Thank you Rick.
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.
I especially love the end statement: “Pure democracies is not the way to run a country.”
I’m so tired of the anti-democracy party.
1Why do they dredge up this old fossil Santorum to comment on every election? When was the last time (if ever) he was relevant?
2So Santorum still fits the urban dictionary definition of his name.
3He is from the party that exists to do the bidding of his donor overlords while performing a dog and pony show to keep the base amused and not looking behind the curtain. Nothing any of them say surprises me.
4I wonder if Old Rick Sanatorium thinks actually living in the district he represented is sexy. But, he wants to ban voters who really do live in the district in which he didn’t. And, since voters dumped him years ago, who cares what he things.
5TexasTrailerParkTrash @ 2,
The MSM has resurrected Karl Rove and Newt Gingrich from the Clinton era. Why would we the public think their their comments are relevant?
6Saying anyone wants abortion (implying we desire it at any point in a pregnancy) is misleading. We want safe, legal abortion for any woman that needs one and we want that choice left up the woman and her clinician. It’s not like saying someone wants chocolate. But that’s a nuance lost on the MAGAt brain. Now there’s another problem: after saying let the voters decide, and seeing how those votes are going, MAGAt nation is trying to move the goalposts again.
7As you stated, Nick, the repugnantican party’s two big policy areas have been and remain abortion and tax cuts. I’d add that the tax cuts they want and protect favor protecting the ultra wealthy at our expense. Their voters just ignore that fact. In ProPublicas Big Story newsletter this morning, there were several articles about how the wealthy thrive by tax avoidance which remain “legal”. The IRS doesn’t do anything about these questionable schemes and the repugnantican party wants to keep it that way.
8I’d also add getting religion into government and “anti-wokeneess” measures are not far behind as their top policy areas.
The House wants employers of child bearing age women, to be able to discriminate against women who use birth control. Here’s the Spending Bill that didn’t pass.
https://www.rawstory.com/republican-congress-birth-control-ban/?cx_testId=6&cx_testVariant=cx_undefined&cx_artPos=1&cx_experienceId=EXC93HV4HK4I#cxrecs_s
9What Grandma Ada said.
10NewsMarx being paid by Put(it)in to lie .
11Steve@8: Santorum wants more than just those two things. He also wanted to kill off the USPS so that FedEx and UPS could take over all that juicy business.
Worse, what should have him sentenced to a small boat in the middle of the Atlantic during a hurricane: he wanted to terminate the National Weather Service’s ability to provide forecasts and weather alerts. Instead he wanted the NWS to continue to collect the data, but provide it to paying services from which us ordinary folks could then access it.
https://www.politico.com/story/2012/01/7-year-old-attack-on-weather-service-could-cloud-santorums-campaign-071129
… and for those who don’t know what Mike@3 is referencing (and who don’t want to go to the Urban Dictionary): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_for_the_neologism_%22santorum%22
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