Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney leads in a new CNN poll of Iowa six days before the January 3rd caucuses, outpacing Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) 25 to 22. But the real surprise in the poll is that former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum moved to third with 16 percent of the vote, after months of campaigning in the state seeing little traction.
If anyone has Hakyekian modesty, it’s this guy, right?
Davis X. Machina
It’s not fair. Santorum has so much more to be modest about.
LittlePig
Well of course Santorum got little traction.
Karen
I’ve been seeing that word “Hakyekian” to describe Romney all over the place. What does it mean?
Larkspur
Thanks a lot for that imagery I will never be able to un-see: man on dog on station wagon.
RossinDetroit
Can we call him Slick Rick in honor of Dan Savage? Please?
Spaghetti Lee
@Karen:
I think it’s some David Brooks-related in-joke, like a way to ascribe wisdom and gravitas to candidates who are really just blowhards.
Brian R.
Santorum is spreading!
LittlePig
@Karen: Too much dairy.
WereBear (itouch)
I sense sheer desperation taking hold. (and I will be forever indebted to the commenter who brought up Wise Blood regarding Santorum’s expression and Motes.
Chuck Butcher
Now that the ABMs are done with Newt and looking at Santorum – who will give them the willies after a bit – do they have to go back to the top of the list and start over again? That would be Michelle, I believe…
It seems that with Paul and Santorum they’re deep in a hole wielding shovels like mad. In fact I think they’re in so deep that the dirt isn’t even making its way out of the hole.
Brandon
GOOD NEWS FOR WILLARD!
One week before Iowa and he is still stuck on 25%, Paul has 22% and basically the majority of voters are still undecided. Brilliant!
At least it seems steamy Ricky’s illicit payoff is paying dividends.
PsiFighter37
Ah, it’s wonderful to have little Ricky grabbing the spotlight just when it counts. Aside from being appropriately and consistently insane on social issues, he also trumps Romney on one other count: he was man enough to run for reelection and get blown out in 2006. That should count for something, shouldn’t it?
The Moar You Know
Ahhh, the GOP has finally hit the bottom of the jeans pile.
Maybe this one will fit!
It’s not that you’ve gained weight, but that the manufacturers make everything so small nowadays.
JGabriel
@Karen:
As the first person to highlight this phrase at Balloon Juice (as far as I know, though DougJ popularized it), I’ll take this one.
It’s an allusion to one of Bobo’s columns, and “Hayek” is “Friedrich Hayek“, an Austrian economist who Conservatives think is important, but, unsurprisingly, whom real economists don’t think was important.
“Hayekian modesty” is thus Bobo’s way of characterizing a politician who thinks markets and traditions are better at solving problems than government.
.
carpeduum
3 cheers for a frothy surge of Santorum. I need a cigarette.
AA+ Bonds
LOL, the Republicans are shitting themselves on the national stage again
AA+ Bonds
@The Moar You Know:
bane
The Santorum is frothing.
AA+ Bonds
@JGabriel:
Also Charles Koch wrote Hayek a personal letter telling him to sign up for welfare payments so he could come to the United States and that is just fuckin hilarious
Warren Terra
Rick Santorum: Come From Behind Phenomenon
AA+ Bonds
Friedrich Hayek was pretty modest in that even the conservative Friedrich Hayek was in favor of universal health care :D and I don’t mean just that Koch letter, I mean he endorsed it in his writing, it’s fair to say that today’s Austrians are well fuckin to the right of Hayek
Chris Wolf
As Winston Churchill once said, “He has much to be modest about”.
AA+ Bonds
I’ll be honest, I don’t even think the Santorum joke is very funny but it’s a coup by Savage in my arena and I will pimp it until Rick dies as should all lefties
What this really means is that Iowan Republicans are space aliens who don’t have the Internet and once again, the Republicans are so. fucked. in 2012
JGabriel
@AA+ Bonds:
It’s funnier that it caught on and became the top search hit for Santorum than it is in and of itself.
And yes, I winced when I realized I had used the byproduct of anal sex and the phrase “caught on” in the same sentence.
.
RalfW
@JGabriel: Yes, but Hakyekian is all about Brooks and his blathery scribe kin. Hayekian is about Sullivan and crushes and illusory conservative economics.
kindness
Santorum now expoldes on the national stage, managing to reach around the other contestants and end in an orgy of love from his Iowa fanbois.
