I’ve been spending even more time than usual with tote-bag types and they’re uniformly disturbed by how gleeful I am about the possibility of Rick Santorum winning the Republican nomination. Shouldn’t I want a serious Republican candidate who doesn’t want to return western civilization to the Medieval ear, etc.?
I think they’re totally wrong, that the Republican party is a ridiculous-yet-frightening jokes and that a Santorum nomination would make this fact more obvious to everyone. Also too, I want to see Bobo and George Will talk about how thoughtful and Burkean Santorum is, but there’s no way I can explain this to tote-baggers (who uniformly worship Bobo).
Do you feel at all guilty rooting for Santorum? I sure don’t.
PaulW
If the Republicans go to a brokered convention and end up with the displayed corpse of Richard Nixon, so much the better.
scav
I’m not rooting for Santorum, I’m rooting for chaos and injuries for as long as possible and then some. If it’s possible to get it on all cable stations including the cooking channel at midnight, all the better.
rob!
The ONLY chance we have of the Republican Party coming back down off the ledge is if they suffer a complete and total ass-kicking: Obama wins a second term, the Dems keep the Senate, they lose the House, and a bunch of governors go down (are any of the crazy ones up?). Anything less than that will just get them to triple down on Teh Crazy. Romney being the nominee will only convince them they didn’t run a “true” Conservative.
So, yeah, I am rooting for Santorum in a big way. The man, not the fecal discharge (they’re hard to tell apart).
Baud
I’m not really rooting for Santorum or anybody else. They’ll choose somebody at the end, and that somebody will need to be beaten. Everything else is just for laughs.
MattF
I’m generally against ‘worse is better’ arguments, but it’s not obvious that Santorum is, in fact, worse than Romney as a candidate– however, this has to do more with Romney’s badness than rooting for Santorum. It’s a gruesome choice, and I’m undecided.
poco
Yeah I know–all of these people–vote reliably democratic but think Bobo and Kristoff, even Friedman, for some of them are worthy of respect. Given that I am surrounded by these people, most of my outrage is directed to them. Don’t know any repubs, so can’t direct it where it is needed.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
And I’m sure they think Romney is “really” the same good old New England Moderate David Broder’s ghost thinks he is. Christ, do these people have any clue about politics? Do they get what kind of people Willard would appoint, what kind of legislation he would sign, to get that second term, to give the Romney name a good rep among the howler monkeys for the sake of whichever Mittlet is already being discussed as “the next political star”? Do they fucking think John Roberts is an umpire calling balls and strikes? Do they have a single solitary clue who Willard’s foreign policy advisors are? Do they see what’s going on the state legislatures? If it’s any consolation to Santorum, somebody can tell him I have almost as much contempt for the people he calls ‘elites’ as he rightly thinks they (and I) have for him and his followers.
cathyx
I’m hoping it’s Sarah Palin getting the nod. Everyone else cancelling each other out.
Martin
Not the point. The point is that the GOP should want that, and their vote clearly shows that they don’t. The GOP wants to return western civilization to the Medieval era, if we assume that elections have any merit at all. The only way for the rest of the country to realize that is for them to nominate just such a candidate.
BGinCHI
Jesus F. Christ, Doug, what does that even look/sound like? Could you provide some evidence? I’m not doubting you; I’m just really curious to see what someone so naive and unskilled at reading says about something so manifestly stupid.
shortstop
@rob!:
I think we have to stop telling ourselves this is going to happen. It’s quite possible that it won’t in the foreseeable future. Regardless of how this election turns out, they’re not capable of honest self-analysis. It’s always, always liberals’ fault.
Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t root for as much GOP suffering as can be achieved in this and all other elections. Keeping Santorum in as long as possible is the best way to get that.
MikeJ
@cathyx: That’s my dream too. Brokered convention and Palin gets the nod.
shortstop
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I’m so sad that this analogy has gained currency. I’m extremely fond of howler monkeys, have traveled great distances to hang with them and even have their call as my ringtone. That gets me extra room on the bus and El, BTW, as many people inch away when my phone rings.
