Balloon Juice » Blog Archive » Ricky don’t lose that number

Ricky don’t lose that number

By DougJ, Head of Infidelity January 3rd, 2012

He is not a representative of the corporate or financial wing of the party. Santorum certainly wants to reduce government spending (faster even than Representative Paul Ryan). He certainly wants tax reform. But he goes out of his way in his speeches to pick fights with the “supply-siders.” He scorns the Wall Street bailouts. His economic arguments are couched as values arguments: If you want to enhance long-term competitiveness, you need to strengthen families. If companies want productive workers, they need to be embedded in wholesome communities.
It’s hard to know how his campaign will fare after a late surge that he is experiencing in Iowa. These days, he is a happy and effective campaigner, but, in the past, there has been a dourness and rigidity to him. He’s been consumed by resentment over unfair media coverage. As his ally in the AIDS fight, Bono, once told a reporter, Santorum seems to have a Tourette’s syndrome that causes him to say the most unpopular thing imaginable.
But I suspect he will do better post-Iowa than most people think — before being buried under a wave of money and negative ads. And I do believe that he represents sensibility and a viewpoint that is being suppressed by the political system.

I wonder how quasi-endorsements like this—which probably doesn’t matter much but will certainly get a lot of play in Scarboughsphere—happen. Did someone in the Santorum campaign rub Bobo’s thigh under the table just so? Is this just clever attention-getting contrarianism, a centrist Hayekian counterpart to the Paultardism that is sweeping the internets?

Posted in David Brooks Giving A Seminar At The Aspen Institute

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012 at 12:52 am and is filed under David Brooks Giving A Seminar At The Aspen Institute. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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76 Responses to “Ricky don’t lose that number”

1 Mark S. Says:

Bobo drinks the Santorum

Jeebus, isn’t this supposed to be a family blog?

January 3rd, 2012 at 12:55 am

2 Villago Delenda Est Says:

You know, I can’t get why BoBo keeps being the OvenMitt of the NYT op ed page. He’s a fucking weathervane, changing constantly to cover the latest Village heartthrob.

The Google Santorum is a very accurate description of the candidate Santorum, and of BoBo.

And I do believe that he represents sensibility

This may be the single most moronic string of words BoBo has ever put together.

January 3rd, 2012 at 12:55 am

3 amk Says:

As his ally in the AIDS fight, Bono,

Really ? When did that happen ?

January 3rd, 2012 at 12:58 am

4 The Republic of Stupidity Says:

Santorum seems to have a Tourette’s syndrome that causes him to say the most unpopular thing imaginable.

And that might be the, uh, infamous ‘man-dog love’ quote?

And that resulting dust up w/ Dan Savage, and the ongoing fallout, certainly haven’t helped Li’l Ricky much either… too.. also…

Not that I, for one, feel the least bit sorry for Santorum…

January 3rd, 2012 at 12:59 am

5 RalfW Says:

He is not a representative of the corporate or financial wing of the party. Santorum certainly wants to reduce government spending

Has the Bobo not ever looked at the history of the K Street project and Santorum’s select role therein?

Does the Bobo not know that Santorum served on corporate boards, including the board of one of the most-investegated-for-fraud health care companies in America?

Of course the Bobo doesn’t know that. The Bobo don’t know jack shit.

January 3rd, 2012 at 12:59 am

6 Mark S. Says:

If companies want productive workers, they need to be embedded in wholesome communities.

Oh God, how stupid is that statement? All those jobs were outsourced because of the high divorce rate, not because corporations prefer paying ten-year-olds three dollars a day.

I’d like to strangle Bobo with a PBS totebag.

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:00 am

7 Corner Stone Says:

But what does Punchy think about this?

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:00 am

8 dance around in your bones Says:

The Late Surge of The Frothy Mix. OMFG.

Also….you don’t wanna call nobody else.

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:00 am

9 freelancer Says:

Seriously, someone in the last thread just said they see Romney as the nominee and Santorum as the Veep pick. What in the fuck? Why?! What states or demographic does having Santorum on the ticket get you?

