Rick The Obsequious Santorum mistakes Ivanka for The Blessed Virgin

Sandy Pensler grows even more desperate in Michigan Republican race for US Senate, enlists Rand Paul for robocalls

I got that call this afternoon, just days after getting one from Rick Santorum urging a vote for Pensler. Clearly this is Pensler's play for the libertarian vote after the earlier play for the Catholic vote.

Pensler is counting on his expensive ad campaign overcoming Trump's endorsement of his challenger, John James, and on the fractured nature of Republican politics in Michigan to eek out a win, which is a phenomenon of its libertarian leanings.

And as everyone knows, libertarians are a contrary bunch who can hardly come to agreement about anything among themselves, let alone unite anyone around their views once in office. Pensler himself has alienated Polish-Americans with his holocaust remarks. He fits right in with the libertarians.

The right thing to do in this context is vote for John James.

Rick Santorum is suddenly doing robocalls for Sandy Pensler for US Senate here in Michigan, which sounds like desperation

Just got the call a few minutes ago.

Turns out the race is now deadlocked after some time with Pensler in the lead.

Pensler has been advertising vigorously in Rush Limbaugh's timeslot on the radio as well.

His opponent John James has been relying on direct mail to reach his voters.

Pensler is spending an awful lot of money to win when he went out of his way in January to alienate voters by stating for the record that the Polish people were complicit in the Holocaust in World War II.

That's hardly how to win friends and influence people in Macomb and Wayne counties if you really want to be elected to the US Senate in 2018! 

'The Polish legislature yesterday, with particularly insensitive timing, hammered home humanities [sic] dangerous proclivity to insulate ourselves against others. It passed legislation outlawing calling Polish based concentration camps such as Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzic and others as “Polish concentration camps” rather they must now be called . [sic] “Nazi concentration camps in occupied Poland”. This attempt to whitewash and deny complicity in the horrors of the Holocaust is dangerous.'

Rick "Tin Ear" Santorum: Trump's base will be "turned off" by Brett Kavanaugh

Quoted here.

No one in the base who watched Kavanaugh's remarks was turned off in the least.

In fact, Kavanaugh impressed as a person with a common, ordinary touch, who is deeply committed to his family and to the law. And he endeared himself to his listeners because the emotion welling-up underneath his remarks went far to prove his sincerity. 

Methinks Santorum, exasperated that he didn't get more support from Catholics in 2012, is a little jealous of his fellow Catholic, whose credentials and experience already stand out from those currently serving on the Supreme Court, not to mention from Santorum's.

Conservative heroine Phyllis Schlafly opposed the territorial tax system the Republicans are about to shove down our throats

Here in November 2011:

Although the Perry plan's most striking feature is its anti-marriage bias, his proposal for corporate income is equally pernicious. Perry would shift businesses to a "territorial" tax system, which means that corporations would be taxed only on the profits they earn inside the United States.

We should do exactly the opposite. We should reduce or eliminate taxes on businesses that employ Americans producing goods and services inside our own country, while increasing taxes on the profits that corporations earn by outsourcing or manufacturing overseas.

Above all, we should eliminate the foreign tax credit, a self-destructive provision that allows corporations to pay China, Venezuela or Saudi Arabia the money they would otherwise owe the U.S. government. Let's also cut out the deductions that U.S. corporations take for hiring foreigners to do work that Americans can do.

Those who support a territorial business tax argue that it will encourage multinational corporations to bring home the profits they earn overseas, but that's unlikely so long as it remains more profitable for them to invest in cheap-labor countries. Of Republican presidential candidates, only Herman Cain and Rick Santorum understand that what corporations need is lower taxes on their operations inside the United States rather than on the profits they earn in other countries.

RNC fundraising in July 2016 is down 61% from July 2012: Donors exhausted about $750 million on 16 losers in the primaries

OpenSecrets has the RNC story here.

Stupid liberals blame this fundraising debacle on Trump when Republicans have only themselves to blame for throwing tons of good money after bad during the primaries, exhausting the donors. If the dopes at Politicus had just opened up OpenSecrets they'd have seen how.

