With regards to the recent surge of Rick Santorum:
Santorum is the lucky beneficiary of the following fortuitous factors (hey, that's alliteration!), in no particular order:
1. Half of the original GOP field (for mathematical aesthetics we must consider Tim Pawlenty to have been half of one candidate) simply sucked as a potential GOP standard-bearer, being either a one-trick pony (Michele Bachmann), a moron (John Huntsman), wild-hair-up-your-ass crazy (Ron Paul), or dumber than a sack of boulders (Rick Perry).
Once the limitations of those candidates were made manifest through 20 debates and several months of media scrutiny, it was inevitable that some of them would drop out and their supporters would look elsewhere. In the case of Ron Paul, the only reason he's still in this race is because there are apparently legions of republicans who might as well be democrats.
2. The Romney People (allegedly) did their homework on Herman Cain, or more specifically, Herman's persistent bimbo problems. For a while it appeared as if Cain stood a halfway-decent chance of being The Man, but that was before his candidacy was torpedoed by the golddiggers and adulterers in his life, not to mention his inability to answer direct questions regarding Iran.
3. Newt Gingrich has, to date, let his legendary intellect fail him, and has instead become what many of his detractors accused him of being all along; an emotional, egocentric doofus. This inability to shrug off the nasty attacks of the annoying Mitt Romney has hurt Gingrich, and it's difficult to say whether he can right the ship anytime soon.
4. Santorum got three wins in two primary states that don't apportion delegates, and one win in a caucus state where the same phenomenon is operative. In addition, he had the Iowa Beauty Contest revised in his favor, although he only beat Romney out by a lousy eight votes. This gives the appearance of a strong candidate and organization where none truly exists. The point is that, for all intents and purposes, those wins don't count where it counts -- i.e. in the apportionment of delegates. Then again, most people are shallow enough to go on appearances solely, and so don't expect anyone to realize that while Santorum may have won the battles, he can still lose the war.
5. Mitt Romney has been all but taking victory laps since the beginning of the year. Romney, having (allegedly) destroyed Cain's hope, and holed Gingrich's ship below the waterline, has acted as if all that remained for him to do was to take the Oath of Office come next January. Romney is getting lazy and cocky, which is surprising, considering that it's obvious to anyone who doesn't spout Libtard boilerplate on Hardball that Mitt ain't exactly the consensus candidate.
6. Die-hard religious conservatives still won;t pull the lever for the Mormon Romney, and Santorum still makes all the proper grovelling Christian noises to the point where he's now being labelled in some places a theocrat-in-waiting. Santorum is an alternative for the brain-dead Christian who prays for a healthy bowel movement, when compared to the heathen Romney, the adulterer Gingrich, and the atheist Paul. Never underestimate the stupidity of people who go to church to make the wrong decisions when it comes to selecting a candidate, nor their ability to toss one branch of conservatism (i.e. fiscal, small-government conservatism) overboard in favor of the Taliban-like devotion to religious and social views.
The sad truth, however, is that Santorum still couldn't beat Obama on his best day, with divine intervention or not. In most polls, Romney still kicks Obama's butt by a 10+ point margin. Santorum is so boring, so predictable, so hypocritical, that it's conceivable that he would still lose to the ineffectual Obama by a wide margin even if he offered free booze and oral sex at the polling booths.
Santorum has no heft behind him. there is no "there" there, being little more than a by-the-numbers-process, cardboard-cutout politician in a bad sweater vest. He's Mike Huckabee with a better-looking wife. His resume, though arguably more substantial than Obama's, is still wafer-thin. Mostly, it's a recitation of a list of semi-accomplishments, legislative loose ends, and never-quite-successful-in-the-way-intended-me-too-along-for-the-ride-conservatism, with no evidence of fiscal responsibility, or government-limiting intentions behind it.
Santorum is a machine-driven apparatchik, who can’t hide the fact that he’s gamed the system in order to get elected without any particular talent being evident.
In a potential battle between do-nothing career hacks, Obama is at least charismatic and speaks to the lazier elements of American Life, where there’s 47% of the people who don’t pay taxes, 1-in-6 on food stamps, and the traditional democratic (small ‘d’ intentional) party base of the stupid, poor, addicted, and clueless. Obama has a built-in numbers advantage. Santorum doesn't excite or interest anyone enough to bridge that gap.
Santorum fits, to a tee, the caricature of the Movement Conservative: a stick-in-the-mud-buzz-killer with poor fashion sense and the vision of a burning cross trailing behind him. This may be unfair to Santorum, but I’m a republican, and that’s the sight that even I see. It gives me douchechills to think about how badly Obama would whip Santorum’s pasty white ass.
There's still time for some of the following things to happen, and in neither case does Santorum strike this writer as being smart or charismatic enough to either take advantage of the one, or retrieve disaster from the other:
1. Obama can fuck up even more than he already has, basically handing the election to the GOP by default, or
2. Another GOP candidate can finally differentiate himself from the herd, cut through the single-issue, petty bullshit, and create a grand consensus behind him.
Jumping on the Santorum bandwagon at this time may prove to be a very short ride, indeed.
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