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

well i mean who doesnt

killing them over here not as fun

u might get blood on u

Muslims don't have blood iirc

I think you underestimate the average anti-choicer's sophistication about this issue. They have been coordinating their game for a long time. I know they often sound dumb in comments threads or if news cameras catch them, and the temptation to succumb to caricature is heavy when we disagree so strongly with their beliefs, but they are about their fucking business & are not dumb. Carole Joffe's book Dispatches from the Abortion Wars is worth a read on this subject.

yah i know their activist base is v on their grind, its just my contention that theres a larger group of fundies for whom this isnt necessarily their main issue who are not as dialed in or on board

Muslims don't have blood iirc

― lumber up, limbaugh down (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, January 4, 2012 12:44 PM (57 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

*checks bible* oh damn u right

yah i know their activist base is v on their grind, its just my contention that theres a larger group of fundies for whom this isnt necessarily their main issue who are not as dialed in or on board

nah i think if anything cynical mnstrm republicans would love to have abortion as an issue to campaign on forever, the on the ground crazies really are the ones who are getting shit done in small incremental steps in places like north dakota. and i think abortion is still - despite all the stuff abt socialist big government death camps - the reason that there are so many political evangelicals

republicans can still campaign on abortion if they want! no ones stopping them

I don't think cynical mnstrm republicans exist to the same extent post-bush. if the GOP could make abortion 100% illegal across the country w/ no political consequences, would they? sure. but that's never going to be a possibility absent a huge shift in peoples' views on the subject. that being the case it's not that they're just toying w/ the voters, there genuinely isn't that much more they can do on the national level w/o a backlash.

even if abortion just disappeared as a subject there would still be a culture war to fight. there will always be a culture war sujet du jour.

idk according to many recent think pieces the culture war is no longer a trending topic

if anything cynical mnstrm republicans would love to have abortion as an issue to campaign on forever

have always thought this about the Democrats

not much thought in those pieces

Speaking of culture wars, Sullivan's dug up a pleasant missive from Santorum's past:

http://www.catholic.org/featured/headline.php?ID=30

It is startling that those in the media and academia appear most disturbed by this aberrant behavior, since they have zealously promoted moral relativism by sanctioning "private" moral matters such as alternative lifestyles. Priests, like all of us, are affected by culture. When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected. While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm.

Take it easy, media--it's Boston.

lmao santorum even u can do better than that

next thing hell try to blame the fact that he brought a stillborn fetus home and cuddled it w/his family for a few hours on the gays

When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected. While that is no excuse for the Red Sox implosion in 2011, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm.

who was president sterling?

fer the young'uns among'uns, see: free speech movement in 1964, president sterling of UC @ Berkeley.

just got an email from the DNC with the subject line "what iowa means" and thunderbird popped up a little notification: THIS MESSAGE MAY BE A SCAM.

Nobel Prize for Software

Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism

yeah, right. Nothing says liberalism like the locked-down Harvard campus, the Koch bros. compound, or Scott fukkin Brown.

lol srsly, i mean political maybe, academic no, and cultural you must be fucking joking me

So it startles Santorum that I can "sanction private moral matters" and still be appalled by pedophilia. Yeah, that's really well reasoned...

perry stays in :)

Swimming in Santorum's wake.

hahahaagghhhhh

“I took the day off work for this,” said insurance salesman Justin Yourison, a Paul precinct captain. “If he doesn’t get the nomination, I’m not voting for anyone else. . . . If the GOP doesn’t let us in, they can do without us.”

wonder how Paul feels about this sentiment

Yes, he's back.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt6XCZz2X1Y

(Morphing Santorum into Obama--just talking visually, Morbius--is quite an achievement.)

I think it's time people stopped maligning the Montana Sheep Institute.

apparently lots of hard core Paul fanatics (which is surely like 95% of his support?) are committed to a write-in campaign if he doesn't get the GOP nod. i'm pretty ignorant about the viability of this wrt certain states/ local jurisdictions but hey

lol @ Santorum is a porker's best friend

I have a feeling this may come back to haunt Rick (no embedding):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCmvEuYjQSI

when Rick is listening to other people talk he looks like he smoked a full gram of hash about half an hour ago and is struggling to just keep it together until he can figure out how to put one foot in front of the other & leave the room

he looks like he ate a full plate of corned beef hash.

what kind of yes men does rick perry have, jeez

kevin drum getting pessimistic:

http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/01/how-do-you-solve-problem-mitt-romney

I'll be surprised if the GOP primary race goes much beyond the end of February, and I'll be shocked if Super Tuesday on March 6 doesn't end it completely. This means that the Republican base will have six months to resign themselves to their fate and come to the conclusion that Romney is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being ever to run for president. And they will. When Job 1 is beating the anti-Christ, learning to love Mitt Romney will be a piece of cake.

So what does this mean for Team Obama? My guess: the flip-flopper charge probably won't get much traction. It's mostly a problem for conservatives, who don't fully trust that Romney is one of them, but by the time summer rolls around they're going to be his most fire-breathing supporters. They'll have long since decided to forgive and forget, and independents won't care that much in the first place as long as Romney seems halfway reasonable in his current incarnation. It's possible that Obama can do both — Romney is a flip flopper and a right-wing nutcase! — but if he has to choose, my guess is that he should forget about the flip flopping and simply do everything he can to force Romney into the wingnut conservative camp. That'll be his big weakness when Labor Day rolls around.

k drum veering a lil too into the abstract, romneys biggest weakness is that hes a droid

but by the time summer rolls around they're going to be his most fire-breathing supporters.

so not gonna happen

Obama's gonna paint him as an out-of-touch plutocrat, gonna go hard on the populist angle

Haven't seen any mention of it in recent days but I'm now idly wondering how much of the non-Romney sentiment really IS driven by "Mormons, ew."

is there a documented case of Romney creating jobs in a failing company as opposed to downsizing until the company is profitable? because I have only ever heard/read the latter

my understanding is all he's ever done is the latter

so can we raise enough money to produce commercials accusing Romney of wanting to deport unemployed Americans, since that is where his expertise lies

i don't know if it's quantifiable. frankly i think a lot of liberals are overstating it out of hope.

frankly i think these interdenominational divisions are just not that important anymore as long as everyone is "conservative". there have been mormon senators and governors in good right-wing standing forever now. a generation ago catholics and baptists and jews and all the rest had huge alignment problems but now those lions and lambs are laying down just fine. thanks, pro-life movement, and 'clash of civilizations' etc.

sure mormonism is a little wilder with its heresies but as long as your policy positions are where they need to be all the angels-on-other-planets shit is just irrelevant

xp to ned

feeling very frank today i guess

No, that makes plenty of sense through and through. I was mostly shrugging the idea off as well and was only struck by it a bit today given that Texas meeting from all the Perry backers that was announced.

These hand-wringing conservatives will start to chill out when they realize President Romney will nominate the, er, right kind of judges to the bench and SCOTUS.

idk, I think the religion thing is gonna be important for some, maybe not a lot, but my aunt (in her 70s, Oklahoman, staunch Baptist) is going to have a REAL tough time voting for a Mormon.

if he wins he'll win w/ a congress that's even more right-wing than he is, so yeah, they'll be fine

RedState is starting to cave on the point.