Oh, Rick Perry. We see you.

So, this is certainly one way a person running for president during this century can talk about what happened in Charleston:

Perry and Malzberg kicked off the discussion of the shooting by attacking President Obama for mentioning the failure to pass gun reform. Perry, a GOP presidential candidate, said that the president is trying to “take the guns out of the hands of everyone in this country.”

“This is the MO of this administration, any time there is an accident like this — the president is clear, he doesn’t like for Americans to have guns and so he uses every opportunity, this being another one, to basically go parrot that message,” Perry said.

Instead of talking about guns, Perry said, we should be talking about prescription drugs: “Also, I think there is a real issue to be talked about. It seems to me, again without having all the details about this, that these individuals have been medicated and there may be a real issue in this country from the standpoint of these drugs and how they’re used.”

I know Perry has since come back around and said he meant "incident" not "accident"--but people can do some wild things on prescription drugs. I heard of one damned fool who tried to run for president for a while all goofed up on back pills.  I know he's a proponent of loosey-goosey gun laws, too, but he can't possibly believe "gun control" equals "taking away all the guns, melting them down, and turning them into a ginormous peace sign statue", right? And I wonder why he wasn't too interested in talking about race? I mean, I don't actually wonder, but...

The 2012 GOP Primary is *Still* With Us. Really.

It strikes me as singularly weird that I'm doing another post regarding the reverb on the 2012 GOP primary and I'm still not talking about TX Gov. Perry's post-indictment chances or the low-level Mitt Romney chatter (Reihan Salam makes a few strong points, but Charles Pierce comedically upends them) . But no, I'm back mentioning this strange little grubby palm-greasing in Ioway. Because it still has ripples, somehow.

Call me a cynic, a skeptic, and a grump, but all the same, I just saw the volte face of Sorenson from Bachmann to Paul as a kind of estimation of their comparative electable merits. Ron Paul has a more or less coherent political message, and Michele Bachmann is not a great maker of coherent statements. End of story?--nope.

Now, to be completely real, until 2012, there was no reason for me to know who the hell Kent Sorenson even is. But it looks like, if you are big in the GOP in Iowa, you kind of are a big deal in getting a presidential primary campaign started, judging from what he seemed to have got out of the deal. (Ya know, before anyone looked into it.)

The 2012 GOP Primary Is Still With Us, Weirdly Enough

When Michele Bachmann's 2012 presidential campaign started to take a massive dump, I was kind of sympathetic but concerned.  To my jaded eye, Michele Bachmann's campaign always looked like a form of trolling rather than a serious effort, and deep in my guts, I always thought Ron Paul, as a kind of rear-guard Goldwater winger, was also doing his part to run a presidential campaign to score points and #profit. Which is why the problems with the Bachmann campaign starting with Sorenson struck me as weird. I was interested with the allegations that Kent Sorenson was "bought" by the Bachmann campaign. But the evidence and the Bachmann campaign's own allegations suggested the obvious reason he didn't "stay bought".  Iowa did not know they had a pimp.

He got a better offer. My immediate response was that the Paul campaign looked more viable, at the time--but the current story is that maybe there were reasons.

This whole affair is making me somewhat re-evaluate my estimation of both the Bachmann and Paul campaigns' seriousness. Were these really a "straight shoot" and not "work" to make shit interesting for "Inevitable Mitt"? Did either of these candidates really think it was worth it to score points so much that they were violating campaign law in Iowa--up in the corn, feeling their oats? This makes me pre-emptively re-evaluate my estimation of Rand Paul's obvious 2016 trolling. He could be for reals.

I don't know if that scares me enough. I guess I won't know until 2016. If anyone ever wonders where I go when I am not posting, I am recalibrating my cynicism, because sometimes I believe it must be broken.

(X-posted at Rumproast.)

Odd Tales From The 2012 Best of the Worst: Michele Bachmann Edition

A story about a debate coach exerting unusual influence on 2012 GOP presidential primary candidate Michele Bachmann comes to us from Buzzfeed:

Michele Bachmann's high-profile debate coach, Brett O'Donnell, developed an "unnatural" and "Rasputin-like" relationship with his candidate during her failed 2012 presidential campaign, another former aide told BuzzFeed, a charge O'Donnell denies. 

