After his hat-trick of primary wins in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri Rick Santorum is the comeback kid in the race to win the Republican nomination for President.
Since his wins, Santorum's campaign website is calling for donations to keep the momentum going and to send "shockwaves through the White House." So far they've had success and have been bleating about $1.5 million dollars flooding into Santorum's coffers. They are right; this is a flood to a campaign that has been transporting its candidate in a pick-up truck for most of the primary season up to now.
But let's get some perspective, Romney's political action committee raised around $31 million last year and Obama almostraised $750 million in 2008. That amount of money buys you a lot of negative campaign ads, ads that will now aim to destroy Santorum's electoral hopes. This would only be dwarfed even further by the financial clout of President Obama's election war chest if Santorum won the nomination. Santorum fighting all of this with the $1.5m he's raised so far is like those Road Runner cartoons when Wile E. Coyote opens a small umbrella just before an anvil drops on his head. Santorum's worry should be that the more baggage he has, the bigger the anvil that Romney in the first instance and then Obama will be throwing down on him. So does he have any baggage that could harm him? The simple answer is something along the lines of does the NRA like guns.
On the surface there is nothing suspicious. Words like small government, lower taxes, freedom, values, equality and of course banning abortion are all there as you would expect from any Republican candidate. It's when you read past the headlines that things get interesting.
For a start its been widely publicized that Santorum in the past has compared homosexuality to bestiality and pedophilia, statements which makes George W. Bush look like a left-wing hippie. If this isn't bad enough, Santorum sees marriage as between a man and a woman and that the only sexual relationships that should take place at all should be heterosexual and within the bounds of holy matrimony. Things like adultery and fornication outside of wedlock should be treated like a criminal offense. Even more extreme is his view that its the government's job to protect the sanctity of marriage and the family and to make laws to deter these social evils. Thanks Rick, this certainly sounds like small government -- just small enough to spend its time trying to peer through your bedroom curtains to make sure that people are not fornicating out of wedlock or that gay people are not in any sort of wedlock. This sort of extreme social conservatism may be difficult for Romney to attack whilst he's trying to get evangelical Christians to like him but I bet Obama's team will be rubbing their hands together with glee at the political attacks they could launch.
The insanity doesn't stop on foreign policy either. On Iran, Bush and Obama have allegedly been too soft so far so Santorum wants a more hard-line approach. Visit Santorum's website yourself but to summarize, his policy seems to be to put "aim here" on President Ahmadinejad's front lawn. Santorum should also have plenty of missiles to launch there too when he increases defense spending and finishes building a comprehensive missile system in Eastern Europe.
But the question in all of this is why Santorum has any beef with Iran in the first place? Because you know who else talks about freedom and values on his website but at the same time has laws against adultery and fornication outside of wedlock? Ladies and gentleman, I give you President Ahmadinejad of Iran. So instead of wanting to bomb them of the face off the earth, I have another suggestion.
Rick, if you win the Republican nomination then make Ahmadinejad your running mate as candidate for vice president. You guys would be total best friends forever. Now that really would send shock waves through the White House and the world. Let's hope that Romney or Obama drops a big enough anvil on Santorum's campaign way before we have to face that reality.