Jeb! Bush burned through $152 million as of August 22nd, and won bupkis.

Lyin' Ted Cruz? $155 million spent.

Little Marco? $164 million (he's over $2 million in the hole, which is the real reason why he flip-flopped and decided to run for the Senate again).

John Kasich spent $40 million (and he's nearly $6 million in the hole, which is exactly what he deserves).

Chris Christie spent nearly $32 million.

Ben Carson, you won't believe it, spent nearly $79 million.

Scott Walker: almost $33 million.

Carly Fiorina: almost $26 million.

Rand Paul spent over $21 million.

Mike Huckabee spent $10.5 million and he's still $275,000 in the hole. 

Lindsey Grahamnesty: over $10 million.

Bobby Jindal blew nearly $6 million.

Rick Perry: over $17 million, also in the red by $111,000.

And Rick Santorum spent $2.5 million and he's in the red $412,000.

Pataki and Gilmore bring up the rear with relatively smaller sums.

Donald Trump has spent over $97 million and yet has over $40 million in the bank.

It's clear from the fundraising that there were only four or five real contenders here, not seventeen: Bush, Rubio, Cruz, Trump and Carson. And after four riveting televised debates before Thanksgiving 2015 polling showed the same thing, and arguably Bush no longer belonged up there. The RNC should have put its foot down at that point and cut the debate stage to four: You pull 10 points in the polls or you're out.

Things might have turned out very differently. Instead we had to listen to Kasich, Christie, Fiorina and Paul divert attention away from an in depth examination of the issues dividing the candidates attracting over 70% of Republican eyeballs. The candidate might have been better for it today, and the party more unified and flush.

Rush Limbaugh, shillin' again for Ted Cruz: "Think of a straw poll as an election"

That's precisely what Ted Cruz argues while claiming he's won all these "elections" where no elections were conducted.

There was no contest in Colorado. There wasn't even a caucus as there was in 2012, which Santorum won but got gypped anyway!

Santorum drops out of GOP presidential primary, endorses RUBIO

CNN has the story here.

That tells you what kind of president Santorum would have made: A president who, like Rubio, would have settled for the Gang of Eight amnesty bill because it was all he could get at the time.

Rush Limbaugh can protest all he wants about Rubio giving up his Senate seat as a sign he's not committed to time-serving the establishment. The truth is as president Rubio would disappoint on illegal immigration to the point of destroying the Republican Party and the country as we have known it.

Establishment support for Rubio will now accelerate. The conservative vote will be split between Cruz and Trump.

Rubio will win the nomination like Romney did, through attrition on the right as neither Trump nor Cruz wins enough delegates to secure the nomination just as Santorum and Gingrich and Paul did not.

In this election, Ted Cruz, the illegal immigration flip-flopper, will be Donald Trump's spoiler.

In the immortal words of Mickey Kaus, Cruz is just in it for Cruz.

Recent Republicans who won the Iowa caucus but not the presidency

Gerald Ford, 1976

GHW Bush, 1980

Bob Dole, 1988

GHW Bush, 1992

Bob Dole, 1996

Mike Huckabee, 2008

Rick Santorum, 2012

Trump's lead in first is actually up 35% in the last USAT/Suffolk poll

When you compare Trump's performance in the last USA Today/Suffolk poll to the previous one by USA Today/Suffolk in July, he's actually up by 6 points in first place, going from 17% to 23%, or up 35%.

Since the July poll, Bush, Huckabee, Paul, Christie, Santorum, Perry and Walker (who are both out now) have all together given up 22 points to Fiorina, Carson, Kasich, Graham, Rubio and Trump, on top of 11 additional points added to those front runners from fewer undecideds in September.

In the averages in yellow, note that Trump has improved his overall lead in first by 1.2 points, or almost 21%.

In the USA Today poll, Trump's lead in first has gone from +3 to +10, up 233%.

