Rick Santorum

Never, ever listen to the National Review

VIDEO

By Alex Pareene

Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum (Credit: AP)

Topics:2012 Elections, Rick Santorum, Republican Party, National Review, Newt Gingrich

The National Review has attracted some attention today for publishing an editorial suggesting that Newt Gingrich abandon his presidential run in order to allow Rick Santorum to fly free and destroy Mitt Romney. (Ramesh Ponnuru contests the notion that the editorial calls on Gingrich to quit the race but “the proper course for him now is to endorse Santorum and exit” seems pretty unambiguous even if it’s prefaced with a reminder that Gingrich told Santorum to do the same thing last month.)

Gingrich should not listen to them. At all. (Not that Gingrich listens to anyone, besides perhaps his wife, but still.) This editorial can be safely ignored for the following reasons:

First of all, everyone should always do the opposite of whatever a National Review editorial says to do. The opposite of what “The Editors” want is invariably the correct choice, morally and politically. If politicians always made “doing the opposite of what The Editors of the National Review want” a top priority, there would be universal peace and prosperity and kick-ass super-trains crisscrossing the nation.

Second, The Editors don’t even have the facts of Santorum’s surge correct: As Dave Weigel points out, Gingrich, contrary to The Editors’ claims, has won more delegates than Santorum thus far. Santorum has three delegates. Three. The press likes to cover caucuses and primaries even when they’re meaningless and non-binding and feature negligible turnout because those are the only actual events to cover in a primary race, but the result is that a couple of random wins are massively over-imbued with supposed import, leading even the politically savvy Editors of the National Review to believe that Rick Santorum has actually won a bunch of delegates because he got some old people into some auditoriums in suburban Minnesota.

Third, there is nothing about the Santorum surge that makes it any more sustainable or solid than all the previous candidate surges, except that it’s happening while primary contests are actually happening instead of last September. In other words, a Santorum collapse could be imminent, and it could come whenever Mitt Romney gets around to seriously devoting his attention to destroying him with money. Santorum has a lot of room to be attacked from the right, especially since he’s got the Rust Belt Republican politician habit of occasionally sounding sympathetic to working-class resentment of rich people. And his political history is filled with assorted crimes against current fanatical GOP dogma. Weigel posted a good one earlier: An old campaign ad in which Santorum actually admits to loving newspapers.

Oh also something about supporting Amtrak, despite trains being part of the UN plot to destroy American sovereignty.

Finally, there is the fact that Rick Santorum is an unambiguously awful candidate. He is not just a “social conservative,” he is a paleolithic anachronism of reactionary thought. The American people, despite the fervid wishes of a couple bishops and Kathryn Jean Lopez, are not actually remotely anti-contraception. Most voters — especially since the ratification of the 19th Amendment — think women should be allowed to have jobs outside the home. The last time the Republicans won a presidential election, they had 48% of the female vote, and I imagine they’d like to tie or beat that number this year, maybe? Rick Santorum is decidedly not the man for that job, unless scientists invent some sort of mind control ray that falls into the hands of Phyllis Schlafly.

So, no, Newt Gingrich, don’t quit just yet, and I’m not just saying that because having Gingrich around makes a political writer’s work marginally more colorful. All Gingrich really needs to remain “competitive” in the media race through Super Tuesday is one more big check from his rich uncle Scrooge McAdelson.

(Not that Gingrich is going to be the nominee! It’s still going to be Romney unless something unprecedentedly hilarious happens at the convention.)

: Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon. Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene

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His claims about the practice's safety puts him far to the right of his state's GOP -- and the oil industry

By David Sirota

(Credit: AP/Eric Gay)

Topics:Rick Santorum, 2012 Elections,

If any state was going to produce a Republican who might understand the dangers of unbridled oil and gas drilling — and specifically, of the drilling process known as “fracking” — you would think it would be Pennsylvania.

