Rick Santorum’s Mondale Moment

The mark of a loser.  You don’t ride a fad or a pop slogan to the presidency.   Etch-a-Sketch.  Fritz Mondale and his “Where’s the Beef.”

Straight up, I’m voting for Barack Obama over Rick Santorum and I’m as conservative and Republican as hell.

This fool will not do.  Fortunately for the Republican Party and the American republic, Rick Santorum is a fad and as you read this is hurtling headlong towards the “Where Are They Now”  file, Etch-a-Sketch in hand.

I probably philosophically agree with Rick Santorum more than I do with Mitt Romney, and certainly more than with Barack Obama.

But this will not do.  So long, Rick, it’s been good to know ya.  Sort of.

 

Tom Van Dyke

Tom Van Dyke, businessman, musician, bon vivant and game-show champ (The Joker's Wild, and Win Ben Stein's Money), knows lots of stuff, although not quite everything yet. A past contributor to The American Spectator Online, the late great Reform Club blog, and currently on religion and the American Founding at American Creation, TVD continues to write on matters of both great and small importance from his ranch type style tract house high on a hill above Los Angeles.

31 Comments

  1. You think very deeply about being a better moron. Not just off the cuff, but a premeditated first degree morom. The Romney campaign handed Rick Santorum the etch-a-scetch on a golden platter.
    No real conservative on the planet thinks we are better of with deficit exploding Marxist Obama than we are with “any” Republican. You sir are no conservative, and you are certainly no true Republican.
    “Straight up, I’m voting for Barack Obama over Rick Santorum and I’m as conservative and Republican as hell” PREMEDITATED LIAR.

    • Just a quick suggestion proofreading – and mind you, one that comes from a guy who’s a pretty bad typist and proofreader himself!

      Anyway, if you’re going to make a long, scathing comment about how someone is a “moron” just because they have a different opinion than you, it is really, really, really important to make sure you spell the word “moron” correctly. Otherwise you can end up looking like a real tool.

      But like I said, that’s just a suggestion!

      • Moreover, anyone who thinks Tom… TOM! … isn’t a committed conservative has some crazy-eyes idea of what conservativism is.

      • OVERTAXED’s problem is he believes the republican politicians when they tell him Obama is a deficit-exploding Marxist. You would be mad too if people who claim to be conservative say they will vote for the Marxist, no?

      • When I first saw this, I parsed it as “GROW A BEARD MORAN” and I thought that the thread had suddenly become awesome.

        I am now disappointed.

    • I am truly tickled by the all-caps PREMEDITATED LIAR. I have this vision of Tom lying in bed at night, gleefully planning all the ways he’s going to lie the next day.

      And if Tom isn’t a conservative Republican, he is to be congratulated for the most effective subterfuge I have ever seen.

  2. The guy who came in 2nd in 1976 was the nominee in 1980. The guy who came in 2nd in 1980, was the nominee in 1988. The guy who came in second in 1988, was the nominee in 1996. 2000 was the first time it was up in the air… but the guy who came in 2nd in 2000? He was the nominee in 2008. The guy who came in 2nd in 2008 sure seems like he’ll be the nominee in November.

    I don’t know that history necessarily points us in the direction of wondering where Santorum is now, come 2016.

    • I will say that if I had to pick a candidate who I thought best represented the ideals that Republicans were supposedly interested in, I’d probably pick Gingrich.

      er, I mean, Santorum.

    • Huckabee finished 2nd in 2008, sort of [more delegates, somewhat fewer votes]. Probably would have won if he’d have run this year. Huckabee stayed in until the end; Romney sensibly dropped out in February without making enemies and fracturing the party, which I believe Santorum is doing right now.

      And I simply don’t think he’ll be a good president. I don’t think his temperament is right and I don’t think he can explain the Catholic social thing well enough; I don’t think he has the learning. As they say, for any issue, the Catholic library has 8 feet of shelf space on it, and I think Santorum’s only skimmed the Cliffs Notes.

      The way he comes off, he makes the strict separationists’ case better than they do.

      • I have a soft spot in my heart for Guvnor Huckleberry. Back when Katrina hit, Arkansas took in thousands and thousands of refugees and it’s not a rich state or anything. He’s just a fundamentally decent man. Can’t quite get over that opinion.

        • He’s a Christian Democrat (to use the more european, and more accurate phrase). South loves ’em.

          • That’s an apt description. The GOP chumps-du-jour, if they ever had consciences, had ’em surgically removed and flung as far downwind as they could throw them. Huckabee’s positions are not mine, but he’s so much better than Romney or Santorum.

          • Huckabee cares. He said the most HONEST thing I’ve ever heard when that Rev. Wright thing came up.
            1) “I’ve been a preacher for 20 years. If you scrutinized every one of my sermons, you could find something to complain about”
            2) “If I was a black man living in the south, the way Rev. Wright was, I think I’d have a chip on my shoulder too.”
            Huckabee makes sure his people get served, black and white alike. He may be more of a wears his god on his sleeve type — but he does his job.
            I can NOT say that about half the republicans these days.

      • > The way he comes off, he makes the strict separationists’
        > case better than they do.

        Well said.

      • I heard that Huck wasn’t running this time around because he thought that Palin was going to run… and he thought that the Tea Party vs. Huckabee thing was going to be bad news.

        That’s just what I heard.

  3. Well, I think it’s pretty much fate at this point that Santorum won’t be the nominee. I’m sort of wondering what was the turning point for you, though. Santorum made an etch-a-sketch joke? For a campaign season, that seems like small beer. But I didn’t see the clip, so maybe it was particularly douchey.

    • I think that–as with every not-Romney thus far–the press was desperately waiting for Santorum to say something vaguely silly-sounding so they could smash it into everyone’s face right next to “NOT A VIABLE CANDIDATE” headlines. They’re terrified that someone who can actually mobilize the Repub/Con base will get up there and beat Obama like a gong.

      Meaning that this clip was about as relevant to anything as “57 states”, but what matters is not its substance but its category.

      • Rufus, I vote for a president first, my ideology second. Santorum was never on my map; he’s just not smart enough. Gingrich could have been—and I gave the “new mature Newt” a roadtest—but he simply doesn’t have the self-discipline to be our president. He’s the same old Newt.

        And I have a very low opinion of President Obama: his ideology is unacceptable to me, but more than that, he’s a divisive prick. And that goes back to his campaign vs. Hillary: “You’re likable enough, Hillary,” and especially how he let his surrogates Clyburn and Brazile use the race card against Bill and Hill. I have nothing good to say about him except that he has kept some level of continuity in our foreign policy, which every president Dem or Rep, has.

        But this is not to say that Rick Santorum [or John McCain] would be a better president. I hope you can hear me on this. It’s the hardest job in the world, and ideology is less than half of the job, so I must vote president first, ideology second.

        [To wit: Handling this Iran thing is far more grave than the question of free contraception.]

        • Yeah, Tom, I get why you prefer Romney to Santorum or Obama. I was just asking what happened recently that convinced you Santorum is a fool. I don’t keep up with this stuff, although frankly I’ve never thought Santorum’s electable, although I think he is pretty bright.

  4. I wonder how many people vote *for* someone as opposed to *against* some other knucklehead?

    • I think about 40% of the voting public votes *for* [party line]. How they get there is muddled, but there you go.

      Probably about 10% of the voting public votes on careful deliberation.

      The other half is all over the place.

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