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:02 am

10 MikeJ Says:

His economic arguments are couched as values arguments:

This is not true. He has no economic argument. Even if it were empirically proved that Heather’s two mommies produced smarter, healthier, better adjusted, kinder, (hell throw in richer and more religious) children, Santorum would still find them an abomination and try to destroy their family.

This is not economics based on “values”. This is busybodyism.

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:03 am

11 RalfW Says:

Santorum seems to have a Tourette’s syndrome that causes him to ~~say~~believe the most unpopular thing imaginable.

Fixt.

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:04 am

12 Ian Says:

@RalfW:
The Bobo knows it. Why else the endorsement?
Unless there was a million dollars involved. Irresponsible not to speculate.

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:04 am

13 hhex65 Says:

Well, I saw on Charlie Rose’s “Iowa Roundtable” that the key to obtaining an endorsement from a conservative intellectual is methamphetamine.

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:06 am

14 MikeJ Says:

@freelancer:

What states or demographic does having Santorum on the ticket get you?

The theory is it would help in picking up PA, which Santorum lost in his senate run by 18 points.

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:07 am

15 Villago Delenda Est Says:

@hhex65:

The VanderWhore guy wants cash. That way he’s got a relatively untraceable way to obtain both his meth and his rentboys.

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:08 am

16 RalfW Says:

@freelancer:

What states or demographic does having Santorum on the ticket get you?

It gets you the fundie demographic. The one that has serious doubts about voting for a Mormon.

If Santorum wins or comes second in Iowa and manages to raise a decent amount of not-Romney money in the next few weeks, it could happen.

Every other idiot in the primary is too damaged to be Veep. I haven’t seem much to make me think there’s a whole lot on the bench waiting for a “pick me, pick me!” out there in Governor land.

Or I could be totally wrong. Not like Cole and everyone else around here isn’t flamingly wrong now and again, is it?!

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:08 am

17 JGabriel Says:

DougJ @ Top:

Is this just clever attention-getting contrarianism, a centrist Hayekian counterpart to the Paultardism that is sweeping the internets?

Yes, mostly that, with a touch of the courtier’s abasement, just in case Santorum does well and Brooks needs Ricky to regard him as friendly.

.

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:09 am

18 Villago Delenda Est Says:

@dance around in your bones:

You know, you might use it when you feel better.

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:10 am

19 amk Says:

this is lil bobo sucking up to lil ricky in case he makes it.

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:12 am

20 Calouste Says:

@RalfW:

Santorum is a Catholic. He migth bring in some fundies, but I can see other fundies having problems with a Mormon/Catholic ticket.

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:13 am

21 The Dangerman Says:

@freelancer:

Seriously, someone in the last thread just said they see Romney as the nominee and Santorum as the Veep pick.

Santorum VP? Not a chance.

It’ll be someone from the South; my latest gut feel is Huckabee.

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:13 am

22 JGabriel Says:

@freelancer:

What states or demographic does having Santorum on the ticket [as VP] get you?

Pennsylvania, which is nominally a swing state. Problem is, Ricky lost his last election there by a humiliating 17.3%. So Santorum isn’t really useful, even in his home state.

.

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:15 am

23 freelancer Says:

@MikeJ:

That’s what I’m saying. You net nothing.

And as for Bobo’s line about

If companies want productive workers, they need to be embedded in wholesome communities.

That is some high-minded, sheltered in a bubble nonsense.

Taibbi:

So that IPO birthday boy is now standing up and insisting, with a straight face, that America’s problem is that compared to taxpaying billionaires like himself, poor people are not invested enough in our society’s future. Apparently, we’d all be in much better shape if the poor were as motivated as Steven Schwarzman is to make America a better place.

But it seems to me that if you’re broke enough that you’re not paying any income tax, you’ve got nothing but skin in the game. You’ve got it all riding on how well America works.

You can’t afford private security: you need to depend on the police. You can’t afford private health care: Medicare is all you have. You get arrested, you’re not hiring Davis, Polk to get you out of jail: you rely on a public defender to negotiate a court system you’d better pray deals with everyone from the same deck. And you can’t hire landscapers to manicure your lawn and trim your trees: you need the garbage man to come on time and you need the city to patch the potholes in your street.