The state, after all, is the home of Dimock, a town near the crucial Delaware River watershed that has become the Erin Brockovich-worthy example of what can go wrong when fracking goes completely unregulated. As Vanity Fair reported in its shocking 2010 expose of the situation, Dimock is “the place where, over the past two years, people’s water started turning brown and making them sick, one woman’s water well spontaneously combusted, and horses and pets mysteriously began to lose their hair.” Similarly, the state has most recently seen a massive fracking blowout in Canton — one in which the Environmental Protection Agency subsequently found evidence of contaminated groundwater. And it is the state where a landmark Duke University study found “evidence for methane contamination of drinking water associated with shale-gas extraction.”

So when former Pennsylvania senator turned Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum late last week cited his roots in the Keystone State as reason to support more fracking and oppose any regulation of the process, it provided a disturbing example of the power of Big Money over our political system.

To review: In an Oklahoma speech last week, Santorum said, “I come from Pennsylvania [where] we’re doing a little bit of [fracking] in Pennsylvania, thank God.” He then went on to say fracking is “the new boogeyman” — the “new way [for environmentalists] to try to scare you [by] saying, ‘Look what’s going to happen. Ooh, all this bad stuff’s going to happen, we don’t know all these chemicals and all this stuff.’ Let me tell you what’s going to happen: Nothing’s going to happen.”

I don’t know for sure what sickened residents of Dimock or Canton would say in response to Santorum’s declaration that “nothing’s going to happen” — nor do I know for sure what the response would be from the Oklahomans who, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, have likely experienced pretty serious earthquakes thanks to fracking. My guess is that they wouldn’t cheer on such statements from a lowly city councilman, much less a presidential candidate — and they almost certainly wouldn’t mimic the right-wing activists who wildly cheered on Santorum’s head-up-the-ass statements.

That’s just a guess, of course — but what isn’t a guess is that Santorum has now put himself squarely to the far right of both the already-conservative Pennsylvania Republican Party and even the drilling industry itself.

As the Associated Press reports, the state’s Republican legislators just passed a bill “that could force Pennsylvania’s booming natural gas industry to help pay for a wide range of state and local government programs [and] toughen safety standards” for fracking. While the GOP bill is certainly not perfect — AP reports that “environmental groups were split over the bill, and the industry has been largely silent on it” — unlike Santorum, it at least acknowledges the reality of the health and safety concerns surrounding fracking. The legitimacy of such concerns are conceded even by the fracking industry in Pennsylvania: As Santorum’s hometown CBS affiliate previously reported, “The president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, which represents natural gas companies, said the group now believes the natural gas exploration industry is partly responsible for rising levels of contaminants found in area drinking water.” And that admission came before the EPA’s headline-grabbing revelation of groundwater contamination in heavily fracked Pavillion, Wyo.

Considering this, Santorum’s, ahem, controversial position can only be explained as the behavior of a person who not only famously doesn’t actually live in Pennsylvania, but more important, was long ago bought and paid for by the oil and gas industry.

As the Center for Responsive Politics reports, Santorum is one of the top U.S. Senate recipients of campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry — and what makes those numbers so stunningly outsized is the fact that he remains one of the top Senate recipients even though the last time he ran for Senate was in 2006. Put another way, this is not a run-of-the-mill legislator who happened to get a few afterthought contributions from the industry; this is a guy who was such a sycophantic apostle of the industry that he received enough oil and gas money to keep him on the top-recipient list a full six years after he was voted out of office — that is, a full six years after he raised a single dollar for a Senate campaign. In baseball terms, it’s the equivalent of Hank Aaron racking up so many home runs that he was able to hold the record well after he retired — only with Santorum, it’s not home runs, it’s oil and gas cash.

For the industry’s part, spending that kind of cash was clearly brilliant. With Santorum ahead in national Republican presidential primary polls, the oil and gas money has presciently purchased a potential major-party nominee who gives them an unthinkably powerful spokesperson: a candidate willing to actually cite his fracking-scarred state as reason to support less regulation of fracking. As expenditures go, that’s about the best political investment money can buy.