R Johnston
@poco: Don’t feel bad about the direction of your ire. Democrats who think that such a thing as a reasonable Republican exists and that Bobo is an example of one are very much part of the problem. They grant journalists license to do “both sides” stories and the Republican party license to keep getting crazier. Without them the Republican party would likely be a vastly closer to sane place.
BGinCHI
OK, can we stop saying “Medieval” in this context? As Mrs. BG will so eloquently tell you, “Medieval” is not a synonym for “backward and barbaric.” If you’d like to argue for its exclusive claim on all things bad, you could try. But you’d fail. Since many other (most, or even all) time periods are full of superstitions, genocides, and ignorance.
Maybe read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight a few times and get back to me.
DougJarvus Green-Ellis
@BGinCHI:
You have to admit Bobo is smart/reasonable. I love watching him debate Shields because they’re both so civil. Etc. etc.
Nearly everyone in academia says things like this.
BGinCHI
@shortstop: Have you been to Ceres Table on Clark?
Mark S.
Man, who the fuck do you hang out with?
DougJarvus Green-Ellis
@BGinCHI:
I don’t mean it as a put-down, I think many conservative Catholics literally want a return to the Middle Ages. I know one who openly says this.
Sargent Pepper's Spray
I’m hoping for a huge Santorum surge in Michigan if for no other reason than to humiliate the hell out of Mitt Romney. Also too. We may even start seeing the never before seen “Republicans in disarray” memes in the media.
Soonergrunt
It occurs to me that Sheriff Babeau took a page from his hero Mitt Romney’s book here: “I can’t be extorting gay sex from illegals! I’m running for Congress, for Pete’s sake!”
BGinCHI
@DougJarvus Green-Ellis: What? Maybe in Math, but not in the Humanities, or at least not amongst my crowd. Maybe we’re just more thuggish here in Chi as compared to Upstate.
Bobo does deftly substitute equanimity for argument, but of course he does so in the controlled climate of NPR or on a film set with no antagonists.
Has he ever been on Bill Maher?
Baud
@DougJarvus Green-Ellis:
Do you think it’s a class-based phenomenon: “Bobo is one of us, unlike those dirty radical hoodlum blogger types who say the F-Word all the time”?
DougJarvus Green-Ellis
@BGinCHI:
I am surprised to hear this.
BGinCHI
@DougJarvus Green-Ellis: I know this is going to sound obvious, but they don’t know what they’re talking about. They could read up on religious controversy in the medieval period and they would be astonished at what went on.
The point is that Golden Age nostalgia is always ahistorical. It always posits an age that never existed.
Brachiator
Oh, hell no.
DougJarvus Green-Ellis
@Baud:
Yes, that is what I think.
BGinCHI
@Baud: Jesus, no. Maybe at your private schools in disciplines where rich kids went grad school and then entered the academy without encountering anything political. This is a very narrow slice of academia, and almost no one at my working class university.
There are class systems in and across academia, of course, since it’s a gigantic and not monolithic world.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
No. I don’t.
Ironically, Santorum voters deserve some credit for their honesty: A primary vote for Mitt is a cynical calculation as to who has the best chance of gettin’ the near out of the White House.
But Santorum is much closer to the true heart & soul of the current GOP base. IMO, he hasn’t said or done anything that I haven’t been hearing from ‘real world’ GOPers out in the wild for years.
maya
After all is said, unsaid, re-said and done, I predict that the Republican party will choose HOBSON.
General Stuck
It is hard quitting the Newtster, but no, by golly, I don’t feel a bit guilty rooting for Santorum. Newt is pure grifter and doesn’t believe in anything past his own piety. Santorum is a full frontal true believer and makes for a much better opponent in the ideological thunderdome. Time to stop puzzyfooting around with this bullshit, and get on with it. And it can’t get any clearer, the choice, than with the crystal clear wingnuttery that Rick brings to the fray. I fully expect the dude to offer up a pilot program to bring back witch burning. Bring it on mofo.
JPL
Santorum is going off the ledge. He now says that Obama believes in a phony theology not based on the Bible.. link
Firebert
My fondest dream is open fistfights on the floor of the GOP convention.
cathyx
@JPL: So he’s not a Muslim anymore?
