We hear this question every election, though, for me, there’s never been an obvious answer (save for Bob Dole).
I dare you to find one person who’d choose to down a cold one with Romney or Santorum. The Anchorman would try to assure you that, even though he doesn’t personally know any beer drinkers, he once met August Busch at a party at Adolph Coors’ estate. Meanwhile, Santorum would scream Bible verses at you about the evils of alcohol.
ABC News reports that the Mitt Romney campaign is deploying Donald Trump as a surrogate in radio interviews in Michigan.
For years the GOP has placated the religious right, even as Christian fundamentalists have steered the movement to the fringe. On a national level, at least, that constituency has been heard but not seen.
Sure, George W. Bush spoke openly of his faith and helped secure a second term behind the gay marriage boogeyman, but he was a child of Washington — son of “Poppy” with a pro-choice wife.
Rick Santorum may be Catholic, but there’s never been a presidential candidate more in line with the Christian fundamentalist wing. You’ve heard little about Santorum home schooling his eight children but the religious far right has certainly noticed. And it would be foolish to ignore their influence.
The movement now sees that to reclaim America for God, it must first reclaim that tradition for Him, and so it is producing a flood of educational texts with which to wash away the stains of secular history.
Such chronicles are written primarily for the homeschoolers and the fundamentalist academies that together account for at least 2 million of the nation’s children, an expanding population that buys more than half a billion dollars of educational materials annually. “Who, knowing the facts of our history,” asks the epigraph to the 2000 edition of The American Republic for Christian Schools, a junior-high textbook, “can doubt that the United States of America has been a thought in the mind of God from all eternity?”
Santorum shares this providential view which, for example, views science as an enemy.
Santorum also said he accepts that Obama is a Christian and was not questioning his faith when he said at a campaign appearance Saturday that Obama supports a “phony theology, not a theology based on the Bible.”
He said he was talking about “radical environmentalists” who share Obama’s “worldview that elevates the Earth above man and says that we can’t take those resources, because we’re going to harm the Earth by things that frankly are just not scientifically proven.” He pointed to the debate over global climate change as an example.
Establishment Republicans who wish Santorum would just go away better think again. Christian fundamentalists truly believe they are persecuted and are eager to fight. Santorum is just the first of many to rise up through their ranks.
Mitt Romney was raised in Michigan, where his father served two terms as governor. Despite that, two recent polls of Michigan GOP voters show him trailing Rick Santorum. If Santorum holds on to win the Wolverine State primary then Romney’s inevitability is officially no more.
I don’t have a dog (and I mean dog) in this race but God help us if the GOP nominates a reactionary fundamentalist like Santorum, who claimed in Feb. 2011 the history of the Crusades has been corrupted by “the American left who hates Christendom.”
Be afraid.
Some “highlights” from the CPAC convention:
*Severe conservative Mitt Romneytron was programmed to liberally repeat the word “conservative” and did so more than two dozen times. Chasing the wind, as he’s wont to do, The Anchorman said he “will fight for an amendment to our Constitution that defines marriage as a relationship between one man and one woman.”
Because the central tenet of conservatism is Washington knows better than the states.
*Next, flavor of the week (vanilla) Rick Santorum touted his fundamentalist bona fides.
Santorum criticized the Obama administration’s health care regulation that would require Catholic hospitals and universities to provide birth control and morning-after pills to their employees as part of their health care coverage.
“It’s not about contraception,” Santorum said. “It’s about economic liberty; it’s about freedom of speech; it’s about freedom of religion. It’s about government control of your lives and it’s got to stop.”
Freedom of speech? Isn’t it funny how some conservatives are suddenly embracing the separation of church and state in wake of the Obama contraception imbroglio.
*Then came Newt, who managed to out-hyperbole Santorum.
If Obama is reelected, “he will wage war on the Catholic Church the morning after his reelection,” warned Gingrich, a convert to the Roman Catholic faith, standing before large video screens displaying likenesses of his “dream team” of prominent supporters, including former GOP presidential candidates Herman Cain, Rick Perry and Fred Thompson.
Don’t forget Chuck Norris and Todd Palin, whose wife delivered CPAC’s keynote speech.
I’m pulling for Jon Huntsman, but does anyone really believe an endorsement by the Boston Globe is going to influence Republican primary voters? Apparently the media does, judging by the entourage of reporters following the former Utah governor around in New Hampshire today.