: David Sirota is a best-selling author of the new book "Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now." He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at www.davidsirota.com. More David Sirota

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David Boies explains the issue in terms of labor law, while Santorum says Obama may lead us to the "guillotine"

VIDEO

By Joan Walsh

Rick Santorum and David Boies (Credit: Reuters)

Topics:Contraception, Rick Santorum, David Boies

On Wednesday night we reached the high and the low, so far, in the debate over the Obama administration’s requirement that Catholic institutions that employ non-Catholics include contraception coverage in their health insurance policies.

The high, in terms of reason and clarity, came from famed attorney David Boies on MSNBC’s “The Last Word.” Lawrence O’Donnell has let male “liberal” pundits like Mark Shields wax a little shrill on his show, but to his credit, he offered the best rebuttal to all the shrieking I’ve seen so far: Boies calmly and clearly explaining the new regulations as an issue of labor law, and the government’s regulation of employers (relatively minimal, compared to other countries) on issues of health, safety and non-discrimination.

I’ve tried to make the same points: What if Catholics didn’t believe in child labor laws? Would we let church-run agencies flout them? Boies used the example of a religion that believed people shouldn’t work after age 60: Could they legally ban older people from employment? Of course, they could do neither. This is indeed an issue of religious freedom: the freedom of non-Catholics not to be bound by the dictates of the Catholic Church in the workplace.

But Boies, fresh off his 9th Circuit victory defending gay marriage, brought the legal knowledge. Watch below.

Of course, the very same night, the re-surging Rick Santorum offered the most shrill and hysterical reaction to the White House ruling, and in a week of shrillness and hysteria, that’s saying a lot. Santorum actually said that President Obama’s contraception ruling meant we are “headed down [the] road” to the French Revolution and the “guillotine.” That’s below, too.

If you watch the entire seven-minute clip, you’ll understand why, despite Santorum’s latest surge, I do not believe that even today’s Republican Party, though it’s been hijacked by the ultra-right, is capable of nominating him for president. Like so many right-wingers, he absolutely mangles what the Founders believed about religion. He says one problem with the French Revolution is that its slogan of “liberty, equality and fraternity” substituted fraternity, or “brotherhood,” for “fatherhood,” a reference to God the father, but also his right-wing belief in the centrality of male control to family and national stability. But his absolute craziness is best displayed in his remarks about the guillotine:

They are taking faith and crushing it. Why? When you marginalize faith in America, when you remove the pillar of God-given rights then what’s left is the French Revolution. What’s left is a government that gives you rights. What’s left are no unalienable rights. What’s left is a government that will tell you who you are, what you’ll do and when you’ll do it. What’s left in France became the guillotine.

Although Santorum said we’re “a long way from that,” he insisted that with the Obama presidency “we are headed down that road.” But watch the whole thing. Boies first, then Santorum. Reason before crazy. I’ll be talking about all of this on MSNBC’s “Hardball” today at 5 p.m. ET.

Reason:

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

Now crazy (h/t Crooks & Liars):

: Joan Walsh is Salon's editor at large. More Joan Walsh

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The rule of the GOP race so far: No one threatens Mitt’s White House dreams and gets away with it

By Steve Kornacki

Rick Santorum (Credit: AP/Jeff Roberson)

Topics:War Room, 2012 Elections, Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney

If one statistic explains why Rick Santorum was able to score such an impressive three-state sweep on Tuesday night, it’s this: In all three states that voted — Minnesota, Colorado and Missouri — his favorable rating with Republicans stood at over 70 percent, well above the numbers for Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich.

There was a very good reason for this: Romney left him alone.

After suffering a lopsided defeat to Gingrich in the Jan. 21 South Carolina primary, Romney’s campaign and its super PAC friends steered their energy and resources into a blunt and relentless effort to tear him down. In ads, press releases and surrogate conference calls, the (many) low moments from Gingrich’s run as House speaker in the late ’90s were aired, and Romney himself used a debate to accuse his opponent of using “repulsive” and “inexcusable” campaign tactics. Gingrich fired back with venomous intensity, accusing Romney of having “a profound character problem” and branding him “a liberal who was pro-abortion, pro-gun rights, pro-tax increases and pro-gay rights” as Massachusetts governor.

