UPDATE: Doodler-at-large Puty sent in this unsolicited illustration, which was beautifully coloured by Awesome Klassen. Apparently Puty spent a couple hours last night and most of this a.m. working on Santorum caricatures. “I’m not sure I’ve got it,” he writes. “But in fairness Rick Santorum is a really plain-looking guy.” I suggest next time Puty wants to draw Rick Santorum he should just do a mash-up of Maxwell Smart and Norman Bates. /Whitworth
It’s a wrap for round one of the ugliest Republican pageant ever, and there’s a new flavour of the month to gag on: the evil Rick Santorum.
It’s been a while since I’ve shared my American Republican primary schadenfreude with ‘dog readers — so long, in fact, that my print Guide-To hardly mentioned Santorum. At the time, he looked like a bottom-feeder, poised to go home after the Iowa caucuses (if not sooner).
Alas, having burned through all the other not-Romney candidates, voters are allowing Santorum to grapple his way into the top tier of candidates. With only eight total fewer votes in Iowa than Romney — earning him the same number of delegates that Romney takes home from the corn-laden red-state — Santorum is poised to make a go of it if he can show well in other battleground states, like South Carolina.
So, why should you hate Santorum?
Googling Santorum will produce (somewhat) specious results, thanks to LGBT activist, awesome columnist and It Gets Better Project co-creator Dan Savage, who spearheaded a Google bomb to redefine Santorum. Savage launched his hilarious and rude campaign largely because of an interview Santorum gave to the Associated Press in April, 2003.
But in summary, the then-senator explained a variety of nauseating beliefs, such as:
-The rash of child sex abuses committed by Catholic Priests is an obvious outcome of liberalism. Santorum went on to call the sexual abuses “a basic homosexual relationship,” since the kids being raped weren’t three or five years old.
-Gay people should be allowed to exist — but they can’t date each other. Or touch each other. Or look longingly at one another. Because that’s gay.
-Santorum doesn’t want to “pick on” gay people — he also thinks that “man on child” or “man on dog” relationships are wrong.
-To package these beliefs, there should be no right to privacy for anyone, and those who believe the U.S. Constitution grants a right to privacy is not reading it right. Because when people have privacy, they have gay sex and sometimes dog sex. Of course.
Santorum, now 53, was the youngest U.S. Senator (from Pennsylvania) after serving in the U.S. House of Representatives. He lost his seat in a 2007 election and went back to a law career.
He introduced the National Weather Service Duties Act of 2005; a windfall law for AccuWeather of Pennsylvania which has forked over thousands in campaign contributions to Santorum.
Santorum tried to amend the No Child Left Behind bill in 2001 to make sure that intelligent design is taught in schools.
He’s anti-abortion, pro-war, anti-amnesty for immigrants and pro- Mexican border fence: bona fide Republican on every count.
He’s been mired in conflict over whether or not he actually lives in his home in Pennsylvania. His oft-claimed residence seems unlikely for the nine-member family (a three bedroom, two bath home worth about $100,000 and used as the registered address for two unrelated voters) compared to the expensive Virginia home he also owns. Among the problems this tangled web has snared, a legal dispute over whether or not he owes the Pennsylvania-based school district reimbursement for paying for his kids’ “cyber” schooling, if he lied about living in the District.
So, U.S. Republicans have done it again. Santorum is riding a conservative wave amongst savoury candidates like the already ethics-slapped-and-fined Newt Gingrich.
It’s unlikely that a non-Romney candidate will win this battle but there are a few funny factors in play. Like the open primary procedure used in South Carolina and 13 other states that allow Democrats to vote in the Republican primaries. Democrats might be eager to roll the dice on a candidate like Santorum or the horrifying, burn-down-government-from-the-inside, every-man-for-himself, minority-hating Ron Paul — who’s likely not capable of beating Barack Obama in November.
Nevertheless, be afraid, Canada. We’re lying right on top of our volatile, divided and riled-for-a-fight neighbours; which Santorum would say is the hedonistic consequence of liberalism allowing us the privacy to lie on top of any country, or animal, we come across.