And in the bigger picture, of course, you need the state and the private sector both to be functioning well enough to provide you with regular work, and a safe place to raise your children, and clean water and clean air.

The entire ethos of modern Wall Street, on the other hand, is complete indifference to all of these matters. The very rich on today’s Wall Street are now so rich that they buy their own social infrastructure. They hire private security, they live on gated mansions on islands and other tax havens, and most notably, they buy their own justice and their own government.

An ordinary person who has a problem that needs fixing puts a letter in the mail to his congressman and sends it to stand in a line in some DC mailroom with thousands of others, waiting for a response.

But citizens of the stateless archipelago where people like Schwarzman live spend millions a year lobbying and donating to political campaigns so that they can jump the line. They don’t need to make sure the government is fulfilling its customer-service obligations, because they buy special access to the government, and get the special service and the metaphorical comped bottle of VIP-room Cristal afforded to select customers.

But why should Chase and Goldman care what happens to those people? Do they have any skin in that game?

Of course not. We’re talking about banks that not only didn’t warn the citizens of Greece about their future debt disaster, they actively traded on that information, to make money for themselves.

People like Dimon, and Schwarzman, and John Paulson, and all of the rest of them who think the “imbeciles” on the streets are simply full of reasonless class anger, they don’t get it. Nobody hates them for being successful. And not that this needs repeating, but nobody even minds that they are rich.

What makes people furious is that they have stopped being citizens.

Most of us 99-percenters couldn’t even let our dogs leave a dump on the sidewalk without feeling ashamed before our neighbors. It’s called having a conscience: even though there are plenty of things most of us could get away with doing, we just don’t do them, because, well, we live here. Most of us wouldn’t take a million dollars to swindle the local school system, or put our next door neighbors out on the street with a robosigned foreclosure, or steal the life’s savings of some old pensioner down the block by selling him a bunch of worthless securities.

But our Too-Big-To-Fail banks unhesitatingly take billions in bailout money and then turn right around and finance the export of jobs to new locations in China and India. They defraud the pension funds of state workers into buying billions of their crap mortgage assets. They take zero-interest loans from the state and then lend that same money back to us at interest. Or, like Chase, they bribe the politicians serving countries and states and cities and even school boards to take on crippling debt deals.

Nobody with real skin in the game, who had any kind of stake in our collective future, would do any of those things. Or, if a person did do those things, you’d at least expect him to have enough shame not to whine to a Bloomberg reporter when the rest of us complained about it.

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:15 am

24 Phil Perspective Says:

@MikeJ: Exactly. He lost to a cardboard cutout. Seriously!!

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:15 am

25 Villago Delenda Est Says:

@The Dangerman:

Supposedly, Huckabee hates Romney’s guts. On both the faith and political levels.

Huckabee also has some serious fucking baggage he’s toting over the pardoning of a guy who wound up killing four cops in WA.

Also, he’s got is Faux Nooze gig to think about.

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:17 am

26 RalfW Says:

@Calouste: Oops. He just seems to have that Bachmannlike shimmer of believer that I mistook for fundie.

So maybe Dangerman @ 21 is right, Huck has the fundie bona fides.

Plus, he played bass with Ted Neugent. That’s gotta count for sumpin’, right? Right?

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:18 am

27 hhex65 Says:

@Villago Delenda Est: i can only hope everybody holds onto their receipts, there’s gonna be a lot of returns and re-gifting

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:18 am

28 cbear Says:

So, here’s my question for all you professional prognosticators out there:
If Santorum finishes outside the top 3, does that mean the gooper establishment will stick him in a jar and show him to all the fundie assholes so they can grieve properly?

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:19 am

29 Thymezone Says:

Did someone in the Santorum campaign rub Bobo’s thigh under the table just so? Is this just clever attention-getting contrarianism, a centrist Hayekian counterpart to the Paultardism that is sweeping the internets?

Nah. I think Brooks is just fucking with you.