Romney got the better of this fight, in that he killed Gingrich’s post-South Carolina momentum, netted a commanding victory in Florida, and rolled into February in a strong position to leave Gingrich in the dust once and for all. But the Romney-Gingrich sniping also allowed Santorum to stand above the fray while pitching his message to Republicans in Minnesota, Colorado and Missouri, states that are culturally and demographically suited to Santorum and his message.

With no one attacking him — and with Romney, whose campaign evidently believed that a February sweep could be attained at minimal expense, spending little money — Santorum flourished under the radar in all three states. Polling in advance of Tuesday’s contests was limited, and it only became clear in the final 48 hours that Santorum was poised for a big day. And even then, it seemed unlikely he’d win all three, much less by the margins he ended up enjoying.

In his victory speech, Santorum crowed that “tonight, we had an opportunity to see what a campaign looks like when one candidate isn’t outspent five or 10 to one.” Which is true enough, but it also points to the main reason to doubt that Santorum’s trifecta will vault him into serious contention for the nomination: He’s got Romney’s attention now — which means that he’s in for the same well-funded abuse that Gingrich endured as soon as he won South Carolina. Actually, the abuse began on Monday, when Romney’s campaign realized that Santorum was going to do well the next day. But now it will intensify, with Santorum in position to use his impressive show of strength to further marginalize Gingrich and to emerge as the right’s consensus alternative to Romney.

Apparently, Santorum will now make a play in Michigan, which will hold its primary on Feb. 28. The state is an appealing target for him; it’s filled with the kind of blue-collar and middle-class voters Romney has struggled with elsewhere, and it contains a surprisingly sizable chunk of conservative evangelicals. It is Romney’s native state, but polls have shown the former Massachusetts governor is at least theoretically vulnerable. After that, Ohio and the Southern states that will vote in early March could also be good targets for Santorum. On paper, he could do some serious damage to Romney in the weeks ahead.

But the GOP campaign will look a lot different in these states than it did in the ones that voted Tuesday night. Expect Romney to engage Santorum directly, as he did with Gingrich (the next debate is in two weeks), and expect his campaign and his super PAC allies to spend heavily, flooding the airwaves with the sorts of negative attacks that helped do Gingrich in. Romney’s surrogates will get in on the act too. When Michigan’s primary arrives in three weeks, it’s just about impossible to imagine Santorum enjoying a 70 percent favorable rating in the state. Romney and his campaign are used to this by now: Every challenger who has suddenly surged into contention has fallen back to earth quickly.

Of course, some of those challengers made it awfully easy for Romney. Rick Perry’s epically bad debate performances last fall turned him into a joke even among Republicans, deflating national poll numbers that had once hovered around 40 percent. And Gingrich — well, where to start? It also helped that the GOP’s opinion-shaping class, whatever it thinks of Romney, is largely united in the view that Gingrich would be a disastrous general election candidate. So when Romney essentially mugged him after South Carolina, most party elites were content to sit on their hands and pretend they didn’t see anything; almost no one spoke up in Newt’s defense.

Santorum is not as easy a mark. He’s basically a competent candidate whose policy views are generally consistent and in line with those of the party base. The biggest knock on him, one that probably prevented him from breaking out earlier in the race, is that he came to the race on the heels of a landslide Senate reelection defeat in a key swing state. But now that he actually does have some traction, that might not matter for much. And if Romney comes after him in this month’s debate, Santorum — unlike Gingrich — will probably be able to defend himself effectively and land some punches of his own. It’s possible, then, that a Romney assault on Santorum won’t produce the same dramatic results as the Gingrich takedown did. A key question is whether party elites will sit on their hands again this time, or if some of them will rally to Santorum’s side and put the heat on Romney for running a negative race.

So while Romney will undoubtedly make Santorum pay for his victories this week, it remains to be seen just how steep the price will be.