Estimated net worth of Republicans for president in 2016

Trump $10 billion

Fiorina $59 million

Carson $10 million

Bush $10 million

Santorum $5 million

Huckabee $5 million

Christie $4 million

Cruz $3.17 million

Perry $3 million (out already)

Jindal $2.7 million

Kasich $2.5 million

Paul $1.33 million

Graham $1.02 million

Rubio $443,500

Walker ($71,500), that's right, he's in the hole

Ex-Gore-Democrat Rick Perry drops out of Republican race for president for a second time

Story here.

Santorum, Jindal and Graham should drop out, too.

Does anyone know if Pataki is still in?

Who? Gilmore? What?

Update:

Counting Perry, there have been no fewer than 37 running for the Republican nomination.

Donald Trump when no one is watching

Erick Erickson, here:

There is one more thing I want you to know about Donald Trump. I’ve met him and interviewed him before. When the camera was not on and the interview was not going, he was not The Donald. He was a guy who cared deeply for his staff and the people who merely walked in the front door of his building. I want you to know that the Donald Trump I’ve seen in private is not the Donald Trump you see on stage because I think we are not going to see that Trump. It’s our loss and it will be his own loss. The person, a separate entity from the personality, is a good man.

The reason I don’t much care for Rick Santorum is that I’ve seen him, off camera and behind the scenes when no one was supposed to be watching, behave like a spoiled and entitled rich kid snapping at people in a lower position than himself when he did not need to. It’s also why I have a soft spot for Trump. From the same vantage point, I’ve seen him behave kindly to people far lower on the rung of life than him when he did not have to. Character when the camera isn’t rolling counts in my book.

Libertarian disunity on display in massive field aspiring to 2016 GOP nomination

14 GOP aspirants to date

Liberals have one serious candidate and a few other aspirants defining their side, but Republicans have twice as many with no clear front runner. This is because Republicanism is now overcome by a libertarianism which by definition is unable to agree about much of anything. It is a shrill and brittle ideology of "freedom from" instead of a more modest philosophical meditation about "freedom for". The latter recognizes that freedom is not an absolute, and is what conservatism is all about, but today you'll be hard-pressed to find anyone talking about that in the Republican Party, much less anywhere else.

7 Democrat aspirants to date

Rick Santorum is right: Conservatism is about the family, and libertarianism isn't about enough

Blue Collar Conservatives, reviewed here:

A blithe attitude about economic disruption and the decline of traditional industries goes along with what Santorum sees as a philosophical overemphasis on individualism. Conservatives, he argues, have neglected an important strand of political thought in which the family is the fundamental unit of the polis.

“The basic unit of the society is the family,” he writes, not “the individual.” Liberty in America shouldn’t mean just “freedom from” coercion, he argues, but “freedom for” — for Americans to do the right thing, to choose the virtuous and Godly course. That, he explains, is the properly understood meaning of the right to “pursuit of happiness.” (He takes this up in American Patriots, his recent book of exempla from the Revolutionary period divided into defenders of life, defenders of liberty, and defenders of “the pursuit of happiness,” i.e., virtue.)

Santorum explicitly blames libertarians for the rise of individualism, but it’s hard not to feel as if he’s taking issue with most of his party. ...

"Other" Beats Jeb Bush, Sarah Palin, Chris Christie, Rick Perry, Mike Huckabee, Paul Ryan, Bobby Jindal, Donald Trump and Rick Santorum In Drudge Poll During CPAC

The fight is between Ted Cruz and Rand Paul among the junkies.

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker did not appear this year at CPAC, wisely having something else to do, like getting reelected in Wisconsin this year.

Flashback To January 2012: ObamaCare's "Not Worth Getting Angry About"

Santorum said, “Just so I understand this, in Massachusetts, everybody is mandated as a condition of breathing in Massachusetts, to buy health insurance, and if you don’t, and if you don’t, you have to pay a fine.”

Moments later, as the discussion over Romneycare and Obamacare continued, Romney rebuked Santorum, saying, “First of all, it's not worth getting angry about.”