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:20 am

30 Jim, Foolish Literalist Says:

@The Dangerman: what VDE said above. I wonder to what extent Huckabee and Pawlenty are counting on 2016. McDonnnell (sp?) VA gov is my bet for Romney’s Veep

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:21 am

31 dance around in your bones Says:

@Villago Delenda Est:

I don’t know…I might send it off in a letter to myself.

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:21 am

32 PeakVT Says:

@RalfW: Would Rickie really do much to capture any additional fundies? He’s a Catholic, which isn’t as bad as a Mormon to most fundies, but not a lot better.

ETA: Or what Calouste said.

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:21 am

33 freelancer Says:

@The Dangerman:

It’ll be someone from the South; my latest gut feel is Huckabee.

Naw, Huckabee has too much video to cut ads with as well as the fact that he pardoned a guy who ended up murdering a bunch of off-duty police in a coffee shop.

For Veep, I’m going to be bold and say Nikki Haley (The GOP gets their Southern Demographic, which is pretty much all that’s left, they get another woman so as to not be the party of the middle-aged white guy, and they get a minority so there’s teflon against the backlash of codeword racial attacks on the President.) Or it could be Rubio, for very similar reasons.

Of course I could be totally and completely dead wrong about this.

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:23 am

34 DanielX Says:

Bobo drinks the Santorum…...ewww. But wait, it gets worse:

And I do believe that he represents sensibility and a viewpoint that is being suppressed by the political system.

He must have had the word salad generator cranked to warp factor 11 to come up with that string of horseshit. In what way does Santorum’s obsession with other people’s naughty parts represent sensibility? He can paint it gold with Brooksian babble, but that’s what Ricky is best known for. As to his viewpoint being suppressed by the political system, there is a shit ton of Santorum-like freaks holding office at the federal, state and local levels, especially after 2010. There are a whole lot of Teabaggers out there who think that Little Ricky is just fine with them, and I haven’t noticed that the Tea Party viewpoint is being suppressed. David Brooks, of course, being completely unfamiliar with Fox News…

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:23 am

35 JGabriel Says:

@PeakVT:

He’s a Catholic, which isn’t as bad as a Mormon to most fundies, but not a lot better.

The fundies would prefer one of their own, granted, but a lot of them think a literally dogmatic anti-choicer is the next best thing.

.

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:25 am

36 piratedan Says:

I still say, don’t be surprised if whoever get the nomination doesn’t look at Cactus Barbie for his Veep, “successful” governor, tough on the “coloreds”, a tea party heroine and unable to string together multiple sentences in public. She’s perfect, they’ll humanize her flaws and emphasize how she’s “held the line” in trimming Az’s budget by culling education and her indifference to the poor and sickly and she’s beholden to the private prison industry. What’s not to love there for a 27%er and she’s out west, so she’ll have cred with the white supremacists and the oldsters that make up the R’s constituency out west. So she’ll play to the folks in Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado and Nevada and Montana…

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:26 am

37 kdaug Says:

Crashed the gate, doing 98, said roll these fuckers down, 10-4.

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:28 am

38 Chet Says:

I actually misread “Bobo” in the thread title as “Bono”, and I started thinking of that old urban legend.

You know, the one where the rock star collapses backstage, is taken to the hospital, and they pump a quart of Santorum out of him?

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:31 am

39 freelancer Says:

@piratedan:

Jan Brewer? No, the American public won’t vote for a candidate who has less charisma than Amy Winehouse’s rotting corpse. Plus, I bet when and if the name comes up, I’m sure Frank Luntz hears a game show buzzer in his head and this moment plays in his mind’s eye. Moar better prognostifying pleaze.

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:35 am

40 amk Says:

@piratedan: eeeww. that old hag ? not.gonna.happen. ‘thugs jack off to milf candidates only.

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:38 am

41 Ian Says:

@piratedan:
I think Jan Brewer would be a good choice for VP, but that is because I want the Democratic party to win.
Like you said she is beholden to prisons, and her support for Joe Arpaio (spelling?) generates plenty of scandals.
She might help lock up AZ, but I think that is about it. I bet that her presence on the ticket would do more to help boost Latino turnout than just about any other thing the GOP could do.

