Every Blog Needs a Purpose, Right?

This blog will be read by few and certainly enjoyed by even fewer. I am fine with that, I am creating this blog out of some sort of desperate need to re-organize my thoughts in a way that can be easily archived. I would write a diary but my uncle once told me "Diaries are for fruits"

Sunday, March 18, 2012

The Rick Santorum Conundrum

So here we are...a short four months from the Republican Convention in Tampa. The race has essentially been whittled down to two candidates Mitt Romney & Rick Santorum. This isn't to say that the large laundry bag shaped Newt Gingrich & the Woody Allenesque Ron Paul aren't still showing up to states that don't want them and taking money from people who could better utilize it for other worldly purposes. However they are truly the walking dead at this point as delegates steadily fall towards the other two candidates.
That leaves us (those of us who have decided to vote again for Barack Obama) the Rick Santorum Conundrum, and I am not referring to his "Google Problem". I am referring to the possibility of a Santorum nomination, and what that really means to the general election. There is a hypothesis that states a Santorum election leads to the the increased probability of an easy Obama re-election.


Rick Santorum...for all the love he gets in states like Alabama & Mississippi...quite frankly scares the shit out of most people of a moderate political view...in other words independents. And therein lies the Conundrum...it isn't myself or other right wing voters who really decide elections...we only really decide nominations. Our general election votes are really just an exercise in civic duty, nothing more. General elections are decided by the roughly 20-25% of the electorate that claim not to vote along party lines, win the independent vote and you win the Nation's vote.


In 2008 Senator Obama actually barely won the independent vote with Sen. John McCain, the enthusiasm of college age white males & females, combined with a rare increase in older white male voters & a 2-1 advantage with Hispanic voters offset this need to hammer his opponent with the independent vote. This won't be the case in 2012.


Obama's dramatic fall from grace with white male voters has almost eliminated the need for campaign stops in a few states this time around (Indiana, North Carolina & Virginia come to mind). This means he will need to court more independent voters, and negativity is a very powerful thing in national politics. As of 03/12/12 Mitt Romney is 5-7% behind Obama in his appeal to independent voters, contrast this with Santorum...who is 8-10% behind Obama with independents were the election to happen today.



Santorum's continual doubling down on overtly religious topics has hurt him and will continue to hurt him with independent voters. He has used antiquated rhetoric to rail against gay marriage, abortion, pornography, and even contraception (that's right, it is 2012 and we are debating the fucking pill again, thank you Jesus) in an "all-in" strategy to rile the right wing evangelicals to swing his way and it has had some results, especially the deep south (surprise).

The thing that scares the shit out of me is that unlike so many before him...I think Santorum really believes all his religious bull shit. I think he does want to see internet pornography outlawed for your own good. I believe he does want your raped daughter to see the brighter Jesus flavored side of her rape or father/brother fucking resultant offspring by letting that awful pregnancy come full term...whether she wants to or not. He DOES care about what consenting gay adults do in the privacy of their own homes, he knows it is destroying the fabric of our suburbs and clean (white) communities when a man blows another man somewhere in America. In other words...he believes that if a gay tree falls in the woods and nobody is around...it DOES make a sound and it DOES require Jesus as a remedy. these things would be laughable and easy to dismiss if Rick Santorum wasn't a former United States Senator and possible Presidential nominee for 1 of only 2 parties running realistically.

And that is the conundrum summed up, do I want a Santorum nomination because it makes the probability of an Obama re-election more feasible? Is that worth the risk? To have a man with such vile and old world views so close to being the most powerful man in the world. I can deal with a Romney victory. This despite his pledge to repeal Obamacare (via the very same evil executive orders he now lambastes the sitting President for utilizing) and increase the military budget in preparation for a cold war that doesn't exist all while cutting the very entitlements that have kept our nation from plunging into a horrendous depression due to flat lined demand for goods and services. I can handle a Romney presidency because the man appears to have all of his marbles in regards to his need to fix a mythical moral decay in this country. I believe he will leave the gay sex alone (hooray!) and let women make decisions for themselves when it comes to their own reproductive organs. As much as I would love to see Santorum get a shellacking at the polls this November, the stakes are simply too high and the risk to our freedoms too grave. Romney 2012 it is.