Going Down the Drain

Whether you care to acknowledge it or not, the three men pictured above are losers, each in their own way; collectively, they are the beginning of the end of the Republican Party.

Ronald Reagan – former union head – would not recognize them as Republicans.  The Tommy Thompson we knew as Governor of Wisconsin has nothing in common ideologically with these three, yet he now panders to the tea people and tries his best to distance the “new Tommy” from the record of the man who was the most popular governor in state history.

Mitt just can’t close the deal, because he can’t relate to regular folks.  Reagan could and did.  Carter couldn’t.  Clinton could do it in spades.  George Bush (dubya) was often described as a guy you’d like to sit down and have a beer with. His dad – not so much.  Obama is….well, I’m not sure.  But Mitt keeps putting his foot in his mouth talking about the “right height” of trees in Michigan, and how his wife drives a couple Caddies.

Newt is – I don’t know.  Not a factor right now.  He’s damn smart; thinks well on his feet and knows how to play to an audience, but – he’s just not “it”.  He can be and say very nasty things, and people just don’t like that.

The trio above represent an epic fail on the part of the Republican Party, akin to the sort of fail the Wisconsin Democrats have going for them in the inevitable Walker recall election.

And Santorini – well, he’s just plain bat-shit crazy, living in a 12^th-Century world of hatred, fear, ignorance, and superstition.  Says Obama is a snob for wanting every kid to have a chance to go to college, a place Santorini calls –and this is a direct quote – “indoctrination mills” that “harm” the country.  He and that Nass asswipe from Whitewater ought to get along really well.  Yet all seven, or eight, or however many kids Santorini has, have gone or will go to college.

Santorini said John Kennedy’s 1960 speech about separation of church and state made him want to puke.  That’s the thing with a lot of these tea people: they only like the parts of the Constitution and Bill of Rights they agree with.  Sorta like the 60’s candidate for Dane County DA, Eddie Ben Elsen, who ran on a platform which said we should “obey only the good laws”.

Santorini’s “position” on women and gays is straight out of the small-town south of the 1930’s.  That crack his patron made about women in his day using an aspirin for birth control (holding it between their knees) was clearly indicative of the mindset of someone who has no understanding of the world we live in.  Alan Simpson calls Santorini “rigid and homophobic”; Arlen Specter says “it is not realistic for Rick Santorum to represent America”.

Santorini’s understanding of Roman Catholic doctrine and dogma is a world removed from the small Catholic Church I knew as a young man growing up in Hortonville; it was during the era of Vatican II and it was a tough time for the Polish Pastor of Sts. Peter and Paul Church, Rev. Leo Przybylski, who replaced the Hungarian pastor of my earliest years, Fr. Jaraslov Pulc.  Both men were more comfortable in their native tongue than English; refugees of the big war, I’m guessing; and Rev. Przybylski (pronounced “sha-BIL-skee”) struggled to adapt to the myriad changes brought about by his leader in Rome, but firmly believed that the church had to change with and adapt to the times to be relevant.  That’s something (change) Santorini is definitely not comfortable with, which to me makes his theology irrelevant – which is as it should be for a candidate for President, but since Santorini insists that religion is government, is more than a bit troubling.

But Santorini’s wife suggests her husband’s success is “God’s will”, and if so, we’d best set our clocks back about a thousand years.