(Tom Toles via GoComics.com)
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So, Rick Santorum seems to have decided his best chance for the GOP nomination lies (in every sense) at the intersection of Elmer Gantry and It Can’t Happen Here. (Retro! it’s very hipster, they say.) Or perhaps the pure thin mountain air brings out something in his shriveled, Opus Dei- ridden soul. Paul Constant at Seattle’s The Stranger reports:
The ghost of Richard Nixon lingered over the Rick Santorum rally in Tacoma tonight. Washington State Republican Chairman Kirby Wilbur invoked Nixon’s name during Santorum’s introduction—Nixon was the last Republican presidential nominee to visit Washington before a caucus, Wilbur said—and Santorum launched into his remarks by invoking the 1960 presidential election as a similar moment of discord in our nation’s history.
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Dick Nixon was an appropriate figure to invoke, because like Nixon’s presidency, Santorum’s speech was plagued from beginning to end by angry young protesters. Members of Occupy Tacoma embedded in the crowd mic checked Santorum on several different occasions. (Occupy Tacoma headquarters were just 500 feet away from the rally site.) Marriage equality activists started a pro-gay-marriage chant that silenced the candidate for something like two minutes, and they encouraged passing traffic to honk in support of marriage equality and taxing the wealthy, adding to the general cacophony. The concrete plaza in front of the Washington State History Museum entrance, with its sweeping coliseum-style seating surrounded on two sides by abrupt, tall brick walls, was a perfect echo chamber, muddling both Santorum’s speech and the shouts of protesters into one dull, angry roar. (It didn’t help, either, that Santorum was lit from below, to eerie effect, during the speech, or that the podium in which he was speaking was directly above a pair of doors marked, creepily, EDUCATION CENTER.)
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Not that the protesters were the only angry people there. Santorum drew a crowd of hundreds of angry Washingtonians to the event. One brave man carrying an anti-Santorum sign (“FREEDOM FROM RELIGION,” on one side, “Stop the Drama, Re-elect Obama”) was followed around the rally by several Santorum supporters pinching their noses and miming as though they were swatting away flies. “I can’t stand the smell of this guy,” one fly-swatter said, adding, “it’s like he’s got garbage in his pockets.” An old woman told the nose-pinchers, as she squeezed past the whole scene, “Watch out for the maggots.” Another woman clucked her tongue, and told her friends, “If you’re an atheist, you’ll just believe in anything.”…
Shades of Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland! Ed Kilgore at the Washington Monthly fisks another Santorum rally, and complains:
I don’t know if it’s because he doesn’t have enough money to devise a more subtle message, or because he fears the attacks on him as insufficiently conservative. Or conversely, maybe his poll numbers have gone to his head and he truly thinks extremism in the defense of liberty can be no vice. But based on this press report from a rally in Idaho, Rick Santorum is really losing all inhibitions in expressing the rawest right-wing sentiments on the campaign trail. Gaze in awe and wonder:
Rick Santorum had a Boise crowd in his hands Tuesday, affirming his faith, ripping his GOP opponents and President Obama, and setting high stakes….The crowd was a big part of the event — booing U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., calling Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg “traitor!” and reminding Santorum that American revolutionaries had more than muskets…
Seriously, folks, Ronald Reagan didn’t talk this way. Barry Goldwater went about half this far and was eternally labeled the most extremist major-party candidate in U.S. history. If in 2008 Barack Obama had used this sort of rhetoric about the electoral stakes of victory or defeat, or the nature of the opposition, he would have been accused of introducing Kenyan Mau Mau tactics to American politics. Even now, he’s called a dangerous demagogue for suggesting Wall Street was partially responsible for the recession, or that the richest people on the planet ought to pay higher tax rates than their employees.
