hearing several campaigns and external pollsters have a surge for Rick Santorum. With the National Review folks fawning over him again, it probably means a surge is real and any surge by Rick Santorum is another factor ensuring Mitt Romney wins the nomination…
Santorum has no money or organization outside of Iowa and cannot win the nomination, but Iowans love a guy who sucks up to them and makes sure they know he loves the babies…
Let’s remember Rick Santorum could not even win re-election in his home state of Pennsylvania…
But most damning to me is Rick Santorum’s actual record in the Senate and House of Representatives. I keep hearing him say he was such a paragon of fiscal conservative virtue, when he was anything but that. He was as go along to get along as all the other Republicans who led to our downfall.
Making Santorum worse, he was always the guy saying, “I had to do this, but wait till I get to leadership. I’ll be there for you in leadership.” It’s what he is saying now. Only it isn’t true and never was…
[T]he Santorum I have observed for a decade is the Rick Santorum on the campaign trail now — a guy trying to have it both ways through too clever by half stunts like voting against the minimum wage while authoring a bill to raise the minimum wage so no one can pin him down on his record.
Rick Santorum is more conservative than Mitt Romney. He is a strong social conservative and has taken a lot of bullets from the left because of his stand. But he is not as strong a fiscal conservative as he claims and the real issue here is social conservatives in Iowa risk Mitt Romney’s election by supporting a guy who cannot get traction or money outside of Iowa.
Rick Santorum will not be the nominee. That’s the reality. But his rise hurts Bachmann, Gingrich, and Perry in Iowa — all of whom have better organizations and better shots beyond Iowa.
The first few dozen comments seem to be split between “sensible” people urging their fellows to shut up and vote Romney, as the best of the available bad choices, and those determined to defend their various alternative candidates… although the only one who really seems to gin up the shouters, both pro & con, is Ron Paul. Rather like the mirror image of some not-conservative blog I follow on a much more regular basis.
I have trouble not reading this as “Yeah, yeah, sanctity of slut-punishing, opposite marriage, yada yada yada—would you guys shut up with the Jeebus talk and concentrate on picking a candidate who might actually be electable? We’ve got a very nice Home Owners’ Association to run here, and those of us who truly understand the burdens of service have agreed (however regretfully) that Willard Romney is the best man available for our board chair.”
If the Fiscal Conservatives and the Social Conservatives are coming to blows even before their first caucus, I do believe that this is Good News for President Obama.
I’m surprised that Ewick bin Ewick mentioned Gingrich there, isn’t he also one of those nasty Catholic types?
December 29th, 2011 at 2:37 am
I feel Ewick’s pain.
The feeling is delicious.
Suffer, you vile asshole. Suffer.
December 29th, 2011 at 2:38 am
Eric lurves him some Perry machismo. Now he has santorum all over him.
December 29th, 2011 at 2:41 am
Is there anyone Erick Erickson does {heart}? Every post of his I see is about how some conservative or another has let him down.
Erickson fancies himself some sort of right-wing tactician. Well, Mr. Tactician, let’s see what you do when you’re out of ammo and all your generals are stark-raving mad. It’ll be fun to watch him and his ilk squirm their way through this mess.
December 29th, 2011 at 3:02 am
Also, as ably chronicled by Roy Edroso, RedState endorsed Rick Perry just a week ago: http://alicublog.blogspot.com/.....3126792749 And they’re worried about some other Republicans supporting unelectable candidates? Oh Erick, you over-inflated buffoon.
December 29th, 2011 at 3:05 am
Watching a rerun of the Ed Show. He was talking to a Ron Paul supporter who said half the politicians should be hung for treason for not following the constitution. He paused awkwardly before he said it. Like he stopped himself from saying what he was really thinking. Bet he wanted to say politicians needed to be shot for not following the constitution.
How can they be talking about Ron Paul on MSNBC without talking about the newsletters?
December 29th, 2011 at 3:09 am
Anything the Growing Old Prematurely party does these days is good for Obama.
At this point it really doesn’t matter who gets the nomination. There is more than enough video of the human weather vane Romney to bury him in a general several times over so he’s not threat. The elites know this which is why they are trying to set up this shill 3rd candidate to try drain off votes from Obama.
December 29th, 2011 at 3:12 am
Ewick is adorable, if you think the know it all douchebag at the sports bar or in the stands at the football game yelling about how bad the coaching is (Put in the other quarterback, God!) is cute. As far as I can tell, that blank-faced hunk of cracker resentment knows precisely shit about shit, and he somehow gets a gig at CNN and expects someone, anyone to take him seriously. How he isn’t laughed off of every public forum he attempts to participate in remains beyond me.