Peter Waldron, an evangelical organizer who served as Iowa field coordinator for Bachmann and helped her win the Ames straw poll said O'Donnell exercised an "unusual power over Mrs. Bachmann." Waldron and other former Bachmann staffalso currently say the Congresswoman has yet to pay them for debts owned from her short-lived campaign. 

"He prohibited her husband, Dr. Marcus Bachmann, from sleeping in the same room with wife while on the campaign trail," Waldron said in an email to BuzzFeed. "He prohibited legendary consultants Ed Rollins and Ed Goeas from attending debate prep sessions. He told her when she could get off the bus (Waterloo event with Gov. Perry), he wrote most of the words that came out of her mouth, he wrote all of her speeches."

Mitt Romney is: The Ugly American

Going over the past day's worth of unforced errors the Romney Campaign made, I'm struck by how well Mitt Romney's unique tin-eared quality genuinely reflects the stereotype of the "Ugly American".

Consider this: he disparaged the security situation for the Olympics in London--

It's kind of clear what that's about; he's comparing the 2012 Olympics to his own 2002 experience heading up the Salt Lake Olympics. In a way, it makes sense for him to talk about his resume during a campaign, but in a broader sense--seriously? You're a guest in that country, hosting the Olympics are a point of national pride (as Romney should well know) and that's just a boorish way to behave.

But it's not just Romney being self-important--it also reads as "Gee, we figured out how to do it in the US--I hope you people don't cock it up."   For a value of "you people" that measures units of not being American.

Also, he pretty clearly wasn't paying attention to who all he was speaking to in one instance--calling Labour leader Ed Miliband "Mr. Leader" and in one instance, paid too close attention to who he was speaking with, by mentioning a meeting with the head of MI6, which simply isn't done.  It shows a lack of concern for the other country's protocols and a disregard for diplomacy.

Something Something Ron Paul's Not Campaigning, Something Something Delegates.

I feel like I should say something to mark the sorta-suspension of the Ron Paul campaign, just as I marked the end of the Cain, Bachmann, Perry, Santorum, and Gingrich campaigns. Somehow, my heart just isn't in it. For one thing, even if Ron Paul isn't actively campaigning, you know, deep down, some of his supporters will never say die. And also, Rand Paul. And also, delegate finagling.  (Would Ron Paul get a prominent berth at the Convention to give one of his speeches? Let me reiterate: one of his speeches?)

In other words, to the extent that he was a fixture of this campaign year, his version of not campaigning would still feel to me like he never left, if that makes sense. And if it doesn't, that's probably fitting.

Romney Doesn't Win WIth the Haters, Because of Hate

(H/T Towleroad)

What have left-bloggers been saying? Well, Bryan Fischer just summed it up--Romney can't be expected to sack up against any foreign malefactor because he's sackless in the face of Fringy McWingnut. (Sic--all references to "sack" as a synonym for courage being the imaginative property of Patriarchy, Inc. All rights reserved to people not like me. ) As I said, Romney doesn't owe these people one damn thing because they don't approve of him on general principles. His yielding to any pressure from them is basically wasted energy, and a gift to the Obama Administration, who wouldn't at all mind seeing him painted into a far-right corner.

If he's painted into a far-right corner (and can't get no Indy's) and hasn't tickled the political libido of the far-right base either, then that guy is gonna lose. And good riddance to diffident rubbish, I'd say.

Mr. Newt's Wild Ride Comes to An End

Instead of linking to Newt Gingrich's rambling farewell speech, in which he thanked many people, and um, said many things (including a digression on his lifetime achievements) and, um, didn't really support Mitt Romney so much as state that any Republican was better than Obama (inspirational!), I think I'm just going to concentrate on Newton Leroy Gingrich's real contribution to this campaign.

For one thing, there's the negging he did earlier in the primary to make the Romney campaign really want to hook him up with support from their donor list to help in retiring his massive campaign debt.  You know, like these comments right here:



And then there's this marvelous and accurate statement from Fox News' own honest fellow, Shep Smith, who comments on Gingrich's parting words and Team Romney's response to them:



"Politics is weird....and creepy, and now I know lacks even the loosest attachment to anything like reality."

I would make that into a needlepoint to hang over my bed if I could do needlepoint, I tell you what.