General Stuck
@JPL:
Shit house rat with an engaging smile.
MikeJ
@JPL: Obama wants women to have access to mammograms so they can rob liquor stores.
scav
@JPL: This can hardly be news after being a commie-nazi-islamo-unamrican-Hawaiian-etceteraist for his entire term.
MosesZD
I tend to agree. I think the only that will fix the Repubicans is a huge electoral defeat that ends in HONEST soul-searching…
Rathskeller
@DougJarvus Green-Ellis: Actually, I used to respect Mark Shields until very recently, when they were discussing the newly joined Catholic contraception wars. He described the current situation as “cataclysmic” for the Whitehouse, and a startled minute later, I just had no more respect for him. Oh well.
As for Santorum, I would greatly prefer that he be the nominee, because he’s the “no excuses” candidate. He is a fire-breathing social conservative that the wingers claim America wants, deep in its heart. I want him to be the GOP nominee, and I want the final electoral results to smash this idea of a hidden conservative America down like a hammer on a nail. All 50 states, lose both houses.
If it’s Gingrinch, they can pretend he loses because he’s mean, Romney because he wasn’t a true conservative, Palin or Cain because they’re conspicuously stupid, etc.
Santorum is The One.
wvng
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: They listen to NPR, so the answer is no, they do not.
WereBear
I agree, no more stealth candidates! The Republicans should let their freak flag fly!
MattF
@JPL: So… Santorum opposes any diagnostic procedure that could lead to an abortion. That certainly resolves the ‘medically necessary’ issue.
MikeJ
@MosesZD: Not possible. Republicans simply can’t be honest. It would imply that somebody else might have been right and they might have been wrong. That will never, ever happen to the Republican party as a whole. The best you can hope for is stripping away more people like Cole, the right’s equivalent of totebaggers.
JPL
@cathyx: So true. The boss has a new post linking to another article . You need to post it again.
shortstop
@Rathskeller: In Shields’ defense, he’s usually fairly solid on things that don’t take him back to his days serving Mass in the 1950s, at which point he forgets that time has passed and certain viewpoints have shifted. The same cannot be said of Brooks, who fails on all fronts.
And for what it’s worth, I spend a whole lot of time with academics and have never heard one of them admire or make excuses for Bobo. Maybe Doug teaches at a conservative joint?
mai naem
I think Santorum’s a better candidate than most of the people on this site. think he.is. I think it goes back to a liberal friend of mine telling me back last summer that he thought Santorum was gonna get the Repub nom. He’s pays attention to politics but not like most people commenters here but he said this when Santorum was still a one percent candidate. Santorum looks way more “normal” then Romney and his mormonism and he sounds more ‘real” FWIW. And I would love to see the Repubs have a total asskicking but Intrades got the Repubs taking the senate and keeping the house. That does not sound like a fun second term.
poco
@R Johnston: Thanks! I agree these people are part of the problem, and they are inveterate tote-baggers–they really think NPR’s both sides do it and only Palestinians are at fault–are also the ones we need to fight against.
But I have so much outrage and directing it to friends and family when they will reliably vote the way I will, feels like a waste.
Nutella
@MattF:
Except when it’s one that will save the life of his very own wife. Then it’s fine! No problem! Of course he doesn’t want her to die, just those dirty sluts who are not named Santorum.
Anoniminous
@MikeJ:
Rickie has a point here. Nothing is more terrifyingly life threatening than a X-Ray of a boob. If accosted with same I’d hand over all the money and all the tequila they could carry.
patrick II
My own hope is that Romney gets the nomination, loses badly, the republican base decides Romney lost because he wasn’t conservative enough and selects Santorum or a similar creature in 2016.
wrb
There is a place where America’s weird is born and its name is Rochester.
Mormonism, Millerism, Seventh Day Adventism, the seances and spiritualism of the Fox sisters, the Oneida Society (quite a taste for polygamy round those parts)…
Jewish Steel
Hell. Naw.
