Why Rand Paul will never be president

By Richard K. Barry

If you are only a casual observer of Republican politics in America, or no observer at all, you may not understand what has become a truism for electoral success amongst conservatives. David Ludwig at The Atlantic explains the dynamic succinctly, using same-sex marriage as a salient case-in-point.

Threading the needle by appeasing the conservative base—which tends to supply the majority of primary voters—without coming across as too extreme for moderates is a challenge for any presidential candidate, but it has been especially difficult for Republicans since the rise of the Tea Party in 2010. With the 2016 primaries fast approaching, nowhere is this challenge clearer than on the issue of same-sex marriage, where popular opinion has shifted dramatically in its favour, while the Republican right remains overwhelmingly opposed.

According to a May, 2014 Gallup poll, support for gay marriage doubled between 1996 and 2014, from 27 percent support to 55 percent support. Much of the shift appears to have been generational, with 78 percent of 18-29 year olds now supporting gay marriage as opposed to just 42 percent of those over the age of 65. Meanwhile, support among Independents is at 58 percent, with self-described moderates polling slightly higher at 63 percent. Republican support hovers around 30 percent.

So, when likely GOP presidential hopeful Rand Paul tells Fox News' Bret Baier that he is personally "offended" by gay marriage, that's a problem for Republicans.

It's a problem because many swing voters don't particularly expect Republicans to change long held positions on things like gay marriage, reproductive rights, and immigration reform.  What they listen for, however, is the bile Republican candidates exhibit in expressing those positions. 

As Ludwig correctly asserts, threading the needle means saying the things that need to be said to attract activist conservatives, without the spitting anger and ugliness that will turn off more mainstream Americans. 

It's a cute trick, and I've seen it work. Rand Paul didn't get the memo. Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum, and Mike Huckabee wouldn't understand it if they got it, which is why none of these people will ever be president of the United States. 

When Rick Santorum is one of the "brightest" you have....

By Richard K. Barry

Think, man. What is the dumbest thing
I can say today?

I was waiting to see how soon Republican foolishness would manifest itself in the wake of Mandela's death, and it didn't take long. 

GOP big thinker Rick Santorum appeared with Fox News bigger thinker Bill O'Reilly yesterday and tied the world changing work of Mr. Mandela to Obamacare, and not in a good way.

“He was fighting against some great injustice, and I would make the argument that we have a great injustice going on right now in this country with an ever-increasing size of government that is taking over and controlling people’s lives — and Obamacare is front and center in that,” Santorum said Thursday on Fox News’s “The O’Reilly Factor.”

Yes, providing healthcare to millions of previously uninsured Americans. Mandela would have hated that. 

Rand Paul thinks dog marriage is next

By Frank Moraes 

As you all know, I have major problems with real libertarians -- to a large extent because most of them have a good understanding of the problems of governing and I don't see why they don't recognize their very clear blind spots. But people who claim to be libertarians who don't understand the philosophy and just throw the word around because it sounds cooler than "conservative" are another matter. I hate them.

The most prominent pretend libertarian is Rand Paul. This doesn't mean that I don't agree with him from time to time. Hell, I agree with Rick Santorum now and then. One nice thing about real libertarians is that you can usually predict where they stand on any given issue. But not so with Paul. He is anti-abortion, for example. Now I understand that some libertarians are anti-abortion. But I don't get it. A 16-cell zygote has equal human rights to the mother? Really?!

But there are many more clear examples. He isn't, for example, in favor of drug legalization -- just cannabis. Now, I'm all for legalizing cannabis. But at this point, the argument isn't the libertarian one that people should be allowed to make their own choices. It is the (true) conservative argument that cannabis is no more dangerous than other legal drugs. At least Paul's father, Ron Paul, acts like a true libertarian in this regard.

And now, Rand Paul is making the media rounds to complain about the Supreme Court's overturning the Defense of Marriage Act. He was on Glenn Beck's show (another pretend libertarian) warning that same-sex marriage would lead to polygamy. I actually agree with him that this ought to lead to polygamy. I'm very much a libertarian on this issue: people should be able to enter whatever contracts they want with each other. But Paul brought this up as a note of caution: polygamy is bad.[1] This is clearly not a man who believes that people's lives are their own.


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Special election in Alabama's 1st Congressional District

By Richard K. Barry

Earlier in May, Rep. Jo Bonner (R-Ala) announced that he would resign from Congress to take a job at the University of Alabama. A date has not been set for the special election to replace him, but this is a very reliable red state, so Democrats shouldn't get excited. 