This moment is bittersweet for me. I don't think there's much of a political future for Newt Gingrich and actually, I suspect that his campaign may have even harmed his reputation by calling attention to the rare batshit flavor of what has generally been assumed to be his scholarly, historical, and technological Big Ideas. Viewing him in the light of 2012 casts a pall over the earlier version that once loomed large in my political imagination--the 1994-1999 Gingrich whose Contract With America and whose leadership in the House led to such...nonsense. The government shutdown. The impeachment of President Clinton.

I don't think you could blame me for seeing the echoes of that time in the 2010 mid-term elections that swept in a mess of GOP freshmen armed with hard-core partisan ideals, or for wondering if someone like Eric Cantor or (more probably) Paul Ryan might have Gingrich-like influence as Speaker themselves one day by following in his creative-destructive footsteps (no fear of Boehner--he's useless).  Yet seeing the curtain swept back on the Great and Powerful Oz to reveal a little con man is kind of satisfying, in a way. Did he give brains, a heart, courage, a home, to arch-conservatism? Or were they merely tokens?

Meh. Ding dong, the career is dead.


(X-posted at Rumproast.)

Rick Santorum Aborts Presidential Campaign

Via Funny or Die --

Rick Santorum Aborts Presidential Campaign from Ashley Judd      

Back to Mitt Romney--

I don’t know how everything got shifted over to how one person who isn’ta campaign spokesperson for President Obama said one technically true thing that didn’t sound right and then suddenly everything was about how Lefties don’t love Mom, the flag or apple pie. I’m sure a bunch of people who are White House and campaign spox are going through Message Discipline Boot Camp right now (Drop and give me twenty talking points!) But I have my ideas. It seems like the only card conservatives can draw is the Defense of Traditional Womanhood Card, just like they play the Defense of Traditional Marriage Card in another respect of the culture war.  In other words, they whinge, “Why are you attacking this tradition (by pointing out that others exist)?”

Thus, when Hilary Rosen made a specific point about Ann Romney’s privilege in being able to be a stay-at-home-mom, it was attacked as being about her choice to be a stay-at-home-mom. Honestly, I do not care if Ann Romney worked a day outside the home. It matters to me that Gov. Romney has decided that he will receive his communications from Planet Vajayjay from someone who is more familiar with Ladies Who Lunch than Ladies who can’t Catch a Lunch Break.

So long and Thanks for all the ....Santorum,

I guess it should be noted for posterity that theocratic homophobe Rick Santorum has bowed out of the 2012 GOP Best of the Worst competition after a morning of speculation turned out to be dead-on.  From a purely blogular standpoint, I’m going to miss him, a little, but he’ll never really be gone. Whenever awkward tone-deaf metaphors for gay marriage are spoken, he’ll be there. Wherever “Did he or didn’t he?” vague racial comments are made, he’ll be there.  Whenever Fox News decides they can afford to cut him a paycheck for doing his thing, he’ll be there. Whenever the earliest availability for scrounging up 2016 presidential interest appears—he will totally be there. Or, to employ a different cultural meme no less sacrilegious, where job creators defend their privilege, it’s there you’ll find old Rick.

I think the thing I admire most, if you can call it that, about Santorum’s campaign was that he actually made it this far and made Mitt Romney’s campaign spend lots of money to put him away. All things considered, it was right for Santorum to drop out now, after Romney made it clear he’d go full-on alpha-male and pee on every tree in Santorum country. So the Romney campaign is committed to a big ad buy in this market for a showdown that isn’t actually happening. Of course, if Santorum was sticking with his quest for the nomination as he indicated with his “half-time” metaphor, this was the right thing for Romney to do.  After all, knock Santorum out in his home state, and he has no momentum and no resources left to go anywhere.  But as it stands, Santorum gets to wind down his campaign having done some reasonable damage to the front-runner’s long-term chances in the general election with an escalatingly negative campaign prior to dropping out, and I note, without an endorsement for him, either.

You know what Charles Pierce calls Santorum? I don’t like to use gendered insults like that, but I concur with the sentiment. And I suspect Romney might, too.

(X-posted at Rumproast.)

Rick Santorum Said What, Now?

Who knows? He started to say something: "government nig(?)", but I can't imagine what. It's the fumbling afterwards that might make some uncomfortably suspicious that he was about to drop the N-bomb. but I am going to remain more neutral about this than about the "blah people" comments.

