Sweet Jesus, I can't stand Rick Santorum.

I think it's time I got this out in the open; those familiar with my blogging history will know this, but if anyone hasn't gotten the 411 yet, I actually can't stand my former Senator Rick Santorum. I've tried to view him as a sincere human being whose beliefs simply don't coincide with my own, in any respect, who nonetheless has the full complement of human reactions to events and considers them against his own value system, weighing those events in due course of time with sobriety and in the interest of fairness towards the persons who are the actors and victims in society's turbulent never-ending parade of events, small and large. And yet, upon hearing anything he ever says ever, some part of me simply hears the flatulence of an inflamed asshole.

For this reason, I view his failure to get any delegates at all in the Puerto Rico contest and his lack of an attempt to narrow the gap in Illinois with some mirth. He went to Puerto Rico as if specifically to tell these people they needed to speak English to be considered for statehood. Translation:  Screw your folkways, if English was good enough for the Bible, it's good enough for Puerto Rico. 


He's touchy that people keep talking about contraception, so he's going to talk about contraception.

(What the-?)

He loses Michigan with a diversion into how much he couldn't stand JFK's embrace of separation of church and state, but then he snuggles deep into the lap of "Christian-nation-hood" on the eve of Illinois. I guess because everyone needs a reminder that he's the darling of the designated hate-group crowd.

And just today, he makes the absurd statement that this election isn't about unemployment or the economy, which would be what any rational person might think the election would be about as we climb out of a recession. Nope, folks, it's about freedom. He might clamp down on contraception, pornography, teleprompters, make people speak English, and dictate out of the Catholic catechism circa whenever Santorum was schooled in the particulars of his faith, but he will ensure that people are free to go without health care, or even job security, or a path to higher education, because that's the kind of freedom he believes in. If freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose, consider him as down with that as can be. He's promising nothing. And a little disapproving of everything else.

I'd like to think he was nearly out of the race, but I don't think he is. Unfortunately, he has something Romney, Gingrich, and Paul don't have--a "narrative".  He's the pro-life faith candidate who lost big in his home state six years ago and is looking to redeem himself while he also redeems America from wickedness. Sadly, I was reminded recently by the HBO movie Game Change that narratives can override substance in an emotional campaign. I'd like to think Santorum would lose by virtue of his awfulness, but that he hasn't so far unnerves me.