I’m afraid Bananas Foster marks the end of peak Santorum:
So on his “Campfire Blog,” which is apparently how he communicates with the world when he’s not on our television screens, Santorum Super-PAC heavy and all-purpose spokesman Foster Friess apologized to the poor dumb humorless people who didn’t get his “joke” about “gals” back in his day using “Bayer aspirin between their knees” as a birth control method. He duly begs our forgiveness for his not anticipating our humorlessness.
The pattern is the same: non-Mitt pulls ahead of Mitt, non-Mitt gets involved with stuff too weird even for Republican primary voters (moon-mining, sexual harassment, debating under the influence), and non-Mitt falls in the polls.
I hope to Tebow I am wrong here, but I’m resigning myself, yet again, to months of hearing about Romney’s Burkean humility.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Maybe, maybe not. 1) this is a Republican primary, a good chunk of them probably go along with the “oh, don’t be so PC” line, and a not insignificant number agree with the underlying message (“nice girls don’t have to worry about all this”), especially among Santorum voters. 2) Romney has a history of stepping on his own dick as consistent as the non-Romney Curve of Fail
eric
when your real strategy is voter disenfranchisement and redistricting, the precise candidate is less relevant. :)
SenyorDave
andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/02/the-hounding-of-pat-buchanan.html
OT, but Andrew Sullivan has major SAD over MSNBC’s firing. Seems to be along the lines of “sure, he’s a fascist, racist, neo-nazi, but he’s intellectually honest”. Plus, he once sent Sullivan a hand-written note after he acknowledged his HIV status publicly. I guess that outweighs the fact that Buchanan used to joke about he and his buddies beating up homos for fun when he was younger.
General Stuck
Maybe from a few ivory tower wingnuts like Brooks and co.. But Romney unfavorables with voters is approaching parity with death in popularity. He’s being newtered. And no one can do anything about it.
Culture of Truth
darn it I was just enjoying the Foster Friess show
Culture of Truth
JEB! Christie! Mitch! Save us!!!!
eric
wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy OT, but how in the heck does this webpage even exist? seriously! foxnews.com/scitech/dinosaurs/index.html
Democratic Nihilist, Keeper Of Party Purity
He’ll still manage to get a couple of more wins, but yeah, this boat has sailed.
Nothing to do with the billionaire, though. It’s just that he’s a freak and everyone knows it.
Villago Delenda Est
@SenyorDave:
“Say what you will about the tenets of National Socia1ism, at least it’s an ethos.”
ChrisNYC
Yes, he’s done. If the MI primary was sooner, he might be able to pull it off but nobody likes a pissed off Santy, because he gets much twerpier than normal. I saw a clip of him last night angrily accusing a reporter of being “obsessed” with the topic of birth control and knees. If he were smart, he would have been able to use it to his advantage — really slam the old guy for his grossness, stand up to the money bags Mr. Lunch Bucket Coal Miner’s Daughter Rick! But, he’s neither smart nor brave.
shortstop
It’s not bad enough that we have to deal with Republican policy. It’s adding insult to injury that they never get how pathologically unfunny they are. I don’t mean unfunny as in “That’s tasteless/mean-spirited/bigoted”; I mean “The lack of sophistication in your humor would embarrass a fifth grader.”
Villago Delenda Est
ROFLMAO, Doug!
Can't Be Bothered
I think he’s going to be around quite a while.
elisabeth
Seeing Twitter rumors that DeWine of OH may be switching from Romney to Santorum. Have no idea how true this may be but DeWine’s office won’t say where he’ll be at 2:00 when Santorum makes major campaign announcement.
Might just be SBA endorsement, though, at 2.
Calouste
@SenyorDave:
Nazi-apologist Pat Buchanan is intelectually honest by Andrew Sullivan’s standards. That says more about Andrew Sullivan than about Nazi-apologist Pat Buchanan.
Crusty Dem
DougJ, I think you are really overstating the impact of a single supporter on Santorum. The guy basically said “back in my day, women weren’t sluts”. Do you think that’s outside the bounds with GOP primary voters? Really?
Sounds more like a calculated move to keep the social issues on the front burner, where Santorum destroys Romney in the primaries.
lacp
@elisabeth: And the Santorum Tsunami gushes over Ohio!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Rick Santorum’s spokesbot on MSNBC tries to make the “this isn’t about contraception, it’s about religious liberty” argument. He gives off the same aura of “Mother put clothes pins on my wiener when I looked at the ladies in the Sears catalogue, and she was right to do so” as his boss.
Frankensteinbeck
To Santorum’s supporters, the apology is the gaffe, not the horrible callous sexist comment. It’ll depend on whether Santorum publicly owns the apology or doubles down.
It’s still a race between two fantastically weak candidates, so I don’t like to make predictions. I can only analyze this one issue.