However, I invite you to listen to the whole speech he was giving, which I'm pretty unambivalent about.  It's just dense with "Obama is not a real American because he's not our kind of American" signalling. Also, he blames President Obama for somehow dividing the country. Santorum appears to be of the impression that there was no history of any kind of racial or class divide in this country before Obama showed up and pointed it out. Yeah, there was maybe a slave trade, a Civil War, Reconstruction, wage slavery, segregation, the slaying of people because of race--especially civil rights organizers, the arson of churches, the vandalism of homes, and the perpetuation of stereotyped, race-based speech in our politics to this very day in this country, but if Santorum wants to ignore all that and shift the responsibility to Obama, he is of course free to tell us what he really thinks.

However, he should not be surprised if we actually do judge him by his unaided-by-Teleprompter words, and know perfectly well what he means by them.

Edit/Update:

And while I'm on the topic of division, I can't help but point out that even if certain candidates who enjoy white privilege don't refer to race as such, they certain can contribute to the division between Americans by dividing them via gender and orientation, which reinforces the kyriarchy. I'm also looking at you, Mitt Romney.

Santorum Wins In Louisiana--still will not be Nominee

But I think he does believe he will be the front-runner in 2016, if I’m hearing this talk about Ronald Reagan correctly:

Santorum told supporters after Saturday’s win in Louisiana that the race was far from over, recalling the naysayers who said Ronald Reagan was too conservative to win the nomination.
“Ronald Reagan fought that battle in 1976 and he did something that had not been done since: as someone as a conservative running against the establishment, he won 11 states. Well tonight, thanks to the great people of Louisiana, we have won our 11th state in this primary fight,” he said.

Of course, Reagan won the nomination and the presidency in 1980.

Which should be very comforting to the sort of people who would be impressed with the message of this campaign ad:

Me? I don't care for it much.

More Notes From Gingrich's Last Stand

Sometimes a vast sea creature will beach itself on one of our shores, and its ponderous bulk will resist all attempts to slip it back into the depths from which it came. It will die there, on land, and of course, it will rot.

As it rots, it will smell, and gather insects about it.  Out of concern for public health and safety, the corpses of these large beasts are occasionally exploded for quick removal.

Newt Gingrich is just about there. He commented today regarding President Obama's comments in response to a question about the killing of Trayvon Martin with the following:

"Newt Gingrich called Obama's remarks about Trayvon Martin "disgraceful" in an interview with Sean Hannity, according to CBS/National Journal. 

“It’s not a question of who that young man looked like. Any young American of any ethnic background should be safe, period. We should all be horrified no matter what the ethnic background," Gingrich said. "Is the President suggesting that if it had been a white who had been shot that would be ok because it didn’t look like him?" 

Earlier in the day Gingrich told reporters that he thought the case should be investigated and suggested the shooter was at fault. 

"That’s just nonsense dividing this country up. It is a tragedy this young man was shot," Gingrich continued on Hannity's show. "It would have been a tragedy if he had been Puerto Rican or Cuban or if he had been white or if he had been Asian-American of if he’d been a Native American. At some point we ought to talk about being Americans. When things go wrong to an American. It is sad for all Americans. Trying to turn it into a racial issue is fundamentally wrong. I really find it appalling.”

Someone asked the President a question. He answered it as a parent would. The man who killed Trayvon Martin used a racial slur and had a history of alarmism about black people.  No one's "trying to turn it into a racial issue"--it is one because even if it wasn't one, many, many, people besides the president believe it is, and grown adults who are trying to lead a country pay attention to how other people feel and react. Tired old grifters who have one big trick left pull out the whistle and blow. We aren't horrified because the victim was black. We're horrified because the shooter walked. Because he wasn't arrested. Because the boy lay in the morgue three days while his phone had his parents' number in it, and they weren't called. Gingrich may ignore how race may have impacted the treatment of this case, but he does so ignorantly if he doesn't realize that people will feel something about that and now won't let it be ignored.

There are differences among people in this country. There is a big difference between Barack Obama and Newt Gingrich. It shows.

