Rick Santorum Sinks Low

Rick Santorum has taken his current front-runner status in the GOP primary as a sign that he no longer needs to worry about his GOP contenders, but instead should start focusing his attacks on his presumptive opponent in the presidential race, President Obama. One might think Santorum, a former Pennsylvania Senator, would be attacking the President’s policies over the three years Obama's served in office, or maybe something the President did while in the Senate. No. It seems Santorum wants to forego debating what the President has done for this country (politics aside: staved-off an economic depression; saved the American auto-industry; provided access to health insurance for millions of Americans who couldn’t get it before; the list goes on…) and the administration’s policies and just go ahead and attack the man himself, unbelievably questioning the President’s core religious beliefs. On Saturday, Santorum said the President’s agenda is tied to “some phony theology” not based on the bible. I think in the next couple of days we’ll even see some on the right bemoaning Santorum’s remarks and saying he went too far. So far, of course, the Obama campaign has disavowed the remarks. Robert Gibbs, adviser to Obama’s re-election campaign, said on ABC’s This Week that Santorum’s remark, “crossed the line.” Surely, it did. But I also think this speaks largely to the campaign itself. As the economy continues to improve, it’s going to be harder and harder for the GOP candidates to argue how the President’s economic policies have actually hurt the country. And that’s what this election is all about. It’s about the economy, the most important issue on voters’ minds. What this shows to me, as well as the contraception ‘controversy’ drummed up over the past few weeks, is that the GOP are desperately searching for cultural issues as wedge devices in the upcoming election to pull independent voters their way. Will this Bush-era tactic work? I’m sure that some voters will be swayed, but for the vast majority of them, especially liberals and the all-important independent group, this will only serve to further pull them from ever voting 'right' again.

And speaking of running the country on a campaign ‘based’on the bible,' here’s an excellent clip from The West Wing season 2. Imagine if we did have a President who based how the country should be run only on the words of that outdated text.