R Johnston
What are the chances that Ron Paul decides to flip-flop and announce that blowing up brown people is a legitimate and necessary function of the Federal government, thereby earning himself an opportunity as the next notMitt? If he does it I’m pretty sure he’d have more primary season staying power than any in the procession ahead of him. I’m certainly hoping for it to happen.
SteveM
What @Jim, Foolish Literalist said.
Villago Delenda Est
@R Johnston:
Close to nil.
He’s in this thing as a philosophical scold, not as an actual candidate.
Mike Lamb
I’m not totally sure. Restore Our
PastFuture is actually running anti-Santorum ads here in AZ. Romney should be a shoo-in here.Zifnab
Will this resonate, though? It’s a campaign donor making a dog-whistle comment that Santorum immediately distanced himself from. It’s not like people who support birth control will suddenly become less Santorum-friendly, or anti-choicers will get all shocked and distance themselves from him. And I doubt it’ll get enough traction to swing independent voters.
Seems pretty non-issue to me. Romney is already racing further to the right. He’s not going to leave any space between himself and Santorum if he can help it. I can’t see anyone saying “I’m voting for Mitt because he’s not such a contraception prude”, because Romney will demolish that perception in an instant if he thinks it’ll cost him Tea Party votes.
Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
Well, I don’t know. I wonder if we on this side of the yawning political gap in this country sometimes have a way of assuming the other side is reasonable deep down inside. Keep in mind, this is the party that nominated Christine O’Donnell. They nominated Carl Paladino. And that happened in Delaware and New York, which are pretty reliably blue overall.
I think Santorum might be just what these people are looking for. And there are a lot of them–at least in the Republican Party. Don’t forget the Crazification Factor: 27% isn’t a lot overall, but it’s a damned big hunk of the Republican primary electorate. These people don’t like Romney and they don’t trust him. But they do like and trust Santorum. He was saying the shit they believe deep down 20 years ago, when he first showed up in Congress. He hasn’t flailed around, trying to have it both ways on everything. He’s one of them. I know Romney and his friends will try to shut this down, but I don’t know if they can really handle the 27% any longer.
elisabeth
Annnnnd we have confirmation – current OH AG DeWine switching candidates.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@elisabeth: that’s the son of the Senator who wept at the thought of John Bolton at the UN, right? Rightward drift from one generation to the next?
When people started talking about C O’D beating Mike Castle, I thought it was blogoshpere fantasy. A good number of Republican primary voters have a case of epistemic closure that makes those calling for Alan Grayson to primary Obama look like hard-nosed realists.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: ah, no. Voinavich was the moderate opponent of Bolton, this DeWine is the former Senator who is a hard right culture warrior.
Mnemosyne
@Villago Delenda Est:
I have to admit, I do have a soft spot for Ron Paul because he has stuck with his party and criticizes them from the inside. He’s not in it to win — he’s in it so he can publicly criticize his own party from the inside. I would actually think less of him if he tried to run as a third-party candidate, because his value is as a Republican gadfly.
I get annoyed when people on the left try to lionize him as some kind of liberal hero for being a right-wing isolationist, because that’s totally antithetical to what Paul is actually trying to do.
shortstop
@Mnemosyne:
Well, he did run for prez on the libertarian ticket in 1988. But you’re right that he seems to have settled into a life of Republicanism since he came back to Congress in 1997.
Disco
@Mnemosyne:
I think most people on the left are aware that his economic platform is non-existent at best, and terrifyingly insane at worst. I would never vote for Ron Paul. I *would* hire him to direct foreign policy.
Lee
Just when I was really getting comfortable with the Santorum
Dan
I wouldn’t despair just yet. It just so happens that this issue dovetails so nicely with Obamacare, which as we all know is the end of human civilization. If Romney wants to distance himself from these events, the only path is towards Taxachusetts.
geg6
@ChrisNYC:
I saw him get all shitty with Charlie Rose (of all people!) this morning on the CBS morning show. Charlie had to school him, a sight I never thought I’d witness.
And I’d just like to mention that snitty, shitty Santorum is the one we Pennsylvanians remember well from when it came out that he was ripping off Penn Hills School District for his children’s cyber education in Virginia and when it came out that he and his wife got a huge medical malpractice settlement just as he was trying to cap such payouts to others who aren’t Rick and Karen Santorum at hundreds of thousands of dollars less than what he got.
Paul in KY
@Mnemosyne: I would think more of him if he ran as a 3rd party candidate, because I think he’d take more Republican votes than Democratic ones.
geg6
@Disco:
So you’re a-ok with right wing isolationism, huh? America First, right?
Jeebus.
geg6
@Paul in KY:
Heh. I’m with you. I try not to think of that asswipe at all, but if I do, it’s only in this context that it is positive.
Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
@Disco:
Jeez, what the hell? Paul still thinks fighting World War II was a mistake. The guy’s a zero. Domestically; on foreign policy; fiscally; socially; he’s a zero.