The Unenviable Branding Genius of Eric Fehrnstrom

I was just talking about narrative the other day, and mentioned that Romney doesn't have one. Well, he has one, as a kind of progressive Republican former Massachusetts governor trying to capture the nomination for presidential candidacy from an increasingly-conservative Republican part that doesn't seem to want him, whilst being burdened with immense personal awkwardness and immense personal wealth.  But for Pete's sake, first of all, that's an almighty mouthful, and for another thing, it's not exactly flattering to the candidate, is it?

What the campaign has always needed was something simple for people to easy understand what the campaign was about--a central idea. Maybe a visual. That is what Romney aide Eric Fehrnstrom has provided. Here's the synopsis:

This all started this morning on CNN. When Romney aide Eric Fehrnstrom was asked if the campaign was worried about moving too far to the right during a primary, he responded that he was not. 

"Well, I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign," Fehrnstrom said. "Everything changes. It's almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and we start all over again." 

What followed, on a day when Romney was supposed to be celebrating his victory -- and his 43rd wedding anniversary, by the way -- was a firestorm from political opponents that lit up Twitter and saw rival Republican candidates appearing on stage with the iconic toy.

Etch-a-Sketch! I had one as a kid--you probably had one as a kid. It's one of the best-recognized toys ever.  And it is a toy designed for making pictures. Which is just wonderful for the visual media, tv, speeches, the internet. And it does sum up the main theme of the Romney campaign--he's running to the right of Rick Freaking Santorum right now, but tomorrow? Who knows?  It's simple, iconic, and everyone gets it.

So instead of talk about how everyone should now get behind Romney now that he's decisively won a pretty big one in Illinois, and gotten a big endorsement from Jeb Bush  who was one of the frequently-mentioned possible contenders in a brokered convention--we were treated to the spectacle of living-dead candidates Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum brandishing prop Etch-A-Sketches.

And yet, amusing as all this is--it won't kill Romney's chances of getting the nomination. The math is still the math. Inevitablah! Mittmentum!

But on other news, Senator McCain is a little disappointed. And Greg Mankiw posts a joke.  These are people on Romney's side.

Pleasant thought--given that Mitt is unpopular enough that he's being savaged by other Republicans and he's the best shot they've got right now, wanna give a think about what kind of bullshit he'll have to go through in the long haul?  Given that his campaign advisers must have the killer instinct of overcrowded lemmings not to have clapped down on some of Romney's privileged gaffe-tasticness, I'm sure at least their pick of running mate will be a real gme-changer, you know?

The Real Mitt Romney

This is this just hilarious.

Notes on the Winding Down of A Long Con

There is no shark-jumping moment for the career of one Newton Leroy Gingrich, former Speaker of the House and would-be presidential nominee, because Speaker Gingrich has long operated with the Great White clearly in view between his water-skis. A White House bid after 20 years of green-room exile may strike some as a romantic fantasy or vanity project, but I prefer to think of it as the "fuck-you" exploit that caps an extraordinary grifting career. Maybe not in the sense of a man solely in it for the money--although money surely has come into it, but for status and attention as well. I think my interpretation gives the man some dignity as a player in the world of players. Every day he's hustling. You can understand a man like that.

Maybe not like him.

But I think the end is near, the money's drying up and the time has come to settle in, write a new book, or maybe even spend more time with his families. Witness the following bid for attention:

(Whoa! Halt everything! I recommend taking a medium-sized drink of the beverage of your choice, so that you might spit it out at the appropriate interval. Pro-tip: Away from your keyboard.)

Newt Gingrich is incensed about a joke by actor Robert DeNiro at a fundraiser attended by Michelle Obama for the president’s re-election, in which the Academy Award-winning star used the word “white” to describe the Republican field’s spouses.
"Callista Gingrich. Karen Santorum. Ann Romney. Now do you really think our country is ready for a white first lady?" DeNiro said. "Too soon, right?"
...
"What DeNiro said last night was inexcusable and the president should apologize for him. It was at an Obama fundraiser, it is exactly wrong, it divides the country," [Gingrich] said. "If people on the left want to talk about talk show hosts, then everybody in the country should hold the president accountable when someone at his event says something that is utterly and terribly unacceptable as what Robert DeNiro said." 

No word yet on whether Gingrich thinks Obama should apologize for Little Fockers.

Toujours l'audace, M. Gingrich.  Who I believe in recent memory called Obama a "food-stamp president" and bemoaned his "Kenyan, anti-colonialist" ways.