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:39 am

42 LosGatosCA Says:

You guys never heard of payola?

This could be payola on spec, if not COD.

Call it an insurance policy, rounding out the Applebee buffet portfolio. Romney, iceberg lettuce, Gingrich, pine nuts (it’s top end), Paul, turnips (it’s also expansive for all tastes), Santorum, holy water (to bless the BoBo’s), Bachmann, teabags.

Imagine this, it’s August, the convention is over, Santorum is the not so surprise pick for VP. He finished second in Iowa, was a distant, yet respectable 3rd in NH, then stole enough evangelicals in SC to cripple Gingrich. After SC he withdraws and throws all his support to Romney.

Ricky reminds Romney that little Ricky actually runs ahead of Obama in PA polls. All those Pennsytucky voters are off the commie Kenyan and he probably already wins Florida without Rubio.

Romney invites him on the ticket and then says we need your first interview to be a sharp contrast with the Palin/Couric disaster. Someone with PBS/NY Times cred but friendly.

Voila, Brooks small investment pays off.

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:41 am

43 piratedan Says:

@freelancer: well feel free to nominate your own, I only have Arizona’s best interests at heart :-). With all due respect, looking at the field that they have in place to secure the nomination, they have to be looking at someone from out west (imho) to balance the ticket to try and deliver those states where they can find a wedge issue (like immigration). Based on your astute observation of Cactus Barbie’s charisma, that still places her ahead of the demented elf (Paul), the nonentity (Huntsman) and on an equal level with that shoe scrapping from Pennsylvania.

Who else would “balance” the ticket? Rubio? Hatch? Kyl? Palin? Ensign? Walker? Thune? Maybe Huckabee, but he has a cozy gig with Faux, why give it up? Who else would join this fiasco other than someone who has zippity do dah left to lose. Besides, no one pays much attention to what the Veeps say anyways do they? Hell proof of that is people still voting in R primaries isn’t it?

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:45 am

44 jl Says:

@Villago Delenda Est:

“he represents sensibility”

you do not get Bobo’s subtle references. The S man reps

sense and sensibility
pride and prejudice!
high and low
sturm und drang
Weber and Fields,

and from there I think it goes to

Barnum and Bailey,

and

cash and carry
for
tweedledee and tweedledum

or something. I have let my bobobology get rusty, but it goes something like that.

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:49 am

45 middlewest Says:

Santorum seems to have a Tourette’s syndrome that causes him to say the most unpopular thing imaginable.

I wish the NYT had some standards about insulting disabled people like this.

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:51 am

46 Villago Delenda Est Says:

@jl:

dumb and dumber?

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:51 am

47 Roger Moore Says:

@Mark S.:

All those jobs were outsourced because of the high divorce rate, not because corporations prefer paying ten-year-olds three dollars a day.

No, you’re not reading the real message. The real message is that the boss needs to invade your private life in order to ensure the company stays competitive. Productive workers can only come from healthy families, with Santorum defining what constitutes a healthy family. If your family does not match the approved model, you can be fired for dragging the company down.

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:55 am

48 jl Says:

@Villago Delenda Est:

puhleez, no.

dumb and dumber is too vulgar and degraded by DFH ever since the 60s in the cash and carry for tweedledee and tweedledum realms of our VS Bobos.

Mind your manners.

January 3rd, 2012 at 1:56 am

49 Bubblegum Tate Says:

Wait, does Santorum actually “pick fights with supply siders,” or is that just Bobo bullshit?

January 3rd, 2012 at 2:06 am

50 Mnemosyne Says:

If we’re tossing money into the dead pool of Republican veep nominees, I’m going with longshot Haley Barbour. Fundie Southerner to balance out New England Mormon. Plus Romney is already dogwhistling like mad, so don’t be surprised if they go for the full-on “Get the Nigger Out of the White House” campaign.

Slightly off-topic, but since Kola Noscopy has taken it upon himself to monitor my posting habits here, I will be posting at least one comment to every thread for the next 24 hours just so he doesn’t have a dearth of things to whine about.

