Wow—just when you thought the Republican primary campaign for president couldn’t get any weirder, former Keystone State Senator Rick Santorum, the most hilariously inept human being to ever actually WIN a presidential primary, stomped poor little rich boy Willard Mitt Romney in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri. The most surprising aspect of this development is that the Republican Party is usually pretty disciplined about falling in line behind the front runner after the first few contests. That they haven’t this year indicates a deep seated unhappiness with Governor One Percenter just when he thought it would be smooth sailing to Tampa and the nomination after seemingly slaying the
The only sane reaction any thinking person can have to these developments is to just laugh and shake their heads. The conventional pundits, of course, are trying to play this off as the conservative base being unhappy with Romney’s religion and his record as Governor of Massachusetts, but I think that assessment doesn't tell the whole story.
No doubt the conventional wisdom cannot be completely discounted, but what those same pundits have been trying to avoid saying at all costs is that Romney’s wealth and his Wall Street background are also causing him major grief. They don’t want to call attention to the class warfare aspect of the distaste for the front runner because the officially sanctioned narrative, whether you are a liberal or a conservative, is that America is a wondrous land of opportunity and anybody who is willing to work hard can become the next Willard Romney. It’s largely bullshit, of course, and it’s becoming even more obviously bullshit with every passing year, but that’s the lie you are required to sell if you want to be paid big bucks to spout your opinion on teevee instead of just being some lonely, uncompensated blogger sitting on his couch in his basement.
Despite their ever-increasing love for Social Darwinism, even the Republican base seems to be turned off by a guy who was born rich and got richer by destroying good paying American jobs, then has the gonads to say aloud that he doesn’t care about poor people. Gingrich knows this, which is why he has been hammering that theme on the campaign trail. The Angry Little Attack Muffin just didn’t expect that in their anger the voters would turn not to him but to a deeply closeted, homophobic freak in a sweater vest whose sudden popularity represents yet another new low for our national politics.
Looking back at Tuesday night's results, if you are a neutral and uninterested observer like me you have to love the fact that the Missouri primary was non-binding, meaning that the party apparatus of the Show Me State retains the ability to select the delegates to the Republican convention regardless of the primary's outcome (actually, the "Show Me State" sounds like the kind of place Santorum would secretly LOVE to visit and indulge his wildest fantasies, but I digress). The prevailing morning-after narrative was that the "meaningless" nature of the contest held the voting numbers down, which enabled Santorum to score his big victory because his much smaller percentage of supporters is far more passionate about him than Romney’s larger percentage are about their guy. No doubt the state Republican “leadership” thought they were being smart by retaining control of the delegate selection process to prevent, say, Ron Paul from receiving any delegates, but what they actually managed to do was set the stage for a HUGE embarrassment of the man the party is now supposed to be rallying around as its standard bearer.
Speaking of Ron Paul, the other notable thing to come out of this week’s results is that he is DONE as a candidate for the Republican nomination. The party’s base has clearly spoken: Anybody But Willard...who ISN’T Ron Paul. The Good Doctor should conceded to reality, drop out of the race now and stop trying to keep his passionate supporters' hopes up. Some might argue that Paul should stay in the race so in case there is a brokered convention he might be able to play kingmaker. To which I would reply: how exactly does ultimately having the power to put one of the remaining three statist authoritarians in the race over the top help his Libertarian followers? Sure, he might personally derive some benefit from such a scenario, but then he would be acting like just one more full-of-shit politician rather than the supposed man of principle many of his followers believe him to be.
As for me, I’ll be rooting for Santorum to continue (ahem) spreading far and wide across the country. I said two weeks ago in my post, "Newt Gingrich: The 'Leader' America So Richly Deserves," that Gingrich would be the perfect president for this Spoiled Rotten Nation, and the same logic also applies to the possibility of Santorum taking the oath of office next January. At the very least, President Frothy Lube & Fecal Matter would expose once and for all just what an utter farce our political system has become as the Empire slouches along towards its inevitable fall.
Bonus: That's our Little Ricky -- hanging out with all the boys
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