Rick Santorum reiterated Sunday that states have the right to ban contraceptives if they wish while Newt Gingrich said today he opposes all abortions, even in cases of rape and incest.
Two months ago I asked, “How Long Before the GOP Candidates Start Tebowing?”
Answer:
Doyle McManus bets the former speaker won’t succeed as Nixon did in 1968 but the similarities are striking.
When Richard M. Nixon ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968, he faced a daunting problem: A lot of voters just didn’t like him. Nixon had made his name in politics as an angry, partisan hatchet man, famous for lashing out against Democrats and the news media.
The question remains whether Gingrich can do chastened as well as Nixon, who bested Romney’s dad in securing the Republican nomination.
Gingrich is trying to engineer a turnaround in a matter of months. Nixon was methodical and diligent; Gingrich — Old Newt, at least — is mercurial and undisciplined.
Perhaps, but I’m not sure mercurial and undisciplined are seen as negatives in today’s GOP.
A top operative for The Anchorman does his best Lionel Hutz, defending Romney’s recent ad that blatantly distorts the president’s words (Obama was mocking John McCain when he said, “If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose”):
“First of all, ads are propaganda by definition. We are in the persuasion business, the propaganda business…. Ads are agitprop…. Ads are about hyperbole, they are about editing. It’s ludicrous for them to say that an ad is taking something out of context…. All ads do that. They are manipulative pieces of persuasive art.”
'Of all the Cornbreads, Cedric Maxwell is my favorite'
It’s sad that the failure of Herman Cain’s campaign will be blamed on his sexual peccadilloes.
I would’ve preferred the embodiment of talk radio’s wet dream been disqualified due to his uncomfortably long embrace of stupidity.
Damn elitist multi-taskers!
Earlier tonight Cain delivered what was to be a “formalization” of the candidate’s views on foreign policy. He would’ve been better off taking questions from reporters about his affair (including “alleged” would be an insult to your intelligence, like saying you phone women at 4:30 in the morning to offer them financial advice).
A sampling:
Like any self-respecting motivational speaker, Cain brought along his own overhead projector.
Cain unveiled a new map to illustrate his view on America’s relationship with other countries.
Explaining the map to those in attendance at the speech, Cain described the map of the world, and pointed out that it included highlights showing the density of Facebook connections.
“Where you see the most liked, that’s where there is the most amount of freedom. Secondly, where you see the most liked is where you see the greatest amount of economic development,” he said. …
Libya, which he famously stumbled through an answer about in an editorial board interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel earlier this month, is listed as “clarity needed.”
Herman Cain is a moron.
He’s also a bigot who is a “great friend” to other bigots.
He knows nothing about history, as demonstrated by his endorsement of Tiger Woods for president.
History may bode well for a Tiger Woods presidential bid. In 1952, Dwight Eisenhower, then a popular former World War II general and Supreme Commander of Allied forces in Europe, cruised to victory with 83 percent of the electoral vote over political insider Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic governor of Illinois.
(Because winning The Masters is every bit as impressive as successfully invading France and Germany during WWII.)
If nothing else, judge him by his supporters.
She says she has known him for 12 years and he’s “never been anything but a gentlemen – and I am not an unattractive woman.”
[Lori] Klein suggested that if Cain is innocent he should sue White for libel and went on to attack the media for digging up the allegations. She also said that in politics, “we want a virgin to do a hooker’s job.”
Klein is a state senator from Arizona notorious for carrying her raspberry-pink gun around the Capitol and pointing it at a reporter’s face. She is the new front-runner for the GOP nomination.
I wonder if she knows China already has nukes.
At various points the Tea Party has vaulted Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and Herman Cain into front-runner status. Not a very good batting average.
There’s a price to be paid when you confuse talk show hosts with leaders. Each of the aforementioned candidates was “legitimized” by talk radio and each, to varying degrees, represents the superficial, antagonistic zealotry that has consumed much of the conservative movement.
Their influence also led sober-minded, experienced candidates like Mitch Daniels and John Thune to sit out this election. They were too reasonable for the Tea Party and they knew it. Look no further than Jon Huntsman who, despite being regarded as the GOP’s best hope at beating Obama, trails the Neanderthal slate in all the polls.
