One Year Ago Today: Please Keep Your Word Santorum

One year ago today, on Cavuto, Rick Santorum swore he would not run again in 2016.

So if Santorum doesn’t win this election he isn’t going to run again. HALLELUJAH! Now I REALLY feel motivated.

— MeredithAncret (@MeredithAncret) March 23, 2012

 

Given the godawful speech I witnessed Ricky giving at CPAC this year, I’m not sure we can count on him to keep his word and that, my friends, is bullshit the GOP does not need.

If we want to have any chance of winning we need NEW faces, fresh arguments, and someone who ACTUALLY supports small government. Rather than Santorum whose only issue with the current big government seems to be that it’s just not regulating what HE wants regulated.

So I’m just here to remind Santorum of his words a year ago. You said you would not run again, keep your word.

And now I’m going back to my vacation.

There is only one word to describe my emotions right now: Halle-freakin’-lujah

Okay, so it’s a compound word…and I made it up, but still.

Santorum has suspended his campaign!

It’s true, I just watched the live stream of his press conference on Fox News.

He was a long winded and making insane statements like “we were winning in a different way” in reference to his campaign.

Really? “winning in a different way”?

I will likely never wear a sweater vest again, even though I have two very cute ones, just because he reference the sweater vest as the “official” clothing for his campaign in this speech.

Or I may wear mine to be ironic.

Anyway, I don’t want to spend too much time on this…it’s Santorum after all.

I’m just ecstatic that he is finally out of the campaign.

Open primaries v. Closed primaries

Over the last few weeks I’ve been stopped several times, both on campus and off, to be asked to sign a petition to get open primaries in our state…which seems a bit like closing the barn door after all the cows have escaped, since my state’s primary was held on February 28th.

The last time this happened I had just had enough. I pointedly asked the women who was carrying the petition to tell me what party she was registered with.

Unsurprisingly, after a bit of prodding, she told me she was a Democrat. I asked her how she would feel about Open Primaries if I, as a Republican, were to gather up Republicans and go to a Democratic primary to vote for the worst Democratic candidate so that the Republican nominee would be able to wipe the floor with him. She told me “well I would be getting people to sign a petition if I didn’t support it.”

Which didn’t actually answer the question, mind you.

As this was a public space another person came up to interject their opinion. He asked me what my solution would be if a Democrat, such as himself, wanted to vote in the primaries for Ron Paul. (Not sure why a Democrat would want to, since 90% of what Ron Paul supports is completely opposite to Democratic views…the only thing I can think that this guy wanted was the legalization of drugs…) I told him to do the same thing that my independent friends had done, which was register as Republicans for the primary and then re-register as their actual party.

He didn’t seem to find that satisfactory…too lazy to go to the trouble I guess.

Here is the key problem with this particular guy’s argument. The Presidential election is the time for the entire country to decide, based on whatever their views are, which nominee will make the best POTUS. That is why you vote across party lines, you can watch the debates, view the records, and decide between the party nominees to decide who will best lead the country.

This is not what primaries are for.

Now, ideally, members of the party should be voting for the candidate who will make the best President. However, Democratic and Republican ideals of what makes a good President are not the same at all, so cross primary voting would be unhelpful at best and disastrous at worst.

What a primary does is allow the members of the party to decide on who, of the available candidates, best represents their ideals and will be the best President possible within those ideals.

So the problem with a Democrat voting in a Republican Primary is that they will not be voting for the candidate that best represents Republican ideals, they will be voting for either 1.) the candidate who best represents Democratic ideals or 2.) the candidate that will be most easily defeated by their Democratic nominee.

And considering that option 2 is exactly what happened this year in the Republican Primaries in several states which have open primaries.

Democratic activists and strategists have launched a campaign to push fellow Democrats and independents to vote for Santorum to try to derail the more moderate frontrunner Mitt Romney, a Michigan native and the candidate President Barack Obama’s campaign least wants to face in the November 6 election.

“I think Santorum is completely radioactive and will bring an electoral disaster to the Republicans – he could deliver Obama a landslide,” said Michigan Democratic strategist Joe DiSano, who has launched one of the efforts to help Santorum. “We need to focus on the one real challenger to Romney.”

- Reuters

Gotta love that sort political trickery. Of course this says a lot about how worried the Democrats are about my candidate of choice, Mitt Romney.

However, this is why closed primaries are necessary. I don’t want to vote in a Democratic primary, I’m not a Democrat and it’s not my job to choose a candidate who upholds their ideals. Neither is it a Democrats job to choose a political candidate who best upholds Republican ideals.

How the hell did Santorum win 3 primaries? And what did California’s 9th circuit court have to do with it.

I know, he won three states that have nothing do with California.

However, 2 days ago the was a court decision was made by the California 9th Circuit Court that declared Proposition 8 to be unconstitutional.

I’m not writing this post to celebrate or nay-say that decision.

I’m writing it to draw attention to something that I’ve been speculating on since Tuesday night.

Despite his close race with Romney in Iowa at the end of last year, Santorum is not doing well in popular opinion. Though he has the second highest number of delegates already won. 72 to Romney’s 112, Gingrich’s 32, and Paul’s 9. (On a side note, who else is thinking that Paul and Gingrich need to bow out now?)

However, somehow he swung 3 states in a single night. Now, while I could simply assume that this means Minnesota, Missouri, and Colorado are populated by functioning morons/lunatics…I think there might be another explanation.

The very same day this insanity happened, only hours earlier, the California 9th circuit court opened the door for same-sex marriage to once again begin in their state.

In a panicked state, fearing for the state of traditional marriage and “OH DEAR GOD, THINK OF THE CHILDREN”, the social conservatives (who may or may not be fiscal/constitutional conservatives) turned and ran to vote for the most socially conservative (and least  American) of the GOP candidates.

You know, lemmings do that same thing and they usually end up over the edge of a cliff.*

*okay, that’s a misconception, but they often drown while trying to cross large bodies of water while migrating.

Frakking Midwest

Yes, I said frakking. Yes, I like Battlestar Galactica. Yes, it was an attempt to be delicate.

I have never liked the midwest. I grew up in the Bible belt. It wasn’t a fun childhood or teen years.

Now I have a bigger reason than my own personal demons to dislike the midwest.

Tonight’s Primary results.

Santorum, SANTORUM, won Missouri and Minnesota. (and while Colorado is too close to tell as of right now, Santorum is projected to win that as well. I will apologize to my friend who lives in Colorado, I love you Tinystork, but your state can go DIAF.)

I have a few theories, outside of the Midwest breeding morons, about how and why this happened. However I’ll wait to write about that sometime later this week when I’m not fuming.

As I am still fuming, that’s all I have to say tonight. I’ll leave you with this.

Now if only I had a space ship.

Though if I did, I’d be tempted to send all the people who voted for Santorum to Newt’s moon colony and wash my hands of them.