Word now is that Rick Santorum will endorse conservative columnist Quin Hillyer. As a safe Republican seat, this will draw a lot of competition in the primary so I suppose Santorum could help his candidate stand out. 

Roll Call: 

Aside from Hillyer, consultants say the most likely and viable candidates in the race include:

-- State Sen. Tripp Pittman, a wealthy owner of a tractor company in Baldwin County, a rural area in the 1st District.

-- First-term state Sen. Bill Hightower. 

-- Former state Sen. Bradley Byrne, a lawyer who lost a Republican gubernatorial primary bid in 2010. 

-- Mobile County Sheriff Sam Cochran, who consultants say is well-respected in the community and has strong name recognition.

If you want to know how red a district it is, Romney beat Obama by a margin of 62 to 37 percent last November. 

Will this one get national attention like the South Carolina 1st? Uh, no. 

(Cross-posted at Phantom Public.)

Rick Santorum is not ruling out a 2016 presidential bid (oh, goody!)

By Richard K. Barry

It takes both hands to get my
head out of my ass every night.

It seems possible we might again have Rick Santorum to kick around. In an interview with Newsmax TV's Steve Malzberg, he said he was "certainly leaving the door open for that." He followed that up by saying, "I'm making no commitments at this point, but we're not doing anything inconsistent with running in 2016."

As you might imagine, Santorum's pitch is that Republicans need to be more conservative to win next time. Yes, that's what he is saying:

"The same advisors who botched these last two campaigns are now saying, 'Well, you know, since we can't win with moderate Republicans, we have to now try to be liberal Republicans to win instead of standing up for the values that made our country great,'" he said.

"We have not had a nominee that is ready to go out and articulate a unified vision of what conservatism is, what America's first principles are about, and why we're the greatest country in the history of the world. And then we wonder why we don't win."

Yes, please. Be more conservative next time. Great idea. 

Granholm slams Santorum on gun control

By Michael J.W. Stickings

More than that, the former Michigan governor further exposed the absurdity of the extremist gun nuts:

Former Republican presidential candidate and likely 2016 contender Rick Santorum dismissed the need for gun safety regulations during an appearance on ABC's This Week Sunday, arguing that Americans should have access to military-style weapons and magazines, including the armor piercing bullets used by criminals to kill cops...

GRANHOLM: Why do you need armor-piercing bullets, why do you need that?

SANTORUM: Because we're talking about a particular type of bullet that is and can be available –

GRANHOLM: Deer don't wear armor. Why do you need an armor piercing bullet?

SANTORUM: Criminals could and having, having…

GRANHOLM: And police officers certainly do…

SANTORUM: And having the ability to defend yourself is a right in our country. 

I continue to contend that assault rifles are weapons of mass destruction in that their purpose is to kill large numbers of people in small amounts of time. And obviously there is no reason to have this sort of ammunition unless you want to kill someone wearing armor. And the fact is, it's not criminals wearing armor, it's law enforcement and the military. Which is to say, the only reason to have these bullets is to kill police officers or military troops.

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Is it too early to endorse Rick Santorum for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

You rock, Rick Santorum!

Rick Santorum told The Weekly Standard yesterday that he's "open" to running for president in 2016:

"I'm open to it, yeah," Santorum replied. "I think there's a fight right now as to what the soul of the Republican party's going to be and the conservative movement, and we have something to say about that. I think from our battle, we're not going to leave the field.”

In 2012, Santorum won nearly 4 million votes and 11 GOP primary contests -- the same number of states, he pointed out, Ronald Reagan won in his failed 1976 presidential bid.

You know what, he's right. He's the next Ronald Reagan. He's a one-man bulwark against European socialism, and of anything other than far-right conservatism. He's the future of the Republican Party... and of America.

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Don't get too comfortable. The GOP could easily come back in 2016.

By Richard K. Barry

It's not that Rick Santorum will be any more credible a candidate for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016 than he was in 2012. But he will continue to be the kind of hard core, socially conservative presence that will make it harder for them to compete in four years. He's not going anywhere, and neither are those who agree with him. But he is on the losing side of this battle. 

In an interview to air on Piers Morgan Tonight on Friday, Santorum said this:

What Mitt Romney, in my opinion, didn't do was go out and vigorously defend the beliefs that he said he espoused and didn't go on the offense. And when you're playing defense, which is what I believe the campaign was doing and Republicans were doing generally throughout the course of this campaign you're not going to win.