Jim DeMint And Rick Santorum Endorse Todd Akin

ABCNews reports here.

Now they support him, after the deadline passed for Akin to quit and after Akin had to go it alone for over a month against Romney and the entire Republican establishment telling him to "git out".

Spineless cowards.

Romney Is Blowing It On ObamaCare, And With It Blowing The Election

So should warn The Weekly Standard here, which thinks Romney still has time to fix this (hope springs eternal), but he doesn't:

[I]ndependents now oppose repeal by a margin of 9 percentage points (52 to 43 percent). By a 7-point margin they now think Obamacare is good, rather than bad, for the country. That's a 28-point swing on repeal, and a 34-point swing on whether Obamacare would be good or bad for the country, in just two months—among the voting block that will likely decide this election.

Rep. Michele Bachmann tried to warn Republicans during the primaries that repeal of ObamaCare was the sine qua non in this election, but the Republicans didn't listen. They picked the worst candidate on the issue, mostly because they didn't really have a convincing candidate on the most important issue, or on any issue.

The Republican Party is devoid of conservatives with gravitas on ObamaCare, or on anything else for that matter. In point of fact, the The Republican Party is devoid of conservatives.

Thanks Greatest Generation! Thanks Heritage Foundation! Thanks Ann Coulter! Thanks Sean Hannity! Thanks R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr! Thanks Fox! Thanks Savage Nation! Thanks RNC! Thanks Wall Street Journal! Thanks Drudge! Thanks Newt! Thanks Ronald Reagan!

Thanks to you all for whom Party comes before principle.

You've all done a wonderful job! How can we ever thank you enough for Thomas E. Dewey redivivus?

Moments later, as the discussion over Romneycare and Obamacare continued, Romney rebuked Santorum, saying, “First of all, it's not worth getting angry about.” 

Rasmussen Polling Also Shows Florida As A Must-Win For Romney

Based on Rasmussen's electoral college map tonight, Gov. Mitt Romney must win Florida to prevail against Obama.

Rasmussen shows Obama presently with 247 and Romney with 206 electoral college votes, and just six states in toss-up status (unlike RCP's ten in toss-up status): Colorado (9), Iowa (6), Wisconsin (10), Ohio (18), Virginia (13) and Florida (29).

My hunch is Obama figures Iowa is key to himself because he's counting on heavily union-dominated Ohio going his way, but Obama is so far making an effort not to telegraph this fact. Together those two toss-ups put him at 271, just enough to win. That's why he's spending so much time in Iowa after the pick of the 42 year old Rep. Paul Ryan by Romney, and why Byron York is fixated on Iowa in a recent column, but for the wrong reason. Iowa is more winnable for Obama than it is for Romney. In other words, Obama is theoretically right now conceding in a worst case scenario Florida, Virginia, Wisconsin and Colorado to Romney, which together give Romney only 267, not enough to win, because he believes he can win in Iowa and Ohio.

A Romney loss in Florida and an unlikely sweep of all the rest of these Rasmussen toss-ups means Romney still loses with 262.

Romney must prevail in Florida to win, if Rasmussen's map is correct. That's why Romney has focused on Florida right out of the box in sending Rep. Paul Ryan to Florida to appear there with his mother, reassuring the seniors on Medicare.

This election is going to be about the economy in general, but spending for Medicare is the tip of the Republican spear, while the president parries with appeals to the youth vote, which in Iowa turns out second only to Minnesota. For a state Romney at one time early decided not to contest in the primaries, Sen. Rick Santorum's narrow victory there identified Iowa to Obama as a state vulnerable for a candidate Romney.

The Des Moines Register reports here on five visits to Iowa by Obama in recent days:

The sitting president of the United States is coming back to Iowa next week to do some more campaigning, on the heels of a super-sized three-day visit to the state last week.

Obama is spending so much time in such an insignificant place because of the electoral math somewhere else, combined with the probability of winning Iowa's youth vote.