David Koch
@JPL:
It’s only a matter of time before he starts openly using the N-word.
fasteddie9318
I don’t know…I was rooting for Santorum too, but this “medieval ear” shit scares the fuck out of me. Were ears that different back in medieval times? Is this crazy son of a bitch going to force me to have my own ears removed and replaced? I’ve just about finished training them to block out the wavelength of my wife’s voice and I don’t want to lose that.
Yutsano
@mai naem:
Wake me when Intrades is an accurate predictor of anything but the incessant need to fetishize the Wall Street cashino.
BGinCHI
@Yutsano: I never noticed your lisp before.
R Johnston
@efgoldman:
The Republican primaries are nothing if not an uninterrupted string of macaca moments for each and every candidate. I’m not sure whether they don’t understand how the internet memorializes their words or whether they just don’t care. I’m a little scared that they don’t care and will turn out to be right not to care.
JoyfulA
I’m rooting for Newt. The more wild ones who stay in the race, the more pandemonium.
JWL
Santorum? Ha Ha, chuckle chuckle..
Just remember that unforeseen events are a regular occurrence in politics. Star align, and lightening does strike. Berlin, January 30th, 1933, Hindenburg appoints a new Chancellor; the summer of 1952, Eisenhower accepts Nixon as his running mate; November-December, 2002, a judicial coup places GW in the presidency.
Washington July 4, 2012 Reuters (7 PM EST)
President Barack Hussein Obama was arrested this evening by agents of the Secret Service and charged with buggering the Muscular Dystrophy Association’s poster child of the year when the child toured the White House last Christmas.
Kathleen
@BGinCHI: Yes. And he made a snarky comment about Bill’s show. He’s not been back.
Commenting at Ballon Juice since 1937
According to Wonkette, just the other day Santorum said ‘”This is just crap”. There’s no way I’m voting for a potty mouth.
John - A Motley Moose
Michigan has an open primary. I’ve been thinking about giving the Repubs a taste of their own medicine by going to vote for Santorum. The only thing holding me back is the proverb, “Be careful what you wish for. You might just get it.“
Johannes
Personally, I’m rooting for a squad of Daleks to exterminate the entire GOP convention, its attendees and the press covering it. I’ll settle for Santorum getting the nod, though, because it will have the same effect.
PeakVT
Do you feel at all guilty rooting for Santorum?
I’m not really rooting for anybody, but I still would rather see Romney get the nod because he’ll depress the Republican base.
Chuck Butcher
Well sure I’m rooting for Santorum – think the candidates ought to look something like the Party. But then, the Democratic Party might be left of St Ronnie…
Maybe that’d be fun – clear choices and all that rather than “not as crazy as the GOP”
reflectionephemeral
@Martin:
This is my take too. Mitt has spent years working at pretending to seem vaguely humanesque and normal. He’s not good at it, of course, but at least he tries. He’ll obscure the insanity that characterizes the entirety of the GOP, preventing moderates and elites from coming to terms with reality. And the GOP rank and file, if they lose with Romney, will draw the same lesson they did from 2008: “let’s be more insane”.
So, I’m openly & unashamedly rooting for Santorum. Let’s put a stake through the beast’s heart.
msskwesq
I’d be careful what we Democrats wish for. If things get too crazy and Santorum or Gingerich or even Ron Paul goes to the Convention with the delegates, the powers that be in the Republican Party will force a brokered convention and I guarantee that Jeb Bush is waiting in the wings for that. Or Chris Christy. They side step the state primaries and the mud that would be thrown on the trail. They become the reluctant savior of the party. Could be very bad for Obama. I am nervous.
David Koch
@Commenting at Ballon Juice since 1937:
I await Ruth Marcus’ scold on Santorum’s “potty-mouth”
aangus
“Shouldn’t I want a serious Republican candidate who doesn’t want to return western civilization to the Medieval ear(sic).
NO!