He didn't make it about those two fundamentally different visions for America and I don't think we did a very good job either as Republicans pointing out those fundamental differences and what type of freedom we're talking about.

Many experienced political campaigners will smile at the notion that the only failing of a losing campaign is that they simply didn't "get their message out there effectively." Nothing wrong with the message, but somehow the mechanics broke down.

Those who argue President Obama simply had a better ground game, or smarter campaign managers, or a better media strategy, or was a better candidate, or that there were too many GOP debates are preparing not only to run the next campaign in a way ideologically consistent with the last one but to make the same mistakes.

This is the most interesting debate going on among conservatives right now. On the one side are those who think the message needs to change. On the other side are those who see no fault in the brand, only in the delivery system.

For example, to my ear Karl Rove is among those arguing for better mechanics. He had too much invested in the last campaign to suggest it was fundamentally flawed. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is arguing for a modification of the message itself, more populist, more apparently reasonable than a Mitt Romney could offer. There seems little doubt that Jeb Bush would offer a more pragmatic, moderate, conservatism. We will see where the other come in.

Some, like those in the incredible shrinking Tea Party movement, will suggest the party should move further to the right. I would guess they will lost that fight.

Many said that Mitt Romney would have to move towards the center once the nomination was wrapped up, and though it took him until the first debate, that is what he did. That particular Mitt Romney and that Republican Party might well have won the election if they hadn't already done so much damage to themselves and if they weren't up against such an incredible candidate and campaign team.

As a exercise, listen to the way various Republicans talk about their failed effort to take back the White House.  Is it about mechanics or is it about substance? If they are able to have a substantive debate about the future of their party, if they are able to come to grips that they failed because their message was too extreme, they could made a comeback sooner than many think.

I know some Democrats are saying that demographic changes will make elections harder for the GOP in coming years, but four years is, as they say, an eternity in politics. In 1976 few of us saw a Ronald Reagan coming on the scene in 1980.

It seemed obvious to me that if the Republicans had put up a candidate in 2012 who espoused boilerplate conservative economic ideas, while tempering his social conservatism, they might have won in a walk. We know that the strength of the Tea Party movement in the 2010 midterms made it hard for anyone to run as a reasonable conservative, but that likely won't be true in 2016.

I am simply saying there is nothing inherently toxic in American politics about conservative ideas if they are not deemed too extreme. There will be a struggle to see how far from the extreme edge the GOP can drag itself in time for 2016 to be credible. I'm guessing they get it done.

We don't need no education

By Mustang Bobby 

Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) told the Value Voters:

We will never have the media on our side, ever, in this country. We will never have the elite, smart people on our side.

I know where he's coming from with a comment like that to conservatives. He's not saying that smart people aren't conservative; I know a number of people who are both smart and conservative, and I respect them. And I don't think he's saying that only stupid people are conservatives, either, although there's a lot of circumstantial evidence in that direction. What he's saying is that the average voter doesn't consider themselves to be "elite" or "smart" and therefore he can make the argument that there are more of them than there are of the pointy-headed nerds or Chablis-sipping snobs and intellectuals (which is also a dog-whistle for gays, Jews, and uppity blacks), and the average conservative is better than them. It's its own snobbery; and it's ironic given Mr. Santorum's comment during the primary campaign about President Obama wanting everyone to go to college — "What a snob!"

Anti-elitism is the backbone of conservative populism. The thinking is that the "smart people" aren't the ones who dig the ditches or work in the factories; they have no idea what an honest day's work is like sitting in their ivory tower writing witty blog posts while Joe or Josephine the Plumber who never made it past high school but go to church every Sunday and marry people of the opposite sex are the real Americans, paying their taxes so that welfare queens can ride around in their pink Cadillacs. It makes for a great soundbite.

The problem with that argument is that given the chance, Joe or Josephine would love to have their kids or grandkids graduate from high school and go on to Harvard or the University of Florida, and if they had the chance themselves, they'd probably take some classes at the community college. And if someday they fell on hard times, they would demand that the government give them a hand, too, even if they don't want to acknowledge it (or in this case, even know where it comes from. Speaking of smart...). It's not that they're hypocrites. They have the natural human instinct to try to make things better for themselves... or in some cases, just survive.