AA+ Bonds
Waldo
Hooray for the Santorum surge! Can the Huntsman hump be far behind?
RalfW
@Warren Terra: For the win.
AA+ Bonds
@JGabriel:
Well yes, as I said
If that hadn’t happened, I doubt I’d be saying that, if it were just the normal liberal giggle-fest instead of a fuckin working Googlebomb
srv
Santorum brings a slick, throbbing gravitas that leaves other candidates looking dry and shriveled.
MikeJ
@AA+ Bonds:
Social Security isn’t “welfare”. It’s an insurance program that people pay into.
JGabriel
@RalfW:
This post is actually the only time anyone at Balloon Juice has spelled (misspelled?) it that way.
So, uh, no. Probably not. Although maybe it should be.
.
Montysano
Santorum has traveled a long and slippery dirt road, and is now directly behind Mitt Romney.
AA+ Bonds
@MikeJ:
^ WOOP WOOP, Kochsucker spotted
AA+ Bonds
Really, MikeJ, you gotta ask for more money if you’re going to provide the Kochs with quality one-liners like that. I mean, that’s some good material, I especially love how you pretend like you’re too incompetent to blockquote properly
Cassidy
Conservatives love the taste of Santorum don’t they?
Schlemizel
The trick has been to be at the top of the clown of the month club heap at just the right moment. There is a good chance Little Ricky may have been such a loser that the wingnuts tried every other possibility before falling to him. Its 6 days to prom & all your date possibilities turned out to be frogs so for better or worse you want to go to prom with Little Ricky and pretend it was him all along.
The question then becomes does he become the one true not-mitt going forward or just another seltzer splash in the pan. The clown of the month club is running out of time and out of clowns
M31
@Chuck Butcher:
those words should not be together
DanielX
@kindness: I could very happily have lived the rest of my life without the mental images that post has provoked. I had dinner plans, but thanks to you I’m going to have to cancel. May a load of Santorum be left at your front door….
In all (ahem) seriousness, two thumbs WAY up.
Thoughtcrime
Doug, just for you (from a show I attended this month), the old dog wags his tail:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RS8gZODR23M
DanielX
Iowa conservatives: “I love the smell of Santorum in the morning. It smells like…victory.”
Frankensteinbeck
@JGabriel:
I think its local use has mutated into a joke about the stupid, meaningless fancy-sounding words conservative ‘intellectual’ pundits use to try and pretend that a rabid howler monkey is a true statesman.
AA+ Bonds
So my guess is that Koch whores like MikeJ despair of finding jobs with their liberal arts degrees,click on a Facebook ad, and are whisked away to a magical world where they run searches on “Koch”, “Hayek”, etc. on WordPress all day to drop in and give their masters the tug ‘n’ rub.
Whaddaya say, MikeJ? Am I close? Too close for comfort?
Studly Pantload, the emotionally unavailable unicorn
@Warren Terra:
That there’s 10 lbs of win in a 5 lb bag.
Hill Dweller
The entire Republican establishment destroying every other candidate to pave the way for a Mormon trust fund robot will never stop being hilarious. Even George H W Bush, who has no influence in that crazy party, was brought out of exile to voice his support for Romneybot, which had to hurt.
Waldo
@Schlemizel:
A little song
A little dance
A little Santorum in your pants
danimal
In 2008, some GOP leaders (ahem, Rush) tried to introduce Operation Chaos into the Democratic primary. It failed, but they seem to be doing a bang-up job with the 2012 Republican primary. When it comes to bringing the chaos, there’s no one better than the GOP. I’m afraid little Ricky is just another temporary notRomney, but now the notRomneys can actually accumulate votes.
I can’t wait to see the Wednesday headline: Santorum Explodes in GOP Race!
Vixen Strangely
Hayekian modesty? Savonarolan humility, even.
g
Santorum is surging! It’s a frothy wave!
slag
Well…With any luck that dog will have its day. I’m rooting for you Ricky!
MikeJ
@AA+ Bonds: WTF?
Social Security is not a welfare program as people generally use the term. It’s not charity. It is an insurance program. Everybody[1] pays in through FICA. Everybody who pays in can make use of it.
Republicans have tried for decades to do things like means test Social Security to make it more like a charity program, so that they can then kill it. When you call it a “welfare program”, you’re doing the work of the Republican party.
[1] People who work, not people who collect dividends.