A White House spokesperson called the remarks "inappropriate", thereby sucking the oxygen out of Gingrich's attempt at rhetorical arson. Some days it hardly pays to put on one's best poutrage face. Sniff. But that was a just a tidbit.  He was scarcely as invested in that, as he is in the $2.50 gas idea.

Gimmicks. Alas. Alack. A duh.

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.

Santorum Vows To Fight Porn, But Won't Beat It

All right, who e-mailed "Two Girls and a Cup" to Rick Santorum?

His campaign website talks about his commitment to "vigorously enforcing" obscenity laws:

America is suffering a pandemic of harm from pornography.  A wealth of research is now available demonstrating that pornography causes profound brain changes in both children and adults, resulting in widespread negative consequences. Addiction to pornography is now common for adults and even for some children. The average age of first exposure to hard-core, Internet pornography is now 11. Pornography is toxic to marriages and relationships. It contributes to misogyny and violence against women.  It is a contributing factor to prostitution and sex trafficking. 

Every family must now be concerned about the harm from pornography. As a parent, I am concerned about the widespread distribution of illegal obscene pornography and its profound effects on our culture.  

For many decades, the American public has actively petitioned the United States Congress for laws prohibiting distribution of hard-core adult pornography.

I dunno. I'm part of the American public that has never gotten especially riled up over porn. I have real problems with some of the business end of porn and the exploitative nature of it on one hand, but the actual product usually strikes me as more quaint, occasionally fantastic (in the "that shit doesn't happen" sense) and tacky than actively harmful. I've always had an issue with with obscenity laws per se because of the kind of abstract, nebulous, "know it when I see it"  nature of the "community standards" basis of what constitutes obscenity. Even within a community, standards can vary. I remember the full-scale freak-out some people experienced in this country over about five seconds of naked aureole during a sports entertainment intermission, whereas my first husband and I made up our minds to never buy porn videos if the jacket was in a language neither of us was especially proficient in only after one of our selections turned out a bit too involved. Reading subtitles--it just gets in the way.

Not everyone watches for the plots.  I get that.

Anyhow, I just get the impression that Santorum's version of "obscenity" involves folks talking about separation of church and state too passionately, if you know what I mean. It plays well among the social conservatives, to an extent, but a lot of people like porn. My former senator, he is so awkward.

(Oh, the video--that's just cute.  Also, I only bring the porn issue up because it irritates conservatives, apparently. Also, I couldn't let the title go to waste. And reading about Santorum decrying misogyny is fascinating.)

Looks Like Santorum Won Mississippi and Alabama

The effect of former PA Sen. Rick Santorum and Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich definitely made itself clear tonight as the numbers came in, putting Santorum on top in AL and MS, and Romney third in these contests. It still looks like Gingrich is unlikely to leave the field, even though he needed a win in at least one of these states to be anything like competitive, but I've long supposed that his game really wasn't for snagging the nomination anyway.

What's amazing to me is that Santorum has shaped up to be a real contender. This time last year, while I'd have definitely conceded that my former Senator was angling for 2012, but I'd never have put him this close to contesting Romney for it--my gut had Romney winning it all in a short walk. On one hand, I'm humbled, I must have underestimated the social conservative religious right votes--on the other hand I'm kind of scared: OMG! The Social Conservative Religious Right Votes!!!!!

Anyhow, I've been a Santorumologist for eons at this point, and am not exactly worried for the republic. He's got authenticity, but he's also got a content-filter issue that would definitely damage him in the long-run with moderates and independents in the general: he says all kinds of stuff. But the odd thing to me is trying to understand how many Baptists pulled a lever for a disciple of the Whore of Babylon--seriously? Things would have been totally different if Newt had kept his original affiliation, my bet. Mormon and wealthy lost the cause for Romney, and if you think no amount of cheesy grits would have made him acceptable to hard-working folks--you might still have enough redneck cred to wonder why anyone would try to profit off of cheap southern stereotypes. Huh?

Anyway, it looks like I will be continuing my close watch of Sh*t My Former Senator Says.  Wheeeeeee---to the extent that that can be said sarcastically.

As a postscript--I don't suppose race is primary in these primaries, but tribal identification and signifying might be. Romney never stood a chance here. Santorum is the signifier of signifiers.

Ergo--he won.