: Steve Kornacki writes about politics for Salon. Reach him by email at SKornacki@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @SteveKornacki More Steve Kornacki

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Is the far-right Catholic candidate benefiting from a conservative fixation on gay marriage and contraception?

By Alex Pareene

Rick Santorum (Credit: AP)

Topics:Rick Santorum, Elections 2012, , Birth Control, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, Gay Marriage, Mitt Romney, Republican Party, 2012 Elections

Thrilling news, Americans! After today, we all have an excuse to pretend that Rick Santorum might win the Republican presidential nomination. And we will get to pretend this for weeks, or as long as he can pretend to have some sort of vaguely defined “momentum.”

After weeks of Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich angrily hurling wads of third-party cash at one another, Republican voters have realized (for the second or third time) that Romney is an aloof job-destroying multimillionaire rentier and Newt Gingrich is an erratic narcissist scam artist. Being mostly ignored turned out pretty well for Rick Santorum, whose repellant bigoted sanctimony reads as righteous piety to the die-hard evangelicals and old cranks actually showing up to vote in these increasingly depressing Republican contests. And so, as Steve Kornacki writes, he’s the new not-Romney, and he’s poised to win Missouri or Minnesota or Colorado or some combination of the three today.

Santorum was also the recent beneficiary of one of those slightly fishy Rasmussen polls showing him besting the president nationally 45% to 44%.

Some pundits are already preemptively deflating the hype they haven’t even bothered to fully build up surrounding the not-yet-transpired Santorum victory. The Washington Examiner’s Byron York predicts a good day for Santorum, but notes that both the Gingrich and Santorum campaigns are praying for the other one to just give up already so they can consolidate the anti-Romney vote. It ends, sadly: “it’s entirely possible that neither Santorum nor Gingrich will pull ahead in the race to challenge Romney.”

But if there’s one factor (besides the political press’ institutional bias in favor of long, drawn-out races) that could actually give Santorum a real advantage in the near future, it’s the surprising number and variety of “culture war” issues that have suddenly become very prominent.

There is today’s Ninth Circuit ruling affirming the striking down of California’s gay marriage ban (Newt Gingrich, having already promised to have the entire Ninth Circuit tarred and feathered, is predictably excited). There is the Susan G. Komen for the Cure meltdown over grants to Planned Parenthood, which culminated in the minting of a brand new conservative martyr as Karen Handel resigned to take stock of the think tank and cable news opportunities available (possible VP pick?). And there is the most obviously manufactured of the current outrages, over the Obama administration’s decision to require that employers cover contraception and birth control in health insurance plans, even if those employers are people who subscribe to the Catholic Church’s morally repugnant and indefensible anti-contraception policy. (Which most American Catholics don’t.)

All of these, most of all the last one, are perfect stories for a candidate like Rick Santorum, so long as this remains a contest to win over outraged elderly ultra-conservatives. And indeed, Santorum has launched an unfair-ish attack on Romney, accusing him of forcing Catholic hospitals to provide emergency contraception. Santorum wants the voters to know that he’s always been the candidate most dedicated to protecting women from the responsibility of having any agency whatsoever over their role in the reproductive process!

(Would it be conspiratorial to note that these divisive cultural issues began attracting a great deal of right-wing attention very soon after the release of a positive jobs report? A little bit, probably.) (Also: Remember when the Tea Party meant the GOP was going all libertarian and abandoning social issues? Ha, ha.)

Not that you should take any of this to mean that Santorum’s good day (which has not yet happened and still may not actually happen) is indicative of anything other than a fickle minority of conservative voters drifting toward whomever was least recently savaged in the press and in attack ads. But if you note your favorite anti-Romney conservative pundits and bloggers rather suddenly talking a lot more about contraception and the gay agenda, don’t be too surprised. Santorum’s positions on these issues horrifies most Americans (“I will force rape victims to carry their pregnancies to term!” is not a general election winner), but most Americans don’t vote in Missouri Republican primary elections.