2012 republican presidential nominee III: can romney get santorum out of his hair?

the idea that he simultaneously believes in American exceptionalism yet is terrified that America is being destroyed by liberal morals, Satan, secularism, etc.

I don't think those are mutually exclusive at all - America is an exceptional country under attack from internal threats. Basically every scapegoating nationalist in history has believed this.

Once Santorum starts suggesting that wealthy liberal Jews in New York and Hollywood are holding back economic recovery he will have truly attained the mantle of the scapegoating nationalist.

the idea that he simultaneously believes in American exceptionalism yet is terrified that America is being destroyed by liberal morals, Satan, secularism, etc.

I don't think those are mutually exclusive at all - America is an exceptional country under attack from internal threats. Basically every scapegoating nationalist in history has believed this.

Yeah the thing is there are some worldviews the GOP narrative owns and some that they successfully project onto their opponents. This projection is a pretty important tactic, and the fear-mongering it entails can seem contradictory to those outside the Us vs. Them bubble.

Sometimes it simply entails finding the most radical left wing ideas and amplifying them. In 2008 I swear I heard "Obama is the new messiah" WAY more from right wingers than left wingers.

You don't say?

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/02/27/rick-santorum-and-the-anti-kitten-burning-coalition/

This delusion gives their lives meaning and purpose. It makes their lives more exciting. And it enables them to bask in the idea that they are good and righteous people — or at least the possibility that they are better than some imagined faction of monstrously cruel other people.

This delusion has become a central defining trait of American politics. Imaginary monsters — other people who are imagined to favor kitten-burning or other monstrous cruelties — are a greater focus of American politics than jobs, taxes, highways and bridges, or environmental protection. Millions of votes are mobilized and cast based on the imaginary fear of an imaginary faction of kitten-burning monsters.

giving us actual, accredited Kittenburners a bad name.

“I don’t believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute,” he said. “The idea that the church can have no influence or no involvement in the operation of the state is absolutely antithetical to the objectives and vision of our country.”

Keep in mind that the church he is implicitly referring to is... the Catholic church. We'll see how that plays in the long term.

f'ckin papists

haha yeah if he weren't running against someone in an even crazier cult his catholicism would be 'an issue'

perhaps the constant strain of mentally squaring the explicitly protestant exceptional-american mythos with radical falangist catholicism is what makes santorum so bad tempered

what makes santorum so bad tempered

Maybe his sphincter's too tight...oh, wait...

I'm loving the Paul-secretly-working-for-Romney conspiracy theories: http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/02/27/432664/ron-paul-never-attacked-romney/

read somewhere a little bee thinks ron's doing this all to get RAND a veep slot

my theory is that ron paul secretly believes that romney is a better human being than he is because he is very rich

paul worked out a deal where he supports romney if the mormons agree to never baptize his ancestors

xp: one wonders if 'mitt romney' were 'michael rosen' would paul would have a different impression of the man's wealth

there's a show about modern republicans right now on radio 4 if you're interested in hearing about this from the point of view of a guy who sounds like a waistcoated lepidopterist

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4

guy from the american enterprise institute says that demographic changes mean that the only way republicans can eke out narrow victories is by winning the working class white vote by massive margins

the 'volk' if you will

sorry

haha

yeah i guess i kind of knew that already but it is helpful to remember it as an explanation for pretty much everything these candidates say

he said that "a variety of cultural factors" have meant that wealthy people are actually less likely to vote republican now than in the past

Lots of stuff up about how Michigan is suddenly close again, with Santorum leading some polls. If Romney wins--he probably will--it'll be because of a huge margin in advance voting. That seems to have saved him a couple of times thus far; lots of people vote for him before they see him up close and/or he starts saying silly things as each primary nears.

Tracer: is the show Analysis?

huh, you don't say. did this get linked here?

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/01/11/rick-santorum-s-italian-family-speaks-out.html

In the tiny town of Riva del Garda in northern Italy, 83-year-old-Maria Malacarne Santorum keeps her family’s secrets—including those of her late husband’s cousin, Rick. In an exclusive interview with the Italian weekly magazine Oggi, Mrs. Santorum recalls fondly when Rick visited her in 1985 during his law internship in Florence, and when he came back again in 1986 and 1989. “He loved our culture and cuisine so much, he brought his wife-to-be, Karen, a massive cookbook of Italian recipes,” she said.

But the elder Santorum matriarch doesn’t understand why he has diverged so far from the family’s longtime political stance. “In Riva del Garda his grandfather Pietro and uncles were ‘red communists’ to the core,” writes Oggi journalist Giuseppe Fumagalli, likening the family to “Peppone” after a famous fictional Italian communist mayor who fought against an ultraconservative priest known as Don Cammillo and about which a popular television series is based. “But on the other side of the ocean, it’s like his family here doesn’t exist. Instead he draws crowds as the head of the ultraconservative faction of the Republican party, against divorce, gay marriage, abortion, and immigration.”

i didn't even get that santorum is an italian name

gukbe - yep

lol goole can you imagine if those were obama's european communist relatives??

of course the correct analogy would be if obama had fascist relatives or something

well africans are 'into' genocide, you may have heard

huh, you don't say. did this get linked here?

yes, back in January

I can't believe I had never heard of Santorum's hardcore commie cousins.

Matt Taibbi on the primaries as the natural end result of the paranoid resentment psychodrama of the last few decades:

No, it was while watching the debates last night that it finally hit me: This is justice. What we have here are chickens coming home to roost. It's as if all of the American public's bad habits and perverse obsessions are all coming back to haunt Republican voters in this race: The lack of attention span, the constant demand for instant gratification, the abject hunger for negativity, the utter lack of backbone or constancy (we change our loyalties at the drop of a hat, all it takes is a clever TV ad): these things are all major factors in the spiraling Republican disaster.

http://m.rollingstone.com/?redirurl=/politics/blogs/taibblog/arizona-debate-conservative-chickens-come-home-to-roost-20120223

lol taibbi goes brooks on us

brooks would have cited "a recent study"

lol taibbi goes brooks on us

http://netrightdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/David-Brooks.jpeg

"What should shame the GOP is how an increasing reliance on what I call the Waffle House vote over the Starbucks constituency is an example of what David Langford, a professor at Wharton, calls the narcissism of spoiled cream"

rofl

I missed that Ron Paul quote he references - that's some crazy head-in-the-sand shit.

idqg how intrade 'works' but 20% is absurdly high for this

http://www.intrade.com/v4/markets/contract/?contractId=756901

if you have some money lying around, this is an easy return i think

the rules of that trade do say

"If the Presidential nominee is not decided after the first round of delegate voting at the party convention the convention will be considered "brokered" (i.e. it takes multiple rounds of voting by party delegates to decide the nominee)."

but even that seems like dreaming imo

shorting things is very expensive on intrade

huh well fuck that!

basically you have to put up 80 cents to the dollar to short a contract that's at 20.

that sentence might have well read 'my cat's breath smells like cat food', good thing I quit my job at goldman sachs counting money weeks ago

haha this is not high finance this is an internet game basically

I would like to short dr. morbius's lent commitment

haha

Nate Silver ‏ @fivethirtyeight Reply Retweet Favorite · Open
I think our Michigan forecast might literally show a tie.

It's probably even the right height.

it's crazy what a big difference santorum winning by 1% and losing by 1% can make in this race in partic

Kid Rock giving a concert for Romney is on the news right now & it may be the grossest thing I have ever seen.