December 29th, 2011 at 3:15 am
Just think of the Ewick as the heir to the fortunes of William The Bloody.
Doomed to be paid handsomely and respected in the Village for being wrong about every single thing.
December 29th, 2011 at 3:28 am
Obama wins the Dakotas and Montana. Loses Missouri.
December 29th, 2011 at 3:42 am
@Mouse Tolliver: I don’t even have cable, and I know Rachel Maddow has been presenting them in her customary give-them-enough-rope manner.
December 29th, 2011 at 3:45 am
Nobody {hearts} santorum. It ruins your bedsheets.
December 29th, 2011 at 3:46 am
@losgatosca: Yeah that’s about right. Kristol is an older rich kid version of exactly the same batshit ignorance. Though Bill may be a lot less concerned about the domestic non economic stuff (fetuses, brown people, teh ghey, and Jeebus) than Son of Erick. Otherwise, different package, same product.
December 29th, 2011 at 3:50 am
@losgatosca:
For a moment I thought you were making a Buffy reference.
December 29th, 2011 at 3:57 am
Nelson is in my head again pointing and laughing.
December 29th, 2011 at 6:24 am
So erickkkson is now into trash-talking his own batshit crazy party’s batshit base too ?
Sweet schadenfreude. Karma is such a sweet little bitch.
December 29th, 2011 at 6:25 am
The problem is that the candidates have tried too hard to make government work! Look at the Tea Party reps in the House… that’s how to win people over!
December 29th, 2011 at 6:31 am
4th comment in over there:
lol.
What, was it yesterday that Frum was pontificating on how Romney will behave when he has both chambers of congress controlled by Republicans?
I guess Republicans shouldn’t even haveta turn out to vote next year. They got it all wrapped up already.
December 29th, 2011 at 6:50 am
Yeah, the wingers have a problem—you need to support someone. Also, it’s news to me that Santorum isn’t actually pure enough politically to satisfy the true believers. That’s somewhere between weird and astonishing.
December 29th, 2011 at 6:56 am
@Spaghetti Lee:
Send in Captain Willard.
December 29th, 2011 at 7:09 am
Snort. The most trusted name in spew?
Meh. I hope you are right but let’s be real, the Republicans are the party that falls in line, not falls in love. The “patriot pastors” will whip their flocks into submission with lies about Obama supporting post-birth abortion (remember that one from 2008?) and fearmongering about terra terra terra.
December 29th, 2011 at 7:16 am
@Southern Beale: Erick will be the first to fall in line. After the Tarp vote he was going to take down the GA senators that voted for it and quickly changed his tune. He’s a phony.
December 29th, 2011 at 7:38 am
@JPL:
A phony and a coward.
December 29th, 2011 at 7:45 am
OT, but pretty funny, IMO:
http://www.gocomics.com/brewsterrockit/
December 29th, 2011 at 7:55 am
@MattF: Also OT: A Mr. Rolando Biscocho Castillo has offered me a legitimate transaction of $8.5 million. Is it my lucky day or what?
December 29th, 2011 at 8:02 am
Their ignorance and arrogance knows no limit. I thought 4 years of Boy Blunder would break the spell, boy was I wrong. Then came the second 4 years and it finally looked like reality had seeped into their tiny world; it did not last a year.
The flat out refusal to live in the real world is a hallmark of the current Republican religion. Its not politics any longer but faith that drives them. The have to take everything on faith because all the evidence, all the reality of the world around them, shows them they are wrong.
I don’t think there is any hope of ever saving this country from these people. The Titanic is sinking & they want to drill holes in the hull on the belief it will let water out. After drilling thousands of holes & seeing the water coming in faster they still believe the answer is more holes.
December 29th, 2011 at 8:03 am
How do you stop surging santorum ?
Depends.
December 29th, 2011 at 8:05 am
I’m visiting my parents for the holidays, and over breakfast this morning, the radio news announced a poll showing the Santorum Surge™. My Dad said ‘who?’, and in my explanation, I made the mistake of mentioning that he had a Google problem, so to speak.
So.
How does one explain, while eating breakfast with my late-sixties parents, what said Google problem consists of? Fun times.
December 29th, 2011 at 8:18 am
Eric (nee Bloaty the Pizza Hog) Erickson is reaping what he and others of his ilk have sown; what we see here is his utter horror at the discovery that getting the chaos he wished for is not nearly so pleasing as his pursuit of it. Also, to hell with TeaNN.
December 29th, 2011 at 8:29 am
Chuckle.