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Perhaps Santorum’s rhetoric will prove his undoing. If Mitt Romney had an ounce of real courage, he’d call him on it…
But then, as Charlie Pierce at Esquire explained in his own critique of the Boise rally:
… This is a speech that should disqualify Santorum not only from any serious consideration as president of the United States, it should be enough to send him so far into the fringes of American politics that he’d have to dial 1 to contact Fred Karger. Within this speech, there are a couple of dozen potential attack ads for any candidate willing to run against Santorum on the Not Insane, Not A Dick platform. This is a speech that has presented Willard Romney with an entire school of very big fish in very small barrels. But he has put himself into a position where he cannot defend the actual science of global warming. He cannot plausibly defend the facts behind the history of the country. He cannot plausibly defend even in a pale and nervous fashion the privacy rights of 51 percent of the American population. But, because of the candidate he’s made of himself, Romney cannot plausibly stand for reason, or even for sanity.
Perhaps there is some consolation in the thought that this is, no lie, Good News for President Obama. As Frank Rich muses at NYMag‘s Daily Intel,
The longer the GOP race continues, the more Romney mimics Santorum’s positions on these issues. No matter who the candidate is, it looks like Obama has the gift of running against the anti-contraception party. The only thing that could be better is if the GOP decides to bring back Prohibition.
zadura
Frank Rich and I were on the same wavelength. With Prohibition, you could at least excuse the misguided sentiment. Anti-birth control? I can’t fathom who would carry that flag into modern society.
Mary G
Almost sounds too good to be true, and probably is. Bought gas this afternoon at $4.03 a gallon, went to work for 4 hours and came home and it was at $4.07. A lot of cranky people came through our store talking about this. Zandar was posting about this earlier, I didn’t have time to read the comments, but it worries me that it will drag the economy down and people will blame the president. Now I am going to bed.
Nancy Irving
Only a month ago R-Money was responding to a debate question about contraception by saying, why are you asking me about contraception, everyone is okay with contraception, nobody is trying to ban contraception.
What a difference a month makes. (Or in R-Money’s case, a week…or a day…or an hour…)
eemom
A veritable masterpiece of cut-and-pastery. There really should be a new category of blog award: Most Posts With Least Authorship. You’d OWN it.
Another Halocene Human
Why wouldn’t Santorum double down on the tea party craziness? It made Paul Ryan a star. I think he’s jealous.
amk
limpaauugghh – this is all an obama plot against lil ricky.
from the comments
I love it that the kenyan shoshalist muslin manchurian is messing the minds of these minions while actually doing nothing.
kdaug
R-R-Rick c-c-coming to k-k-kill me?
Another Halocene Human
About Opus Dei: the first I ever heard of them I was living Maryland and I was told they were a cult, and the evidence for this was that the cult chose who the cult members marry (which of course is against Catholic doctrine). Is this true?
Also, too, wasn’t Rick Santorum’s wife previously married? Is she a widow? If you are a widow technically you can remarry, after all Jesus said there would be no marriage in Heaven. Yet, there is sometimes stigma against this. Unavira (a one man woman) is an old Italian concept which carried over into Catholicism.
Did Santorum get into Opus Dei before or after he went to Washington? They are big in DC. Catholic version of “The Family”? Useful idiots for il Papa? I don’t know.
Citizen_X
I think Rih wants us to be nuclear suicide bombers, or something. From the Washington Monthly link:
So…M.A.D. doesn’t apply to us either, because we’re a Gawd-fearing’ nation, so we’re ready to launch the Apocalypse?
amk
Changi airport
amk
‘Linsanity’ hits Taiwan
magurakurin
@amk:
another winner from Rushbo
Of course Rush doesn’t worry about that because underage Dominican boys can’t get pregnant anyhow.
Josemaria Escriva
Francisco Franco IS NOT DEAD!
WereBear
Rush is rotting like a bad banana. He just lost the under 30’s.
Xenos
@magurakurin: Reminds me of an old Woody Allen joke – in his persona as a nebbish he complains that it was difficult to get a divorce because NY law required that there be adultery. Luckily for him, his wife went out and committed adultery so he did not have to.
Xenos
@WereBear: Given the unemployment rate for the under-30s, it is not clear how than can be responsibly having children these days.
the farmer
And the over 50’s who wish they were under 30 again.
*
JPL
@WereBear: He’s just jealous because there are not enough blue p.ills available in the world to help him get it up.
Rita R.
Rush has been married, what, three or four times? And no kids, right? Hmmm….
