Political Ruminations

Morning Quote: Mitt Romney

Romney won’t rule out Rick Santorum as a running mate when asked by a voter if Romney would consider Santorum:

“Everybody is on my list. I’m not taking anybody off the list, alright?”

Morning Quote: James Carville

Democratic strategist James Carville described Rick Santorum after Santorum lost  three primaries to Romney on Tuesday:

“He was like a chicken with his head chopped off. The chicken is dead. The only person that don’t know it is the chicken.”

Morning Quote: Paul Waldman

Paul Waldman upon viewing Santorum's new anti-Obama ad, which in the words of Kevin Drum “really does open with a Saw-like shot of a flock of crows shrieking as they fly away from an abandoned, wind-swept little town”:

“Holy crap! Was that a shot of Barack Obama forcing a little girl to bite the head off her beloved guinea pig? Maybe not, but almost. Apparently, it will take Obama only two years to turn America into some combination of “The Day After” and “Saw”.”

The ad is awful. In fact, the ad is so Halloweeny, you’d have to be a bloody damn idiot to fall for it, and more than likely, almost no one will.

We are now seeing a very desperate Rick Santorum.

Via Kevin Drum

Morning Quote: Mitt Romney

“The other two sort of leading contenders are folks who spent their life in Washington, working there and being elected officials there. I don’t think you can change Washington if you’ve been part of the culture of Washington.”

- Mitt Romney last Sunday in Michigan, paints himself as a Washington outsider vs. Santorum and Gingrich’s obvious position as Washington insiders.

Of course, Mitt Romney was very much a Wall Street insider.

Morning Quote: Mitt Romney

“While I was fighting to save the Olympics, you were fighting to save the ‘Bridge to Nowhere.”

- Mitt Romney attacks the record of Rick Santorum during the Mesa, Arizona debate last night.

Santorum Attacks President Obama’s Faith

Ya know, there is always a lot of mud slinging in politics, but modern Republicans have gone way off the edge with the stuff they’re slinging since the black man took office.

Case in point, here’s the whiny little evangelical nightmare, Rick Santorum, questioning Pres. Obama’s faith as if we’re supposed to believe that Santorum’s repugnant remarks are anything more than yet another dogwhistle, words which might make us think that the black man is simply different from “us” [white folks].

Think Progress:

The “president’s agenda” is “not about you,” he said. “It’s not about you. It’s not about your quality of life. It’s not about your job. It’s about some phony ideal, some phony theology,” Santorum said to applause from the crowd. “Oh, not a theology based on the Bible, a different theology, but no less a theology.” [...]

Although Santorum criticizes the president daily on the campaign trail, this is the first time he has used this rhetoric or said the president has a “different theology.”

In a statement, Santorum’s campaign said the candidate was not actually talking about Obama’s religion but rather his belief in secularism, adding, “The President says he’s a Christian and Rick believes that and has even said so publicly many times.”

Santorum appears to be on a mission to be a one-man Council of Trent, the 16th Century Catholic ecumenical council that defined Protestants as heretics. In a 2008 speech rediscovered this week, Santorum said Mainline Protestants — about 45 million Presbyterians, Lutherans, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Methodists and others — are “gone from the world of Christianity as I see it.”

As conservative Presbyterian blogger John Schroeder wrote, Santorum’s “truly intolerant comments concerning Obama pretty well disqualify him from holding office. It is simply not the president’s job to be judging whose theology is correct and whose is not.”

John Schroeder is right. Rick Santorum is unqualified to be president. Not just for the reason cited by Schroeder, but for others as well. In fact, Santorum shouldn’t even be wasting our frickin’ time and taxpayer money by running.