Thursday, March 03, 2011

Never Give Up, Never Surrender

Former Penn. Sen. Rick Santorum waits to speak at the Iowa Renewable Fuels Summit, Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2011, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Today's must-read is this totally weird article at Politico about "the truce" on the right wing about social issues. The truce? You remember the truce: it's about how the Republicans think that voters only care about economic issues and so they should put social issues on the back burner for the next election cycle.

Except that, as the article amply demonstrates, there is no truce, there never has been one, there never will be one, and "social" issues doctrine is still used as a litmus test on the right, and always will be. In fact, the only GOP figure to even suggest such a truce, Mitch Daniels, is basically described as being a non-starter specifically because he suggested it.

What's really funny is that every single "social issue" group says the same thing. To paraphrase: "We're not saying that our abortion/homo/school choice issue should be the number one issue, but if the candidate doesn't agree with us on that issue, they're out of here." Doesn't sound like much of a truce to me.

So basically it's a whole article about something that doesn't exist, which makes it interesting. Neat!

6 comments:

Tim said...

Eeew! Somebody needs to wash that truck! There's some sort of frothy mixture stuck to the fender.

HRH King Friday XIII, Ret. said...

Does the truck come standard with froth flaps on the tires?

rbohemian said...

Nothing "santorum-ish" (ewww) to my comment, just thanks to the Princess for the title of this piece: a reference to a very entertaining film featuring the amazing Alan Rickman with bizarre headgear!

Also, thanks for reading Politico so I don't have to.

LunacyOrConcern said...

No truce indeed, you have nailed it again. But why does 'everyone' pander to it? why so little outrage?

Diane Griffin said...

Lunacy, my observation is that the outrage strategy doesn't work. Using outrage is just permission to turn around and escalate. It's a puzzle.

I think other people here have alluded to this, but googling "santorum" is quite nsfw these days. frothy mixture. hehe.

lorrwill said...

Isn't that the job of main stream media today - to make stuff up?