Saint Rick’s fatal flaw is that on his own website, the first article to come up on his “Issues” page is a declaration of war against the “illegal pornography” menace that everybody is worried about right now.
This s*** flies because we’re all social conservatives, more or less, since the vast majority of us are Bible believing Christians. It’s not going to fly once you start campaigning away from the Base of the party and into the mainstream.
I won’t say that Saint Rick can’t beat Obama. I think anybody can, except for Romney and Ron Paul. The problem with Saint Rick is that he offers nothing for us to turn to after Obama is out of office. We’ll just go right back to sleep, as usual, as we settle with his mediocre solutions. He only has mediocre solutions because he himself is a mediocre intellect.
I was doing some reading the other night and came across a page on a Pro-Fair Tax website. It was an outdated page listning all of the candidates and their positions/thoughts on the Fair Tax.
Everybody had an opinion, including Obummer, but right there in the middle of the page was Saint Rick: “Rick Santorum — unknown [position on Fair tax], favors lower taxes but not very specific.”
That, and his Porno article being first on his Issues page, is basically the symbol of Rick Santorum’s campaign.
That's the problem right there. Santorum is pretty much ONLY known as a social values warrior. With Rick, we get sermons on the evils of pornography, contraception, gambling, etc. These are not side issues for him, these ARE his main issues.
It would be one thing if Santorum were a well known champion of budget cuts, or reforming entitlements, or ending the influence of labor unions, or some sort of big, conservative theme the population would naturally associate him with because of his past. Unfortunately, with Rick, we get social/moral arguments - and that will be pretty much it.
And it's not as Rick can stay silent on these things, cleverly push these "personal view" issues to the background while marching forward on economic themes. Santorum can be baited into yakking about how terrible birth control is easily and at will - mostly because he's already said he WANTS to talk about these things as they relate to public policy.
Sorry, we are electing a President, not a priest. A campaign by sir stick-in-the-mud, charismatic as a tree stump Santorum droning on about pornography, birth control, whether women are better off at home or work, etc, will be a disaster. And with Rick, there is no way to avoid it. He may be able to slide through the GOP primary on this stuff because the base is so divided and Romney the chameleon is such a crappy candidate - but in a general election, Rick could well lose by the same 18 points or so he lost his home state by last time around.
This election should be about government failure, massive debt, the rapid expansion of the entitlement state and Hussein's otherwise awful stewardship of the nation. With Santorum we will be endlessly sidetracked on issues the public has long ago decided. Folks/women want birth control. It is what it is. The vast majority of people are fine with this. Only a tiny sliver of Americans want to hear Rick bleat on about how evil it is. Most people understand pornography is available everywhere and if they don't want to see it, they can just not tune in or go to those websites. There is no great outcry amongst the people to re-fight this ala Jerry Falwell of the 1970's. Yet Santorum won't be able to help himself because this is one of his big issues. Santorum would lose in a landslide of such scale he'd hand Obama exactly the absolute mandate we've all most feared. We'd remain locked out of the White House, lose our House majority and fail to regain the Senate - and the spillover effect in the states would be a nightmare.