But then again, maybe climbing into bed with that disgusting pig is birth control enough.
JPL
Little Ricky is coming to a town north of me on Sunday according to the AJC. “Santorum will keynote a “God and Country” rally at First Redeemer Church in Cumming at 6:30 p.m. Sunday”
Raven
You hear Romney talking about the guy who lived “across the hall” in high school?
“Cranbrook Schools is a private, PK–12 school located on a 319-acre (1.29 km2) campus in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. The schools comprise a co-educational elementary school, a middle school with separate schools for boys and girls, and a co-educational high school with boarding facilities”
burnspbesq
@Another Halocene Human:
Opus Dei makes a great all-purpose villain because relatively little is known about it and because its name sounds mysterious and vaguely sinister. It’s a big fat nothingburger. I don’t understand why people are fussing about it. If you want to make a fuss about a fanatical fringe group within the Catholic Church, make a fuss about the USCCB.
burnspbesq
@JPL:
Santorum. Cumming. The jokes write themselves.
WereBear
@Xenos: I used to have his comedy records: at least there, the punchline was, “I volunteered.”
Raven
Oh my fucking god. Mike doesn’t think there is anything wrong with Ricky’s stance on birth control!
c u n d gulag
Looks like Rick has updated Goldwater for the 21st Century:
‘Extremism in an attack on vice, is Liberty!’
Icky Stick Ricky thinks being President means you get to be the Head Moral Scold, as well.
Schlemizel
Interesting thought about prohibition. It was the first major crack in the destruction of the old Dem party. Even slavery didn’t hurt the Dems as much as their support of the drys. The old party was not a friend to womens suffrage either. But by the time of repeal dry Dems were a disappearing breed and slowly the old, anti-black, anti-woman, anti-immigrant party embraced modernity. Maybe the circle will be complete when the GOP openly embraces all those with prohibition being the last.
Rita R.
@Raven:
You mean Mika, right? I was just watching that and I couldn’t believe it. She was earnestly talking about how Ricky has a point about birth control allowing dangerous behavior and it’s a conversation families need to have and how great it is that Ricky with his seven kids lives his beliefs and she respects him because of that.
Honestly, is there any bigger idiot than that woman? She talks more now than she used to, but that’s just served to confirm how vapid she is.
WereBear
@Rita R.: Yeah. Like Ricky birthed those seven kids. There’s a reason Mrs. Santorum has a mouth that looks drawn by a fine line marker and a ruler.
Raven
@Rita R.: Too early to type! Thank for the clarification.
Schlemizel
@WereBear:
not completely, he keeps the under 30 losers that can’t get laid – pretty much his target demo just younger
Lojasmo
@burnspbesq:
The catholic church is, itself, a fanatical group. The USSCCB and Opus Dei are but symptoms of a greater disease…catholic fanaticism.
Schlemizel
@Rita R.:
Its feature not a bug. The blond moran on Faux Friends in the morning graduated from Standford with honors yet you would be hard pressed to find a dumber, more vapid woman on morning TV. For some reason this is what we are presented with, is it veiwers demand them pretty and stupid or just because that is all we are given.
the farmer
A lot is known about it. Most people don’t bother to learn about it. Opus Dei was a Catholic order founded by Josemaría Escriva during the regime of Francisco Franco. (Santorum attended the Catholic canonization of Josemaría Escriva). Opus Dei was an enabler of the theocratic Spanish state during Franco’s regime and largely controlled the nations educational system. The public display or practice of religious faith other than Catholicism was prohibited.
*
Schlemizel
@the farmer:
Thanks, I have read about OD and not learned that. But there is plenty out there about OD that is more than enough to make them a concern to any rational, thinking, being. It irritates me when they get used as cartoon villains in novels or movies because they are too dangerous to make sport of.
Another Halocene Human
@burnspbesq: Oh, don’t worry, I fuss about the USCCB, although the group you need to be watching out for is the Ad-Hoc Committee [for Snarfing Up Gubmint Cheese].
All the Opus Dei people I met seemed a little tired and sad.