January 3rd, 2012 at 2:23 am

51 MikeJ Says:

@Bubblegum Tate: There is footage on youtube of him hanging out outside the Von Mises Institute giving noogies to nerds.

Actually I think your second guess was right.

January 3rd, 2012 at 2:23 am

52 dance around in your bones Says:

@Mnemosyne: just pie de little fucker

January 3rd, 2012 at 2:27 am

53 jl Says:

@Bubblegum Tate:

OK, look, you parse things in an uncivil way. Attend, please to the following classical syllogism:

non Santorum GOP candidates in the GOP primary are supply siders

Santorum picks fights with other GOP candidates in the GOP primary

Thus,
Santorum picks fights with supply siders.

QED

You Keynesian liberals do not know math, my sir.

Not technically untrue at all!

January 3rd, 2012 at 2:27 am

54 Yutsano Says:

@Mnemosyne:

Slightly off-topic, but since Kola Noscopy has taken it upon himself to monitor my posting habits here, I will be posting at least one comment to every thread for the next 24 hours just so he doesn’t have a dearth of things to whine about.

I sooo less than three you. :) And every time I see you I kick myself for not doing the internship. I even got Florida.

@dance around in your bones: I LIKE PIE!!

January 3rd, 2012 at 2:29 am

55 Mnemosyne Says:

@dance around in your bones:

I should, but it’s still so funny to me to watch him get his panties in a wad when people talk back to him using the same language he uses to them. It’s like the purest example of privilege online that I’ve ever seen, and I can’t stop looking.

January 3rd, 2012 at 2:31 am

56 Mnemosyne Says:

@Yutsano:

Did you watch the marching band festival that is the Rose Parade? I liked the one from Japan, myself.

ETA: And having the final float feature the stuffed corpses of Roy Rogers’ horse and dog was good ol’ Southern Californian bad taste at a purity I have rarely seen on television.

January 3rd, 2012 at 2:32 am

57 dance around in your bones Says:

@Mnemosyne: Well, party on! That dude is just useless to me….pie, Pie, PIE!

Plus, I have contributed to the pie comments, and I get a little frisson of authorial pride when I see one of my contributions show up in his (gawd, does it sound weird to say mouth?) .....comment space.

January 3rd, 2012 at 2:37 am

58 LosGatosCA Says:

Here’s the stuff people are feeding Bobo – from late July, 2011:

“President Obama has seen his popularity dip significantly in the pivotal swing state of Pennsylvania and is now tied in matchups with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., according to a new Quinnipiac University poll released early Tuesday.

A majority of Keystone State voters now disapproves of the job Obama is doing as president. Just 43 percent of voters approve of his job performance, while 54 percent disapprove. That marks a significant decline from mid-June, when voters were split evenly on Obama.

Romney holds a 44-42 percent lead over Obama, reversing a seven-point edge for the president in June. Santorum now trails Obama, 45 percent to 43 percent; in June, he trailed by 11 points.

Santorum’s mini-surge comes from his base in western Pennsylvania. He posts a 24-point lead in the southwest portion of the state, and he also leads by double-digits in the central and northwest sections of the state, nearly overcoming Obama’s leads in the eastern half of the Keystone State, including Philadelphia and its suburbs.”

You can take the Bobo column as a heavy confirmation in Romney at the top of the ticket according to CW and the action now moves to the lower rung.

Gingrich – too egotistical, and verbally incontinent, Biden on steroids
Bachmann – too Palinesque
Paul – the bad he’s a nut, the good he’s not a sell out, he’ll go independent first
Huntsman – two Mormons???
Perry – too Palinesque, Rich Lowry even gets starbursts

Rubio – he’ll get fragged by the birthers, plus FL is going Republican anyway
Brewer – too Palinesque, Arizona going Republican anyway

That leaves

Santorum (could get PA and K Street)
McDonnell (Could swing VA, fundraising?
Pawlenty (can he fundraise? does he have a pulse?)
Christie (he might do it and get NJ, but he might not)

The thing folks never understood about Quayle was that he was a made man in Midwestern Republican circles and he just vacuumed up cash every visit back to Indiana, Michigan, Ohio. etc. He was the W prototype (but without the Cheney backup) who funneled the money and could be trusted to what he was told. Santorum could play this role very well with K Street.