By the way, I've spent a lot of time in my life working with what Mr. Santorum considers to be the average conservative voter, and a lot of them were really smart. I knew carpenters and truck drivers who can talk about Shakespeare and philosophy at the grad school level. (I also know a number of smart people who can't figure out how to work the pop-top on a can of soda.) Granted, there are a number of really stupid people out there, too, but as one of my carpenter-philosopher friends noted, "Stupid people don't know that they're stupid, because if they did know, they wouldn't be stupid in the first place."

Mr. Santorum is putting a sweater vest on the old George Wallace racist anti-intellectual outside agitator tropes, and in today's politics, it has a certain appeal. But only to those voters who don't know how stupid they are.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Akin pains

By Mustang Bobby

According to reports reaching TPM, Missouri Senate candidate Rep. Todd Akin (R) has been making preparations to withdraw from the race. He's getting pressure from all over the Republican party, a major right-wing PAC, and leading lights of the right-wing punditry and commentariat to get out. The notable exception is, of course, the Family Research Council, who stands by him, but then, they make their living supporting junk science.

Mr. Akin says he plans to stay in the race, and the polls are showing that he's still leading Sen. Claire McCaskill.

The Romney-Ryan campaign came out with the boilerplate condemnation of the remarks, but since Mr. Akin's stated points of view regarding the sanctity of personhood for a zygote pretty much parallel the position of Mr. Ryan and -- at least lately -- that of Mr. Romney, they're kind of on thin ice when it comes to damning someone else for repeating their own views.

A lot of people have pointed out that Mr. Akin's stand on abortion in the case of rape without adjectives (as President Obama noted yesterday, "rape is rape") is not new to the anti-choice crowd. This "you can't get pregnant from rape" meme has been with them for a good long while, too. Rick Santorum, when he wasn't obsessing about gay sex, basically ran his entire presidential campaign on the issue of the sanctity of one-celled organisms over the life and health of the woman serving as host. As for bearing the child of a rapist, he said the woman should "make the best out of a bad situation."

So what Mr. Akin said was not really an outlier from the thinking of the mainstream of the Republican party. It's just that he put it in a way that was blunt enough to prick up the ears of the blogosphere.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Raise your hand if you think Santorum is truly sincere in his praise for Romney

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I get how politics works, and so I get that what you say during a campaign may not be what you really mean, or that you might not really mean anything, that it may all be situational, and so I get that what, say, Romney's former opponents are saying about him how is vastly different, if not the exact opposite, of what they said back during the heat of the primaries, but this is just ridiculous:

One-time GOP presidential contender and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum on Saturday told conservative voters that Mitt Romney's message on social issues was "solid," vouching for his one-time rival before a gathering of social conservative voters.

"I've talked to Gov. Romney, and I have no doubt, and I mean this in all sincerity, I have no doubt he understands the centrality of family. He understands the importance of family for our culture, for our economy, and for our future," Santorum said at the Faith and Freedom Conference in Washington, D.C., according to media reports.

Really? No doubt? All sincerity? Please.

This is just the sort of bullshit you expect from any politican, perhaps, but it always seems even more extreme in its Republican form, given that Republicans always seem to fall into jackbooted lockstep behind their leaders, a typical right-wing thing to do, even with less-than-desirable leaders like Mitt, and it shows that Santorum is more partisan than ideologue, a man more of party than of principle, which those paying attention always knew, what with his long career in Republican politics, but which during the primaries was lost when he was spinning himself, with the media playing right along, as a man of great moral conviction.

Don't get me wrong, I do think Santorum is generally consistent, at least these days, now that he's out of office, in his ideological, theocratic extremism, but that just means this pro-Romney cheerleading is all the more transparent. It's all for show -- and it's all about the lesser of evils.

Sure he wants Romney, as he would have any Republican, to beat Obama, but that doesn't mean he likes Romney. Indeed, I suspect he was being more honest when he was slamming Romney, just as Newt and the others were, for being, to put it mildly, insufficiently conservative and not at all the right person to lead the party against Obama.

And -- think back -- he slammed him hard, suggesting even that Romney was really no different than Obama.

Unless Santorum is completely shameless, in a Romney sort of way, there's no way he meant what he said about Romney being "solid" on social issues. Well, unless "solid" means "yeah, okay, I guess he's better than the alternative, and, yeah, I guess I have to say something positive about our guy because I want to have a future in conservative politics and don't want to be seen as disloyal."

And it's pretty clear that's how he meant it.

Santorum's endorsement of Romney -- better than a sharp stick in the eye

By Richard K. Barry

Let go of me. You're hurting my arm!