However, scratch a cult, and you will find some sick shit in the creamy center! Maybe I just love a good train wreck. I spend too much time on rickross forums.
Speaking of disgusting cults, has anyone else here read FROZEN? Pouring human blood and poison in the AZ sewers, “helping” family members move on to the next stage… because of course they’re not really dead… they’ll be with you forever and Ted Williams… n/m that your brain cracked dozens of times during the freezing process. That’ll buff right out.
Another Halocene Human
@the farmer: Ah, I see, the right sort of people.
WereBear
@Another Halocene Human: Didn’t know what to believe: but I do think the cryogenics folk are cultish.
As they say in addiction treatment: some people are desperate to simplify their life. Focusing on “just one thing,” be it a drug, a “religion” or a sports team can destroy anyone’s sense of perspective, even sanity.
Rita R.
@Schlemizel:
There’s a whole group of women on MSNBC alone, none of whom are exactly hard on the eyes, who’d be far, far better than Mika.
I honestly think part of it is Joe Scarborough doesn’t want a woman on the show who’d really be able to challenge him. You can see him start to get angry when Mika every once in a great while decides to actually stand up and make a coherent point against him. And if I remember correctly, he walked off during a segment on another show when Rachel Maddow challenged him on some issue.
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL:
I drive past that church pretty frequently. It’s the same place that featured Tim Tebow at some big holiday extravaganza last year, I think Fourth of July. The place has one of the biggest, brightest signboards I’ve ever seen.
Linda Featheringill
@amk:
Maybe we should just “occupy” the airport! Lovely place.
aimai
@the farmer:
I agree with Farmer. Just becuase Opus Dei has become well known enough to become the punch line of a joke and big enough to have some tired and perfunctory members, doesn’t mean that “a lot isn’t known about it” or that it isn’t dangerous. It is to organizing and pushing the worst kinds of religious bigotry what the Collegel Republicans under Rove were. In other words: it is and was the place that non religious were permitted a higher level of power/responsibility in the Church. It turns ordinary people into agressive defenders of the faith. I had a friend (Catholic) whose sister joined Opus Dei and it is totally a cult like environment in its “elect within an elect” way.
aimai
amk
@Linda Featheringill: teh best. And I have seen them all.
Omnes Omnibus
@amk: Even the Central Wisconsin Regional Airport in Mosinee?
Linda Featheringill
It’s heartening to see that several US citizens can see that Lil’ Ricky might be dangerous. Maybe as a whole we’re not as dumb as we look.
amk
@Omnes Omnibus: Why would I travel to a third world country ?
Booyah…
Walker
@Mary G:
I cannot remember where I read it now, but one of my (sane, legitimate) economics blogs says that there is evidence of new speculation in oil. Like what Goldman Sachs did in 2008. Demand right now is simply too low for those prices.
Omnes Omnibus
@amk: Nearest airport to Colby, WI – where Colby cheese was invented. Closest airport to the geographical center of the northern half of the Western Hemisphere. World class kayaking in downtown Wausau. School districts whose levies are approved almost every time. Ginseng.
amk
@Omnes Omnibus: still not tempting enough. :)
Omnes Omnibus
@amk: So you will admit that you haven’t seen all airports? Ha! I’ve run circle around you logically.
And don’t pull out some hyperbole excuse. I ain’t buying it
Schlemizel
@Omnes Omnibus:
Parts of WI are positively enlightened. I was stunned to see the public services available around New Glaris. My dads family is from Waupaca and that seemed less civic minded.
As for air ports – Green Bay back in the day, my wallet set off the metal detector. They had it set so sensitive the mag stripes on credit cards triggered it. Those were some lonely guys on security up there!
amk
@Omnes Omnibus: you buy all the
hyperbolebs that is posted in blogs? relax dood.Omnes Omnibus
@amk: Nah, I lease some of it. Fewer worries about depreciation.
Raven
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m trying to see on the map if we rode through there on the Harley’s we rented in Appleton couple of summers back.
Matt McIrvin
Dan Brown.
Matt McIrvin
Anyway, as far as I can tell, he hasn’t changed; all this stuff is just Rick Santorum doing his Rick Santorum thing. Americans who aren’t either from Pennsylvania or into reading about appalling wacky politicians are just hearing it for the first time.