This has been another edition of Simple Answers to….
shep
Of course they do. Obviously, they like their corporatist propaganda wrapped in a soft, smarmy package.
sloan
I saw this headline at Politico and immediately thought of DougJ: 2012: The year of ‘birth control moms’?
dww44
@Rathskeller: Yep, Santorum (who is the best campaigner, imo) is the ONE. The choice will be clear if he gets the nomination. As a female who came of age when the pill became widely used and abortion legal, it will be interesting, too, to see how many women actually vote for him and vote to give up control of their own bodies.
ellennelle
@PeakVT:
that’s actually my concern about santorum; he’s got far more enthusiasm power than romney. that’s how that ‘crazy’ factor translates.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@BGinCHI:
Well … as someone who taught Medieval history for many years, I’m certainly sympathetic, but I really enjoy the phrase “going all medieval on your ass.”
Liquid
Has someone made an appropriate Monty Python quote yet?
Scamp Dog
@shortstop: How did you get that ringtone? I’m up for getting a copy myself.
rm
Do you feel at all guilty
Yes. Also dirty, smelly and kind of slimy . . .
Donut
No, but my reason is different.
Santorum, Romney, whichever is in as the GOP candidate as of their convention does not matter. Gingrich has a fork in his ass, not even worth talking about now except as a factor that sucks off support from the other two.
Santorum, were he a Protestant Evangelical, would already have the nom sewed up and done with, but instead he’s a hardcore Olde Timey Catholic, and that means he is batshit cRaZeE town on all kinds of religious stuff, in the eyes of the Protestant GOP voters, that is far beyond the “culture war” issues he is trying to flog as the better attack line against Obama.
As has also been already flogged to death, Romney has gone way past the point of no return with independent voters, meaning the ones who actually do flip their votes every election, so my reason for not caring about the totebagger mentality is that even with Romney we won’t be having any thing resembling the reasonable issues and policy positions debate. I guess totebagger types think they crave this, even though in my memory as well as in formal study of American political history, it’s hard to remember many presidential elections that were decided on issues and policy positions, so I guess…what-the-fuck-ever is my ultimate response. Where we get this attitude that presidential politics should be high-minded and reasonable and issues-oriented is basically out fucking whole cloth. It’s rarely existed in the past, and it’s boring and actually not very productive.
Besides, the Teahadists, though they are waning in influence a little, are waaaay more consequential to American politics right now than any Totebagger. Those people are fucking irrelevant right now.
Another Halocene Human
@BGinCHI: Yes, but the RCC did have enormous social and political (not to mention economic) power in the Middle Ages and the common people lived under a paternalistic feudal system. Plus something called “romantic love” was “invented” (an academic wrote this so I know it’s so) and good Christians were off fighting the Mooslims over there so they didn’t have to fight them over here. Or something. (Something kidnapped Christians something didn’t want to return to Christiandom something something. Derp.)
Many Catholics idolize this era, before Martin Luther and his intolerable insolence. (Luther wasn’t the first heretic, just the first who got away with it. Wycliff was posthumously tried and burned at the stake, after all.)
I’ve also heard the argument that life was better in the religion and superstition soaked Middle Ages than in the profit-driven, advertising bombarded mercantilist and capitalist eras. A lot of otherwise reasonable people adhere to some version of this notion. Take that idiotic movie Star Trek: Insurrection, in which a deliberate return to some sort of low-tech agrarian past is the only path to social and personal perfection.
Greg
Now, Rathskeller, to be fair, we probably wouldn’t take *all 50* states. Santorum would still pick up Alabama, Mississippi, Idaho, South Carolina, and probably Kentucky, West Virginia, and Alaska. So it’s a 43-state blowout at most.
Which would still be epically awesome.
But, call me cautious, I just don’t want to take that chance. As awful as Romney is, the country could survive four years of him. Santorum? I ain’t so sure.
Stentor
Not No, but Fuck No!
Ronzoni Rigatoni
@Firebert: Last time I recall seeing fistfights at any convention was in ’52 when the Taft Repukes were fighting the “I Like Ike” surge. It’s become much more “civilized” these days (and far more boring). I blame the liberals.
Patricia Kayden
While I believe that Santorum is way too extreme for the average American, I can’t say that it is out of the realm of possibility for him to win. A lot can go wrong between now and November.
For some reason, Americans seem okay with right wing extremists. Despite everything that Santorum has said (about gays especially), he is doing better than President Obama in Iowa and is pretty close in some national polls.
Kathy Kattenburg
Love the Bonnie Raitt reference, Doug!