So, Rick Santorum endorsed Mitt Romney via an e-mail sent to supporters. After 12 paragraphs full of chatter designed to puff Santorum up to his own fans and basically lay out why he would have been the better choice, he finally gets to the point, sort of.

Here are the exact words: "The task will not be easy. It will require all hands on deck if our nominee is to be victorious. Governor Romney will be that nominee and he has my endorsement and support to win this the most critical election of our time."

It's like they're all reading from the same script. "Because Romney will be the nominee, I will support him." Still no excitement there. Not that it matters, though. Something like 97% of the Republican base has already said they will vote for Romney. And I don't think a great number of independents are looking to Santorum for guidance.

One of the more telling comments in the e-mail was in Santorum's encouragement to Romney to "add more conservative leaders as an integral part of his team." One wag on MSNBC said that this would be like suggesting that a news outlet should add journalists to its staff. Not exactly a way to make friends.

Speaking of making friends, this does beg the question as to what kind of role Santorum might have at convention. Are they really going to trust this guy at the mic? I don't think so.

Santorum never really had a shot at the nomination, but after months of being taken too seriously by his supporters and the media, hungry for a story, it looks like he started to believe his own press clippings. Not that I give a damn what happens to Santorum, but he didn't help himself with this flimsy endorsement. He could have shared part of a very big stage, but I don't see that happening now. Romney must be saying, "Who needs this shit?"

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Some fun, sort of

By Carl 

If you haven't read or heard anything about the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner on Saturday night, well, you missed a doozy.

It wasn't particularly funny, but it did have an underlying nasty edge to it. Jimmy Kimmel was MC, with performances by President Barack Obama and former NBC correspondent David Shuster, who got off the cutting remark of the night when he pointed out the Gingriches were attending, and noted "I guess their check cleared."

To his credit, Kimmel didn't fawn over Obama and had a zinger or two in his arsenal: "There's a term for Presidents like you, just not two terms."

It was Obama himself who had some of the best and most cutting lines of the night, but even there, you could tell he was playing it safe:

"Last year at this time, this very weekend, we finally delivered justice to one of the world's most notorious individuals," Obama said. Then a picture of real estate mogul Donald Trump appeared on the room's television monitors. The president last year delivered a scathing roast of Trump, who flirted with running for the Republican nomination and claimed he had solved the "mystery" of Obama's birth certificate.

Obama also took a shot at the Republican congressional leadership, whom he thanked "for taking time from their exhausting schedule of not passing any laws" to attend the dinner...

"[Mitt Romney and I] both have degrees from Harvard. I have one, he has two. What a snob."

The crack drew a thumbs up from former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who was in the audience. Santorum dropped out of the presidential primary campaign earlier this month. He had called Obama a snob for encouraging young Americans to attend college. 

And there was a luscious, scrumptious video joke ("voke"?) of a faux-campaign commercial put together by Romney, using Air Force One...

It's not even May yet. We have six months more of this crap... sorry, Seamus... still to come, but it's nice it kicks off with a few laughs.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Rick Santorum throws in the towel

By Richard K. Barry

We all saw it coming, so there's no sense feigning surprise. By the time he got around to announcing the inevitable in his speech, everyone knew what to expect. Some of the words went like this:

We made a decision over the weekend, that while this presidential race for us is over, for me, and we will suspend our campaign today, we are not done fighting.

He made the announcement at a campaign stop in Pennsylvania after a weekend of tending to his 3-year old daughter, Bella, who had been hospitalized with pneumonia. 

Whatever one thinks of Rick Santorum, and I'm not a big fan, I can image this has been an emotionally draining time for him all around and it wasn't surprising that he was quite emotional at the press conference. He noted that his daughter was making great progress and home after the weekend in the hospital. Terrific news.

The rest of his final moment in the brightest sun was fairly unremarkable, though he made no mention of Romney in his 12-minute speech nor did he, obviously, take the opportunity to say that he would be endorsing Romney, his party's de facto nominee. Maybe that was a little bit churlish. 

But let's give credit where credit is due. Santorum came from no where to give Mitt Romney a bit of a scare. Mostly that was about Romney's weakness, but Santorum did show himself to have some strength when he wasn't being a bat-shit crazy social conservative. If there had been any way Santorum could have presented himself solely as the "grandson of an Italian immigrant coal miner," as he liked to say, or as a meat-and-potatoes middle-America kind of guy, without all the preachy baggage that made people so afraid of him, things might have been different. 

