Tag: Rick Santorum

Zombie Clown Gingrich Vows to Stay in the GOP Clown Car – Will Deliver Nomination to Romney, No Matter What!

Jon Ponder

art-gingrich-zombie-clown-carAs the Republican primaries grind on, it becomes clearer by the day that Mitt Romney is the weakest GOP frontrunner since former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole ran against Pres. Bill Clinton, and lost, in 1996.

The comparison with Dole presents a historical paradox. One of the biggest factors that hobbled the Senate leader’s campaign in 1996 was his close association with his counterpart in the House, Speaker Newt Gingrich. While Gingrich was not on the ticket that year — Dole’s running mate was a GOP liberal, Jack Kemp — the Clinton campaign deployed a relentless barrage of television ads that tied Dole to Gingrich, who was, and remains, the most unpopular and divisive figure in American politics.

The irony lies in the fact that, in the current cycle, Gingrich is playing a role opposite to the one he played in 1996. His campaign for the nomination, which should have died before it began, is now the key factor propping up the campaign of Mitt Romney’s favor, the putative frontrunner.

In primary after primary, Gingrich has peeled off votes of the GOP’s teavangelical, neo-Confederate base from Rick Santorum, often denying Santorum a win over Romney, as he did in Ohio, or nabbing delegates that would have otherwise gone to Santorum, as he has done just about everywhere else, including in Alabama and Mississippi last night.

[…]

Dumb and Dumber Vs. Obama on Afghanistan

Trish

Mitt Romney, chanelling Sarah Palin when it comes to the difficulty of forming coherent sentences, and vividly demonstrating that he hasn’t been paying attention:

Certainly it’s time on a regular basis to review our mission there, and not to make decisions based upon some actions by a crazed gunman. We don’t determine our foreign policy based on something of that nature, but of course from time to time we have to assess what the process is there. I’m very disappointed that the president has not over the last year or two talked about what’s happening in Afghanistan, what progress is being made, describing a time table, or why his timetable makes sense or not.

Rick Santorum, hysterically demonstrating that he is an idiot (the “enemy,” had nothing to do with the recent killings by the U.S. troop), but he pays more attention than Romney:

The president putting a timeline in place has made a very winnable operation very, very difficult. It continues to unravel because the president has given something to the enemy that we should have been able to deny them, which is hope.

Pres. Barack Obama, calmly demonstrating once again that he is the only adult in the room.

I have put us on a path where we are going to have this war over by the end of 2014. That our troops will be coming out, but will be coming out responsibly. We don’t rush for the exits in a way that could end up leading to more chaos and more disaster not just for Afghanistan and the Afghan people but also for the entire region and for our own security and safety.

Two Months into Republicans’ Clown Car Primary, WSJ/NBC Poll Finds Voters Turning against the GOP – Again

Jon Ponder

In the midterm elections just two years ago, voters punished Democrats for the crime of passing universal health care by voting to give Republicans control of the House. Now, a new Wall St. Journal/NBC poll finds that these same voters appear to be changing their minds again:

55 percent of respondents — including 35 percent of Republicans — believe the Democratic Party does a better job than the GOP in appealing to those who aren’t hard-core supporters.

How damaging has the primary season — with all of its debates, attack ads and scrutiny — been for the Republican Party?

Forty percent of all adults say the GOP contest so far has made them feel less favorable about the party, while 12 percent say they now have a more favorable impression. Forty-seven percent say it’s had no impact.

Even among Republicans, 23 percent maintain the primary season has given them a less favorable opinion of the party, versus 16 percent who say it’s been positive.

In addition, 55 percent of respondents — including 35 percent of Republicans — believe the Democratic Party does a better job than the GOP in appealing to those who aren’t hard-core supporters. Just 26 percent say the Republican Party does a better job on this front.

And, as we noted here, the poll found that Mitt Romney’s favorable rating has dropped down into George W. Bush territory. He has a 28 percent favorable rating among all respondents and a 22 percent favorable rating among independents.

[…]

Santorum Forced to Admit President Never Said Everyone Must Go To College

Jon Ponder

Rick Santorum came thisclose to admitting he has repeatedly lied about Pres. Obama’s position on higher education this weekend, and it happened on in an interview with Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday“:

“I agree with the president that we should have options for a variety of training.”
– Rick Santorum

Wallace pressed Santorum on the issue of higher education. The candidate had recently called Obama a “snob” for wanting “everybody in America to go to college,” but Wallace pointed out that what Obama actually encouraged was for all Americans to have at least one year of higher education or some kind of vocational training or apprenticeship.

Santorum acknowledged that he might have made a mistake.

“Look, maybe I’ve read some comments where at least it was characterized that the president said we should go to four-year colleges,” he said. “If I was in error, you said you haven’t found that, I certainly read that… if it was an error, I agree with the president that we should have options for a variety of training.”

We’ll just have to take Rick Santorum on his word, as he might say, that he misheard Pres. Obama on the multiple occasions when he has called for increasing resources for community colleges and similar job-training facilities. For example, we’ll have to assume Santorum blanked out during the president’s 2012 State of the Union Speech when he made this reference to the decades-old, public-private job training programs at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte:

[…]

Romney, the Financial Genius, Gets Less Bang for His Buck than Santorum

Trish

$10.40

What the Mitt Romney campaign and his PAC, Restore Our Future, paid for each vote cast for their guy in Michigan, according to Electablog. Romney’s funding sources poured a total of $4.27 million into the state, while Rick Santorum’s supporters spent $2.27 million, or about $6 per vote. Nine out of ten Romney ads were negative, but they netted him 32,393 more votes than Santorum, or 3%.

Santorum Opposes Higher Education, Says He Was Victimized for Right-Wing Views in College

Jon Ponder

A study released earlier this month found that conservatives are generally less intelligent than most people — a factor that may help explain why Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum went on the attack against higher education last week.

I went through a process where I was docked for my conservative views.
– Rick Santorum on being victimized by liberal students at Penn

Santorum — who received an undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania Penn State, an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh and a law degree from Dickinson School of Law — suggested both in interviews and on the stump that American colleges and universities are indoctrination mills that convert young people into liberals.

He said he knows this to be true because he was victimized at Penn State by students who ridiculed his retrograde political views.

On two occasions recently, Santorum has said that 62 percent of students who go to college lose their faith, a statistic that has proved to be false.

Santorum elaborated on his opposition to higher learning yesterday in an interview with George Stephanopolous on ABC’s “This Week:

[…]

After Making a Disastrous Choice in 2000, God Can’t Seem to Make Up His Mind about Which Republican to Anoint in 2012

Jon Ponder

chart-gallup-bush-most-unpopular-president-in-history

The Republican presidential primary has produced an unprecedented number of frontrunners — candidates who surged in the polls for a while and then faded after they were vetted by voters. Pundits say that this phenomenon — a first in the history of American presidential campaigns — is due to the fact that Republican voters do not like Mitt Romney, the robotic, putative frontrunner, but that they can’t make up their mind about which alt-Mitt they would prefer.

That may be true, but, from the point of view of the religious right, it appears just as likely that it is God Himself who can’t make up His mind.

Last week, Karen Santorum, who, like her husband Rick, is an extreme right-wing Catholic, asserted that God had ordained her husband’s campaign for the Republican nomination:

[…]

Santorum Caught Lying – Claims the Netherlands Involuntarily Euthanizes the Sick and Elderly

Jon Ponder

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Remember death panels — the “lie of the year” in 2009? Well, now GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum has come out with a false statement along similar lines that is a contender for 2012’s lie of the year — in the Netherlands:

[…]