Rick Santorum put up one of those statements on Newsmax that was equal parts brilliant and asinine all at the same time. Of course, it is only brilliant if he was fully cognizant of what he was saying. If he’s not then it is the most ironic statement of the year as it pertains to elective politics.

The video you see above summarizes the GOP in a nutshell. For those that don’t want to go down the rabbit hole, Santorum is essentially saying that the Democrats only won because they put sexy issues like abortion and marijuana on the ballot. That statement highlights the electoral issues that the GOP has in one sentence.

The first part of the statement basically admits that the GOP counts on low turnouts to win. So, a large part of the irritation is that they brought out voters by putting those measures on the ballot in Ohio. This is what all of the voter fraud stuff is all about. They can’t really justify taking voters off the rolls that they want to remove without a built in excuse. So, we will talk about fraud.

Absentee balloting has been a thing for over 100 years in this country. The states have combined to prosecute fewer than 1000 people for voter fraud. That’s in over one billion ballots cast. My calculator says that is somewhere around .01 percent of ballots cast. I’m overestimating it in fact. Voter fraud is not a problem. In other words, if you can’t get the voters to choose you then you choose your voters.

Of course, the issues themselves are obvious. He was admitting that a majority of the population is for abortion. We could parse out exactly what that looks like. It all depends on what conditions you put on it. The right always puts it in extreme forms. They always want to bring up partial birth abortion because that is the one form of abortion a majority is against. No one in the Democratic party is banging the drum for partial birth abortion. It really isn’t a thing in terms of a talking point on the left. So, when you boil it down to its basic level, a majority of the population wants some abortion rights.

A majority of the population wants marijuana legalized in some form. You could call it decriminalization. You could call it medicinal marijuana. You could simply say it is legally available but heavily regulated. Any way you slice it, a majority of the population is over heavy criminalizing marijuana use. So, Santorum is saying it is the fault of the Democrats for putting something on the ballot that the people find popular.

So, in that statement Santorum is admitting that the GOP is on the wrong side of those issues and that they only win if people don’t vote. Imagine the honesty and direct analysis that we are getting there. I don’t think he has the self-awareness that such a statement would say he does. He is blissfully unaware of what he just said.

If you look at Republican politics since 1980 they have been about two things: abortion and tax cuts. They have been remarkably successful at both. They have played the long game on both. They have packed the courts and played the grassroots game about as well as it could be played, but you are talking about two issues that are losers with the changing demographics in the country. That’s the whole point and the whole ballgame. Thank you Rick. I couldn’t have said it better myself.