As the New York Times wrote:

Mr. Santorum’s candidacy benefited from the comparison to Mr. Romney as the Republican candidates appealed to a conservative segment of the Republican Party during the primary process. Mr. Santorum regularly mocked Mr. Romney as a flip-flopper on social and conservative issues who could not be trusted. 

That helped Mr. Santorum win several Southern primaries in which evangelical voters and Tea Party supporters dominated the primary electorate. 

But Mr. Santorum also cast himself as the true economic conservative who understood the needs of the middle class. His campaign attacked Mr. Romney, a multimillionaire, as out of touch with the needs and interests of regular working Americans. 

Most take-aways on the relative success of the Santorum candidacy are fairly obvious, but maybe just to make the point, I will say this. We knew, coming out of the mid-term elections, that the Tea Party movement and other right-wing radicals would work hard to assert their influence on the GOP nomination process. They had some success in 2010, and they wanted more. We knew that whoever won, no matter how relatively moderate he or she wanted to be, the eventual nominee would be drawn to the far right to placate the activist hard-right, most vocal, wing of the party. 

We didn't know what the vehicle would be for pulling the party and the nomination process in that direction.   Few probably saw Rick Santorum as that vehicle, but that's the way it worked out. Again, to give him his due, he ended up being a pretty effective voice for that particular fringe. All things considered, he probably was the best of the rest when it came to articulating the new radicalism of the Republican Party. I don't know that this is a compliment, but there it is. 

Now that he's out, now that Romney's path to the nomination is more or less unimpeded, the only question remaining is, how quickly will Romney be able to move back to the centre to capture the necessary independent voters to compete in the general election, how effective will his Etch-A-Sketch candidacy be from here on out?

Santorum pulled Romney a long way over to the right and for that President Obama owes a great debt to the former Senator from Pennsylvania. 

Make no mistake, though, Rick Santorum has rejuvenated a political career that had been in the crapper. He's a player now amongst social conservatives in America in a way that he never was before. Maybe his support base going forward is even bigger than that. Oh, joy. 

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Santorum's addiction

By Richard K. Barry

Watching Rick Santorum deliver a speech from Pennsylvania on the night of the Wisconsin primary, something very disturbing occurred to me. Santorum is having a very hard time letting go of the national spotlight. 

He performed so poorly in the early going of the whole nomination process and has, let's be honest, been able since to sieze a significant piece of the national stage. It's all been so improbable. Now that it's time to say goodbye, he can't do it. 

He's mainlining adulation and has no idea how to wean himself off it. He's jonesing for his next fix. Maybe he thinks it'll be the GOP primary in his home state of Pennsylvania. I don't know.

He's in a kind of bubble that happens in politics when a candidate gets so addicted to the attention that nothing matters but the next applause line.

That's Santorum's addiction and it's getting sad. It's over, Rick. Get out, go away, shoo!

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Predictable sweep: Romney wins Wisconsin, Maryland, and D.C.

By Michael J.W. Stickings

We were going to live-blog the Republican primaries in Maryland, D.C., and Wisconsin this evening, but, really, what was the point?

It looked like a Romney sweep going in, and a Romney sweep it was. Or will be, once the returns are all in.

Right now, at 10:53 pm:

He's beating Santorum 48 to 30 in Maryland (with Gingrich at 11 and Paul at 10) -- 59% reporting.

He's beating Paul 70 to 12 in Washington, D.C. (with Gingrich at 11 and Santorum off the ballot) -- 58% reporting.

And he's beating Santorum 42 to 38 in Wisconsin (with Paul at 12 and Gingrich at 6) -- 71% reporting.

What does it all mean? Just that Romney moves further out in front and is now the even likelier winner. But we knew that already.

So the only news, and we see it in how the media are reporting the results and trying to make something of tonight's results, is that Romney now has more than half of the 1,144 delegates needed to secure the nomination.

All of which is to say, it's over. Not that that's news, but we can now stop talking about the Republican race, other than a mention here and there, and get on with things.

The only hope for Santorum was a win in Wisconsin to balance Romney's wins in Maryland and D.C. That looked like a possibility as recently as a few weeks ago, but Romney was well ahead in all the recent polls.

Simply put, Santorum has run out of steam. Credit him for coming out of a distant nowhere and emerging as the voice of the right, and for a time of the anti-Romney majority of the GOP, but he was always at a huge disadvantage against Romney, mostly in terms of money and organization but also in terms of not having the party establishment behind him at all, and it was only going to be a matter of time until Romney finished him off.