December 29th, 2011 at 8:45 am
@Comrade Nimrod Humperdink:
CNN gave Erik a gig because CNN management was concerned about the supposed leakage of their conservative-leaning viewership to FOX, and they wanted to make a decisive move to demonstrate their network wasn’t a “liberal media establishment” mouthpiece. Ironically, the perceived criticism of conservatives is half-right: CNN’s news staffing isn’t full of “liberals”, but it indeed is full of Washington establishment tools like Wolf Blitzer. CNN has become an “establishment” mouthpiece, just not the “liberal establishment” mouthpiece.
December 29th, 2011 at 8:53 am
they deserve all these lowndown mofos
December 29th, 2011 at 8:55 am
And the world doesn’t so much as spare a shrug.
December 29th, 2011 at 9:17 am
Der Spiegel on the current crop rethug candidates.
A great read.
December 29th, 2011 at 9:30 am
@dmsilev:
I can never tell if they don’t know, if they know but are pretending it doesn’t matter, or if they know and think they are being nasty or clever (or both). It doesn’t help that none of the networks, as far as I know, have even acknowledged Santorum’s Google problem.
December 29th, 2011 at 9:35 am
When Erickson claims “Rick Santorum is more conservative than Mitt Romney. He is a strong social conservative and has taken a lot of bullets from the left because of his stand,” it is so counter-intuitive that he chooses the rhetoric of armed combat to describe the way Santorum’s own rhetoric was used to humiliate him. It wasn’t combat. It was perfect and delicious irony. Another thing: it’s a long sell to claim that Santorum actually lived in Pennsylvania, the state he claimed to represent. For the better part of four years of his six, he owned, schooled his children, and spent 100 percent of his time living in Loudon COunty, VA, while he rented his former PA home. He’s always been a shady luggage salesman, a sketchy Buster Bluth
like pseudoadult. It’s really a shame that he wasn’t drawn to another graduate program, like drumming or cartography. His cliched Freudian repression and gregarious weird little “Teacher, teacher, I know the answer to this one, too!” sure don’t help him except among the most gullible rubes: the resentful, rural, angry Christian base.December 29th, 2011 at 9:35 am
I was having some trouble parsing the EE quote, so out of curiosity, I pasted it into an online writing assessment tool. It says eighth-grade level, with a “readability index” of 45/100.
December 29th, 2011 at 9:40 am
@Ken: It’d be pretty difficult for any of the mainstream networks to cover that story without running way way afoul of their on-air decency standards.
So, instead they do a story on Santorum, an entire country says ‘who?’ and heads for Google…
December 29th, 2011 at 9:41 am
@amk: From Der Spiegel article (my highlighting):
O wad some Power the giftie gie us /
To see oursels as ithers see us!
December 29th, 2011 at 9:45 am
Of course ol’ Erik never notices that one of the main hurdles for Santorum is that the man is an idiot. I don’t just mean he picks unworkable positions on issues—-I mean the man is incapable of complex thought.
December 29th, 2011 at 9:49 am
@Woodrowfan: That’s never been a disqualifier for Republicans before.
December 29th, 2011 at 10:18 am
FTR, Rick Santorum’s homestate was not Pennsylvania.
That’s where he worked.
He lived in virginia.
That was arguably part of the problem.
December 29th, 2011 at 10:25 am
From the link:
I don’t think Erik knows much about honey imports (Chinese have been trying to dump crappy honey on us for years, even going so far as to try to sneak it in through third countries.) I guess he loves China more than the U.S.? What am I missing here?
December 29th, 2011 at 10:27 am
Erickson thinks Bachmann would be a more electable candidate than Santorum?
December 29th, 2011 at 10:49 am
Oh dear. An intra-party feud.
December 29th, 2011 at 10:52 am
@MattF:
Yeah apparently being a senator in a majority party who has to vote for things like constant debt ceiling increases and government handouts (medicare part D) all the while keeping the costs of the Iraq war off the books…
Any sane person would judge Santorum to be an out of control government spender who shouldn’t be trusted with your grandmothers penny jar. This statement should be true of all republicans.
December 29th, 2011 at 11:12 am
It was inevitable that Frothy the Ghomeman would get his turn as the AntiMitt. Rachel Maddow ha some ‘splaying to do.
December 29th, 2011 at 11:12 am
@dmsilev: How did you finesse it?
December 29th, 2011 at 11:20 am
@dmsilev:
Had the same problem
1) finish breakfast
2) explain the concept of eponyms, a word named after a person (i.e Boycott)
3) describe what Santorum did, what Savage did in response, and how it caught on. Don’t tell what ‘it’ is
4) Ask if they really want to know, ‘cuz it’s really disgusting’
5) if yes, tell
December 29th, 2011 at 11:31 am
Santorum can’t get traction? Who knew?
December 29th, 2011 at 5:43 pm