Eugene Robinson: Rick Santorum could take Republicans down with him

[babylonsister]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/rick-santorum-could-take-republicans-down-with-him/2012/02/20/gIQA8Af8PR_story.html

Rick Santorum could take Republicans down with him
By Eugene Robinson


Republicans haven’t quite thrown away what they see as a winnable presidential election, at least not yet. But they’re trying their best.

snip//

Santorum’s social conservatism is a huge iceberg, and his views on women and childbearing are just the tip. He not only opposes gay marriage but has criticized the Supreme Court decision that struck down anti-sodomy laws and declared that “I have no problem with homosexuality. I have a problem with homosexual acts.” That alone would be enough to put him well outside the mainstream. But his Ozzie-and-Harriet ideas about family life place him in a different solar system.

In his 2005 book, “It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good,” he lectured women who choose to work outside the home, writing that “the purported need to provide things for their children simply provides a convenient rationalization for pursuing a gratifying career outside the home.”

Convenient rationalization? Given all the money Santorum has made as a Washington insider since leaving office, perhaps he forgets that most American families need two incomes just to put food on the table.

The issue, for Republicans, is not just that Santorum would lose in November. It’s that he could be a drag on House and Senate candidates as well. Imagine, say, Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) trying to explain to his constituents why someone who doesn’t fully understand women’s participation in the workforce should be president.

Listen closely and you can hear the anguished cries: “Mitch! Chris! Jeb! Help!”

[Art_from_Ark]

1. A "winnable presidential election"???

With the dumbasses they have as candidates????

[Scootaloo]

2. Santorum is just the symptom of a progressively lethal disease

For thirty years, the republican party has been whittling itself down to a core of ideologically "pure" demogogues. This quest for "eine Partei, eine meinung" has left them a radicalized bunch of far-right crazy people... and since they've purged all dissenters from their ranks, there really is no way for them to form new ideas that could put the brakes on their current trajectory.

The GOP - and their voters - have become so ideologically inbred, that Rick Santorum looks normal to them. And when he loses, the party will respond with another paroxysm of expunging itself of everything it considers "liberal," since they're so utterly invested in the idea that everyone in America hates liberals as much as the GOP does, and they lost the election for being too left-leaning.

Basically, the party is completely doomed to self-destruction. It's too far gone to hope for "moderates" to take over - there aren't any moderates over there anymore. The best we can hope for is for the American voter to see how fucking insane they are, and keep them out of power as they burn out, so that they don't take the rest of us with them.

[Happyhippychick]

3. I agree with everything you said

[Old and In the Way]

4. They have reached the critical mass of terminal stupidity.

Rick Santorum is their parting shot.

On edit...welcome aboard! Great observation...I've felt the same for a loooong time. This didn't happen overnight. They started at rough parity 40 years ago - I'm so old, I remember when progressive legislation was past with real coalitions of like minded people in both parties. But they decided the way to win was to appeal to the bigotry and selfishness in people - play to the voter's worst instincts. It started with the easy groups to demonize - the gays, Then it progressed onward - immigrants, latino's. minorities, blacks, liberals, environmentalists, scientists, teachers, unions. women....eventually, the expanding demonization starts producing its logical conclusion...a Party of NO one. Good riddance...the sooner it implodes on itself, the better it will be for this country.

[JNelson6563]

5. Exactly.

[izquierdista]

7. Nixon's Southern Strategy

I'll bet Satan himself is prodding ol' Tricky with a pitchfork for the payoff from the wonderful job he did.

[Vogon_Glory]

10. Nah, Satan has an even BETTER torture in mind.

Nah, I think that Satan has an even BETTER torture in mind. He's going to sit Tricky D!ck in front of a bank of TeeVees with live feed from the broadcast and cable news channels and force him to watch the results in this year's elections (Just as he probably has made Richard Milhous go through the 2008 election results).

[zipplewrath]

8. Absolutely

Santorum isn't "taking them down", he's riding them down. He's what they've wanted for 30 years and they finally got him. Blaming this on Santorum is like blaming the wind for the hurricane.

[Vogon_Glory]

9. Accurate--BUT The Media Doesn't See It That Way

I think that's a pretty accurate prognosis about what's going to happen to the Senile Elephant Party. The Far Right's increasing lock on the Republican Party and its ability to force the GOP to hold to a Far Right political agenda is why I bailed on them twenty years ago.

The trouble is that the corporate media doesn't get that the GOP has swung so far to the right and that it and its leaders are being led around by its far right bloc. Most of the reporters (and more importantly their editors and their editors' bosses) are still wed to the notion that there are still two parties not that far apart on their ideologies and that both parties are still led by responsible, rational people with the country's good at heart. As long as that fiction predominates among the news critters, the Republican Party and its agenda will be treated with the attention and respect it (doesn't) deserve.

We can STILL have a disastrous Republican victory that will screw up America for generations. All we need are for the corporate news organizations to forget to be critical, curious, and investigative (And they usually aren't) and for more voters across the USA to emulate Texas voters' careless, slothful inattention to and non-participation in the electoral process.

[PlanetBev]

12. You're hired, scoot

Fine analysis. What you say explains it all, in a nutshell.

[quaker bill]

14. Well said

I think republicans nominating Rikky does the country a huge favor compared to running Mittens. It would be far easier for republicans to deny a Mittens loss and hang it on "compromise". Mittens is not the "values" candidate, Rikky is. They should finally run someone that gives their "values" a full throated presentation to the public.

So far, the closest they have come to this was the GHWB convention in 1992, where they let Jerry Falwell and Pat Buchanan off the leash for a bit to attempt to make moral "values" an issue against Bill Clinton. If it were not for Ross Perot's wealth and complete disdain for GHWB, it might have worked. When it failed they went on a "values" witchhunt ending in the impeachment fiasco. However this did set the stage for GWB to run and get far closer to victory against Gore than he ever should have on his own "merits". Early on, GWB kept the conservaloons in the closet and made no serious attempt to truly advance their "issues" on the social front. He threw a few bones their way with stem cells and on abortion but never really stepped up to the core of it.

Rikky is ready to take it to the mat, and run full bore on keeping women barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen. He is ready to call all the brown people out, trash gays, the media, Hollywood, and even select churches that don't meet his specifications for Christian. He is the in depth culture warrior that a faction on the far right has craved since the 1980s.

All that said, the huge favor to the country being done here is that we finally get to test the question. These folks have long believed that an uncompromised culture warrior would win an election massively and somehow reset the clock back to the 1940s - 1950s, perhaps 1920s, or even perhaps the 1890s, some idyllic time that in fact never existed as they imagine it. The likely favor is that they lose massively on what they see as a "true test" of their "values" agenda. For it to work, they need to lose massively, by margins so wide that no remotely sane individual can believe the election was "stolen". This is entirely possible. Rikky could be their George McGovern moment, and this would be a very good thing.

[tanyev]

6. ...

[HopeHoops]

11. Any of the GOP clowns would.

[irisblue]

13. yes

from his keyboard to the goddess' ears