After losses in Alabama and Mississippi on March 13, Illinois on March 20 was a decisive victory for Romney, a reminder of Romney's broader if still deeply limited appeal -- and of the inevitability of an eventual Romney win. Today, particularly the vote in Wisconsin, just adds to that.

So what now? Well, we have three weeks until five primaries in Romney's northeastern stronghold: New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Delaware. He will win all five -- yes, he'll win Santorum's home state of Pennsylvania. And then it will really be over, even if Santorum and/or Gingrich stay in the race.

So that's it. A big, if numbingly predictable, night for Romney.

Snooze.

Santorum claims California universities don't teach U.S. history

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Are we still paying attention to Rick Santorum? Well, sure, for the time being. I was rooting for him to beat Romney -- for obvious reasons -- but his campaign, for all its stunning wins (given that he seemed to come out of nowhere), has been one long series of gaffes and missteps and, well, lies.

The latest... as he said yesterday in Wisconsin, where he's hoping against hope for a come-from-behind win today:

I was just reading something last night from the state of California. And that the California universities – I think it's seven or eight of the California system of universities don't even teach an American history course. It's not even available to be taught. 

Um, what exactly was he reading? Or was that a lie, too? Because, as Think Progress notes:

In fact, of the 10 UC system schools, just one (San Francisco) doesn't offer American history courses. But that's because it doesn't offer any humanities courses at all — it's a medical school.

Meanwhile, Berkeley, Irvine, Davis, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz all offer numerous American history courses. All require students to take U.S. history before they can graduate.

University of California spokesperson Brooke Converse emailed to note that every single UC undergraduate program is required to study "American history and institutions," though specific requirements vary at each campus.

Go away, Rick. Just go away. You had it going there for a bit, what with your folksy populism and seeming authenticity, but your continuous stream of right-wing bullshit (whether about birth control or education or whatever), as much as Romney's money, has taken its toll. You're done. And now you're just looking more and more like the fool you really are.

Conservatives don't much care for science

By Michael J.W. Stickings

From yesterday's Daily Intel:

While only 35 percent of conservatives said they had a "great deal of trust in science" in 2010, an estimated 100 percent of Rick Santorum believes that climate change, evolution, and pretty much all empirical scientific data is a bald-faced lie.

And, let's face it, Santorum is pretty much a mainstream Republican in this regard.

Which means that a vote for any Republican is a vote for a return to the Dark Ages.

The Founders, men of Enlightenment, surely would not approve.

Just give Mitt Romney the nomination and be done with it

By Richard K. Barry

When do we get to say the Republican presidential nomination race is over? Is it when Santorum loses his home state of Pennsylvania, because that looks like it might just happen, or so some recent polling is starting to indicate?

A Franklin & Marshall College poll out this week has Rick Santorum nearly tied with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in Pennsylvania, which is also showing that Santorum's support is eroding.

Here's the technical stuff:

The poll of 505 registered Republican voters, conducted March 20-25 in conjunction with the Tribune-Review and other media outlets, shows Santorum clinging to a small lead over Romney, 30 percent to 28 percent, within the poll's 4.2 percent margin of error.

And now, as Nate Silver is reporting at FiveThirtyEight, polls are showing Romney on track to win in Wisconsin, a state, Silver notes, that once seemed relatively favourable for Rick Santorum:

A survey from Marquette University, released on Tuesday, gave Mr. Romney an eight-point lead in the state. That is a slightly smaller margin than the one in an earlier Rasmussen Reports poll, which had put Mr. Romney 13 points ahead.

I even noticed today that if Romney falls short of the magic number of 1,144 delegates to win the nomination, he may be able to count on 120 uncommitted Republican National Committee super-delegates to put him over the top.

As Daily Kos writes, actually referring to a National Journal article:

Technically, there are actually 168 super delegates, but 15 of those super delegates can't vote because their states voted early, breaking RNC rules, and 33 of them are bound to support the winner of their state's primary or caucus. That means there's really only 120 super delegates in the traditional sense. Those 120 insiders have the power to put Mitt Romney over the top, if they need to do so, they almost certainly will.

Not to get into details, but this is just one more tool in Mitt Romney's kit to ensure he will be his party's nominee. If push comes to shove, or, I should say, when push comes to shove, the GOP establishment will be there to bail Mitt out. Of course they will.

