Tag: Santorum

Romney grows a pair

… the world’s smallest pair. If the man can’t stand up to Limbaugh, how’s he going to do face-to-face with Putin?

… the world’s smallest pair.

His comment on Rush Limbaugh’s calling a law student a prostitute for supporting contraceptive coverage under health insurance?

I’ll just say this which is it’s not the language I would have used. I’m focusing on the issues I think are significant in the country today and that’s why I’m here talking about jobs and Ohio.

“Not the language I would have used.” Now that’s tough. And that’s what he came up with after ducking the question all day.

How can you expect Romney to stand up to Putin or Ahmadi-Nejad if he can’t even stand up to an obese bully with a microphone?

Update Rick Santorum, on the other hand, has millimeter-sized stones rather than micron-sized stones:

He’s being absurd, but that’s you know, an entertainer can be absurd. He’s in a very different business than I am.

Try calling one of Rick Santorum’s daughters a slut and a prostitute, and I bet you’d discover he knows stronger language than “absurd.”

Barack Obama, on the other hand, knows how to behave. And he also knows how to seize a political opportunity when his opponents hand him one. But that’s the point, isn’t it? This year, we will have an election between a party whose members and leaders think that contraception is evil and a party whose members and leaders think it’s an essential part of health care. “No difference?” Now that’s absurd.

Questions for Mitt Romney

Gov. Romney:

1. Rick Santorum has claimed that the President’s environmental policies are based on a “phony theology.” Do you agree? Do you think his comments were appropriate in a campaign?

2. Rick Santorum has claimed that mainline Protestantism has fallen under Satanic influence and is not longer part of the world of Christianity. Do you agree? Do you think that his comments were appropriate in a campaign?

3. Rick Santorum has asserted that birth control is “harmful to women” and “harmful to society.” Do you agree?

4. Rick Santorum opposes health insurance coverage for pre-natal ultrasound exams because he says they lead to abortions. Do you agree?

In the competition for Republican primary voters, Santorum’s extremism is probably a net plus. Romney doesn’t want to position himself as the more moderate of the candidates. But, assuming (as still seems more likely than not) that Romney will be the nominee, the rest of the voters are entitled to know just how much of his rival’s extremism Romney shares.

Rick Santorum really, really hates you if …

… you’re a professor or a mainline Protestant. You’re doing Satan’s work. No, really.

… you’re a professor or a mainline Protestant. You are doing the work of the “Father of Lies” (and no, he doesn’t mean Rush Limbaugh).  You really have to hear the loathing he packs into the phrase “smart people.”

 Audio here.

Can you imagine the outrage had it turned out - per impossibile - that Barack Obama had described the Catholic Church as a tool of Satan, the product of “vanity and pride,” and no longer “part of Christianity”? But I doubt Santorum will lose a single endorsement over this, or even be required to defend it.

h/t Political Animal.

 

How much does Newt Gingrich hate Mitt Romney?

Enough to drop out and leave him head-to-head against Santorum? Now *that* would be a dirty trick.

Mitt Romney and his SuperPac not only destroyed Newt Gingrich’s campaign, they assassinated his character: with a little bit of help, of course, from Newton Leroy himself. The Gingrich campaign, having morphed from a book tour into a serious run (for one brief, scary moment) at the Presidency, has now been transformed again, this time into a revenge drama.

But just how angry is Gingrich?

Is he angry enough, for example, to withdraw from the race, putting Romney in the position that was always Romney’s nightmare: head to head against a single extremist? Now that would be a low blow.

Santorum’s surge after Tuesday’s hat trick - he’s now even with, or even ahead of, Romney in national polls of Republicans - shows, for about he fourth time, how badly most of the GOP base doesn’t want Mitt Romney as the nominee: they’d coalesce around Hannibal Lecter if he were the clear alternative.

Santorum, with fewer wives than Gingrich and a less spectacular history of influence-peddling, simply does not present the same target-rich environment that Gingrich does in the context of a Republican primary. Even without the big bucks, Santorum might make a race of it, if it came down to a choice simple enough for even a Tea Partier to understand.

I don’t think this will happen, for the same reason that Bill Clinton missed the chance to take his revenge by resigning in early 1999, which would have stirred up sympathy for Clinton and rage against his foes while allowing Gore to campaign as the incumbent. Yes, Gingrich cherishes his grudges; but it will probably turn out that he cherishes his media appearances even more.

Just sayin’

Krauthammer and Kristol both think Rick Santorum represents their brand of Republicanism. Any other questions?

Both Charles Krauthammer and William Kristol - who pass for conservative intellectuals in these degraded times - think that Rick “Man on Dog” Santorum is a worthy standard-bearer for their brand of jihadist Republicanism.

Consistency

If Santorum is defending the Crusades, how about the Inquisition?

Now that Rick Santorum has explained that the bad reputation of the Crusades is the result of a plot by leftists who hate Christendom, is he going to endorse the Inquisition next, and expose Voltaire as an undercover jihadist and proto-Marxist?

No doubt the Crusaders were, indeed, fighting for the “Judeo-Christian concept of the person,” and the massacre of Jews when the Crusaders took Jerusalem (and many other massacres and forced conversions of Jews by Crusdaders before and after that event) merely reflected an excess of Judeo-Christian zeal, or the fog of war, or something.

Yes, I know making fun of Santorum is too easy to be any real fun, and that he’s not going to be the Republican nominee. But his campaign remains as a monument to the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the contemporary GOP. And you can bet your bottom dinar Mitt Romney won’t dare criticize Santorum’s praise of one of the most foolish and immoral movements in all of world history. What’s worse, no reporter will even dare ask Romney the question.

The big winner in the Republican debates …

… is Caligula’s horse Incitatus, no longer the gold standard for distinction beyond merit.

… has clearly been Caligula’s horse Incitatus.

For close on two millennia the poor beast, the victim of his master’s insane (or perhaps jocular) intention to make him Consul, has been a proverb for those offered for posts beyond their capacities. Here, for example, is John Randolph of Roanoke on John Quincy Adams’s choice of Richard Rush as Secretary of the Treasury:

Never were abilities so much below mediocrity so well rewarded; no, not when Caligula’s horse was made Consul.

As a result of the Republican debates, we can now give the innocent Incitatus - who never, after all, ran for Consul, or even galloped for it - a rest. Perry, Bachmann, Cain, Gingrich, and Santorum are all clearly less qualified for the office they seek than a horse would have been to serve as Consul. The Presidency, unlike the Consulate under the Emperors, still has real functions.

And at least Caligula proposed the entire horse.