January 3rd, 2012 at 2:39 am

59 dance around in your bones Says:

@Yutsano: I like-a de pie, too ;)

January 3rd, 2012 at 2:40 am

60 Villago Delenda Est Says:

@LosGatosCA:

Interesting, but again still highly whimsical in its certitude. Those numbers will transform with proper ad buys and content. For one thing, the Obama people know how to go after OvenMitt, and they certainly can go after Santorum who got his ass kicked royally out of the Senate in ‘06.

Our resident Romneyfan’s idiot blather aside, Romney has just too many easily exploitable vulnerabilities, plus HAL 9000 has more charisma than he does.

January 3rd, 2012 at 2:47 am

61 Yutsano Says:

@Mnemosyne:

Did you watch the marching band festival that is the Rose Parade?

This was a travel day for me. Plus when you’ve done it twice it kinda loses its luster. They do some really interesting band work in Japan though. Usually they’re honour groups that meet just to do this then disband. I saw a few of those during line-up. The kids are THRILLED to be there, mostly because they get a tour of both LA and Disneyland.

January 3rd, 2012 at 2:50 am

62 FlipYrWhig Says:

@Villago Delenda Est: I’ve heard both Romneytron and HAL sing. Hal does a pretty solid “Daisy.” Romney does a weirdly stilted “Who let the dogs out?”

January 3rd, 2012 at 2:53 am

63 Anne Laurie Says:

@The Dangerman:

It’ll be someone from the South; my latest gut feel is Huckabee.

Well, the Herminator™ is still available. On a somewhat-more-serious note, Guv Goodhair has made it very clear he will whore himself for money, and if there’s one thing Willard has in abundance, it’s money.

I still don’t think Rubio’s gonna jump aboard the S.S. Clusterfvck this year—he’s saving his electoral virginity for 2016. And the GOP voters who shy away from pulling the lever for a godless Mormon are, I suspect, not going to fall in love with an Indian-American woman, no matter how bidniz-friendly Gov. Haley can demonstrate herself to be…

January 3rd, 2012 at 3:02 am

64 Yutsano Says:

@Anne Laurie:

And the GOP voters who shy away from pulling the lever for a godless Mormon are, I suspect, not going to fall in love with an Indian-American woman

I guess this rules out Piyush as well.

January 3rd, 2012 at 3:06 am

65 LosGatosCA Says:

Huckabee might go for being the VP. His window of materialistic vulnerability shrinks to 90 days. He seems to be very motivated to keep his Faux News contract. If he wins he’s gonna make a lot more money than his contract at Faux calls for now. If he loses, he gets a bump at Faux News, plus more speaking gigs, he’s whole in another 90 days and on another salary plane after that.

I don’t know about his corporate fundraising abilities and Arkansas is going GOP anyway. But with the Theocons and Faux News viewers he’s credible.

Haley Barbour is caricature of a fat cat Republican and Boss Hawg. No charisma with non-Republican voters. And Mississippi will be carried by a black man when the new hated minority is green men from outer space. So no incremental electoral votes.

Santorum is well placed along all 3 dimensions if he finishes well in Iowa.

1. He’s a plausible contenda at the margins – mini gravitas and he hates teh gey
2. He’s well connected to K Street for fundraising
3. He could help Romney in PA

He has no real downside with the base. And he doesn’t need an upside anywhere except PA. If he gets picked, Romney thinks he can take or be very, very, competitive in PA.

I should also say that if unemployment is down to 8% by June reported in July Obama ‘cleans their clock’ by winning 272-290 electoral votes.

January 3rd, 2012 at 3:12 am

66 Anne Laurie Says:

@Yutsano: Well, Jindal’s got ba… a Y chromosome, which the fundies will count in his favor; but on the other hand, he’s as paleo-Catholic as Santorum, which will not.