You know, it wasn't even my intention to get into the weeds about why Romney will win the nomination. After Michigan and Ohio, that was a done deal. Most Republicans, even those who aren't very happy about it, are now pretty clear in their minds that Romney will carry the banner for their party.

The only question for me is how the pundits will fill their time over the coming months. I'm bored by the GOP race. I want Romney to be the guy because I am convinced that when he is the sole focus of attention he will implode. Hard to believe that anyone in the country is unaware of Mitt Romney and his failings as an effective mouthpiece for the conservative cause, or any cause, that anyone hasn't seen his pathetic attempt at being a politician, but a lot of people just don't pay attention.

When they do pay attention to Romney, most don't like what they see. The numbers are pretty clear on that. I also know that as a Democrat I should want the GOP race to continue. I should want Santorum and Gingrich and even Paul to be there to throw mud at Mitt. I'm just tired of it.

Please let it be over soon. I am convinced that Romney can destroy his chances of winning the general election all by himself without any help from his Republican challengers. I'm sure of it.

Let Mitt be Mitt, all alone on the stage, and let him fail miserably.

Let the games begin.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Behind the Ad: Santorum goes apocalyptic with "Obamaville" nightmare

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(Another installment in our "Behind the Ad" series.) 

Who: Santorum. All Santorum, but speaking on behalf of many, many Republicans in their hatred of President Obama.

Where: Online. In other words, everywhere.

What's going on: Just watch the ad. It explains itself.

You may have seen this on Jon Stewart last night, but it's also been making the rounds. And it's about as un-subtle as a Ron Jeremy film.

We do a series here at The Reaction called "Signs of the Apocalypse," though we haven't done a new entry in a long time. (This was the most recent, #75, from October 2010. I really need to get back to it.) It's more socio-cultural than political, focusing on various indications that the Apocalypse is on the way. (And, no, it's not religious.)

Well, according to Santorum, in this first of an apparently eight-part series (just like Harry Potter!), the Apocalypse will come if President Obama is re-elected -- and it's called "Obamaville," a dystopian future meant to scare the shit out of conservatives, or at least to reinforce the conservative lie that Obama will turn America into something resembling Mordor, an earthly hell for "God"-fearin' Americans. And, note, for white Americans specifically, as Jon pointed out. Yes, this too features the racism that is at the core of the right's assault on Obama.

"Imagine a small American town two years from now, if Obama is re-elected..." Yes, 2014! If Obama is re-elected, it will take just two years for the nightmare to become a reality.

Oh wait... that's not quite enough to scare you? How about blending Obama and... Ahmadinejad. Yes! Perfect! And add to that the treat of nuclear armageddon. Even better! "And every day, the residents of this town must come to grips with the harsh reality that a rogue nation and sworn American enemy has become a nuclear threat."

Honestly, this may be the silliest, most ridiculous political ad I've ever seen. And yet it captures the fear, ignorance, bigotry, and outright insanity that have been driving the right's own apocalyptic opposition to Obama -- and that are driving conservative politics generally.

As Rude Pundit put it yesterday, so very well:

One of the things it has always been easy to admire (yes, admire) about Santorum is that the motherfucker may be crazy as a shit fight in a monkey house, but he believes what he's saying. He's all-in. If you're gonna base your candidacy on your belief that Satan wins if you don't, own that shit. And nothing says nutzoid like Santorum's latest video from his campaign, not a Super PAC, wherein he imagines the color-drained hellscape that America will become if Barack Obama wins a second term. Because apparently you can put anything after the President's last name, it's called, "Obamaville."

That's right. Obama will force your children off playgrounds and take away one of their shoes. Hot women with whore-red lips will tell you to be quiet. You and your spouse will have nothing to chop on the butcher block but a bowl of grapefruit. Grapefruit, goddamnit. Little girls will dress in rags and sit in wooden rooms. Doctors will have long lines, says the narrator, but somehow hospital beds will remain empty. And all of a sudden gasoline will have the ability to pierce your skull. Old people will sit or stand quietly, knowingly. TV will mix up Mahmoud Ahmadenijad with the President in showing us our "enemies."

It's all supposed to be a bit Twilight Zone-y. Check out the ending. It's the sort of thing that would be understandable, perhaps, as satire, as something you might see on Colbert to show just how fucking insane Republicans really are. The thing is, Santorum means it. And you know conservatives are just lapping it up.

Enjoy!