Snarki, child of Loki
At the next GOP debate, lil’ Ricky needs to be asked whether he’s in favor of Prohibition.
And Ron Paul needs to be asked for his position on Free Silver.
And the wheel of history goes full circle.
WyldPirate
@Another Halocene Human:
No, she shacked up with her landlord/obstetrician/sugar daddy as a 22 yo nursing student who was about 25 years her senior and had kids her age. I think she stayed with him 4-5 years.
Rafer Janders
@aimai:
Cut bursneqs some slack. He desperately, desperately wants to think that he’s not supporting a criminal conspiracy, so he has to keep up a vague sort of handwaving “hey, nothing to see here” pretense.
different-church-lady
My answer to Ed Kilgore is that Santorum is the latest of an increasingly long line of GOP politicians who feels the power of the beast and mistakenly believes he can harness it.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@WyldPirate: She stayed with him six years – and he’s forty years older than her. He was also the local abortion doctor.
burnspbesq
@Schlemizel:
“the old, anti-black, anti-woman, anti-immigrant”
Interesting theory, but how does it explain thr Irish-dominated Democatic machines in NY, Boston, Albany, and Jersey City, or the multi-ethnic Democratic machine in Chicago?
burnspbesq
@Matt McIrvin:
Need I remind you that Mr. Brown is a writer of fiction?
burnspbesq
@Rafer Janders:
“Criminal conspiracy?”
Would you be so kind as to list for me all the Catholic clergy who have been convicted or pled guilty to conspiracy, obstruction of justice, or any similar crime?
Your saying it doesn’t make it so. Only a jury can make it so. You know that as well as I do. Why do you choose to lie?
Nancy Irving
@Rita R.:
I don’t know about living his beliefs. He’s been married over 20 years, and they have *only* seven kids? Maybe it’s a case of *yur doin it rong*, but seriously, two of my four sets of great-grandparents had between ten and fifteen kids, and a third great-grandmother had 18 live births. Now THAT’S what *I* call Catholic!
Jenn
FFS, will the folks slagging on Catholics just STOP already?! Slag on the Church hierarchy all you want. I’m an agnostic, and it’s annoying the crap out of me – I can only imagine how people of faith are feeling about it.
les
@burnspbesq:
This is seriously your answer to a charge of criminal behavior by the catholic church/hierarchy? Seriously? I can get, sorta, the difficulty faced by folks who have to or want to be Catholics–but denial that the Church–as individual members of the clergy and as an organization–has indulged in criminal behavior? That’s drifting into Sullivanesque territory.
mclaren
Untrue.
In 1970, 4 months before the Kent State massacre, Ronald Reagan said about anti-Vietnam-war protestors: “If it takes a blood bath, let’s get it over with.”
In 1968 Ronald Reagan said about young people: “They dress like Tarzan, have hair like Jane, and smell like Cheetah.”
Ronald Reagan was the Great Hater of American politics. He built his career on hate-mongering and extremism. In 1964, Ronald Reagan called the decision whether to adopt Medicare “not a choice between left or right, but a choice between up or down: up into civilization or down into the anthill of totalitarianism.”
Please explain why describing the adoption of Medicare as “the anthill of totalitarianism” is anything but wildly extremist craziness that makes Santorum’s gibberings look mild and prudent by comparison.
mclaren
Hey, burnspbesq, would you be so kind as to list for me all the members of the former Bush 43 administration who have been convicted or pled guilty to conspiracy, obstruction of justice, or any similar crime?
Oh, none have? Well, gosh, then it’s obvious that none of them committed any illegal or immoral acts, right? Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
What an asshole. Burnspbesq is the classic example of the remora-eyed thug who thinks “not enough evidence to indict” means the same thing as “innocent.” This is the morality of the mafia don who has the witnesses against him murdered and then boasts and struts about how he’s never been arrested.
Some Loser
@mclaren: It is okay that you dislike Burns, but did you really compare him to a mafia thug? Really? Burns is just more willfully ignorant than malicious.