In my fantasy world, Willard will fall in love with Carli Fiorina the way McCain was in love with Lieberman—not enough to get her past the nominating committee, but publicly enough to (a) scare the base and (b) make him cranky enough to nuke the ticket with another Palin-equivalent when he’s told he can’t have his soul(less)mate.

January 3rd, 2012 at 3:15 am

67 LosGatosCA Says:

@Villago Delenda Est:

I’m just explaining why I think BoBo wrote his column. Not necessarily why I think Santorum will get the VP slot. I do think it’s plausible and I think BoBo thinks its plausible as well.

I don’t think BoBo wrote the column to give Santorum help to beat Romney or that he thinks he has a chance to do it.

Could be wrong though.

January 3rd, 2012 at 3:27 am

68 Villago Delenda Est Says:

@LosGatosCA:

Yeah, well BoBo is always whimsical in his certitude about things. Not as side splittingly hilarious as that utter assclown Kristol, but amusing enough.

January 3rd, 2012 at 3:31 am

69 Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal Says:

if there is a santorum surge of any measurable volume, it will be the fundies of FotF he has been courting not his relationship to the white middle and lower middle class. if anything bobo is trying to pre-spin the santormentum as being something other than the fundies saying hell no to romney.

January 3rd, 2012 at 3:41 am

70 BC Says:

Don’t give it more worth than it has. This:

As his ally in the AIDS fight, Bono, once told a reporter…

Is simply brooks remembering wistfully that one time he and Bono were in the same room together in 2006. Bono and Santorum are allies just as much as Bono and I are, in that we both think people should not get AIDS. Does anyone really believe that Bono:

But there’s one church that if I was living close by I’d definitely be in the congregation. It’s in San Francisco—Glide Memorial. Rev. Cecil Williams there looks after the homeless, gays, straights; he marched with Martin Luther King, he’s funny as hell—pardon the pun—and you can get an HIV test during the service. Now that’s my kind of church.

and Santorum:

[I have] a problem with homosexual acts, as I would with what I would consider to be acts outside of traditional heterosexual relationships . . . if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [gay] sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery.

Really have anything to do with one another? We can again thank brooks for unnecessarily ‘frothing’ up the blogobubble over santorum.

January 3rd, 2012 at 5:07 am

71 Triassic Sands Says:

And I do believe that he represents sensibility and a viewpoint that is being suppressed by the political system.

Yeah, Bobo, the values wingers have really been silenced in the American political debate.

January 3rd, 2012 at 5:50 am

72 Schlemizel Says:

Did someone in the Santorum campaign rub Bobo’s thigh under the table just so? Is this just clever attention-getting contrarianism, a centrist Hayekian counterpart to the Paultardism that is sweeping the internets?

Nope – bobo is just limbering up for what is to come this summer. He knows he is going to have to explain a way a lot of ugly shit in order to convince the great unwashed to support Bozo® for President. That is not a task one should attempt without some good stretching before hand lest you pull something from the strain.

January 3rd, 2012 at 8:41 am

73 Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937 Says:

If companies want productive workers, they need to be embedded in wholesome communities.

The fundamental hypocrisy of Republicans/conservatives is that their policies destroy communities and families. Did the factory that employed generations of your extended family just move to China? Then uproot your kids and move to where there is a job. Or better yet, since you can’t sell your house, go work hours away and come home on the weekend.

January 3rd, 2012 at 8:57 am

74 Bubblegum Tate Says:

@jl:

Hahaha! Expertly played.

January 3rd, 2012 at 11:23 am

75 Hungry Joe Says:

Brooks opens the column by carpet-bombing readers’ brains with phonus-bolonus crapola explaining why white working-class people love Republicans::

They … sense that the nation has gone astray: marriage is in crisis; the work ethic is eroding; ... the news media sends out messages that make it harder to raise decent kids.”

No comment necessary, I hope.

January 3rd, 2012 at 11:53 am

76 The Ancient Randonneur Says:

Oy. I just clicked over from Spreading Santorum to read the latest. Your opening line … well, you know.

January 3rd, 2012 at 12:01 pm

Ricky don’t lose that number

76 Responses to “Ricky don’t lose that number”

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