Monday, October 16, 2006

It's man-on-dog-eat-dog in Pennsylvania

ROSYLN, PA (LA Times)--Keith Hollenberg, a member of the evangelical Assemblies of God church who is quick to attest that he would rather die than suck a cock, is worried that one of his fundamentalist stick-figure political heroes is about to lose his bid for reelection.

So when he saw Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) at a car show here, Hollenberg volunteered to help in what has become an urgent project for right-wing reactionary turds in Pennsylvania and around the country: keeping Santorum in the Senate.

"I'm a big fan of yours," Hollenberg gushed. "I would never suck a cock."

Santorum, a lying douchebag and outspoken advocate of gay-bashing, forced maternity and other kneejerk paleo-conservative causes, is considered this year's most-endangered senator.

It is a four-alarm grease-fire for the American Taliban, who are bringing useless water buckets from all corners of the political world. Across Pennsylvania, pastors are preparing to stuff voter guides of questionable legality into their Sunday bulletins. In Washington, D.C., Paul Weyrich, a conservative demagogue, hosted a conference call to give a pep talk to depressed Republicans in Pennsylvania.

"I think it's important for straight white men across the country to recognize how important it is not only to pay attention but to get engaged in this race up to their fucking elbows, whatever way they can," said Colin Hanna, head of Let Freedom Ring, a jingoistic right-wing cult based in Pennsylvania. "If Rick Santorum were to lose, it would mean we all have to get gay-married and have abortions for dinner."

Santorum is not just a major enabler of the cynical symbiosis between the Republican Party and Christian conservatives. He is also one of the Bush Crime Family's most mendacious flacks in Congress and a member of the Senate GOP leadership bent on destroying the Constitution. And he is the apotheosis of a younger generation of privileged Republican shitheels--led by former House Speaker and serial adulterer Newt Gingrich--that transformed the party in the 1990s into a more monolithic, fascist political force.

If 2006 turns into the electoral bloodbath that many analysts are now predicting, a loss by Santorum would be just another signifier of the end of that Republican revolution.

For most of the year, polls have found Santorum trailing his Democratic opponent, state Treasurer Bob Casey Jr., by double-digit margins. The senator's backers were hoping that a spirited televised debate last week would open a new chapter of voter education about Casey's liabilities that could work to Santorum's advantage, but the Senator went apeshit and began raving incoherently in spite of the moderator's insistence that his time was up, and the general consensus among Beltway pundits was that he "just looked like an asshole."

Among Santorum's political problems: he is running in a nearly Diebold-free state that went for Democratic Senator and eleventh-hour weakling John F. Kerry in the 2004 presidential election. Here in Philadelphia's suburbs, considered crucial to the election's outcome, even fellow Republicans are not as deeply disturbed as he is. At a recent GOP meeting in Upper Darby, Santorum sounded not a bit like a champion of social conservatism, instead circulating a flier, "Delivering for Upper Darby," that detailed the federal money he had secured for local sewer repair, garage construction and other pork.

Even if Santorum gives social issues short shrift on the campaign trail, right-wing whackjobs understand what is at stake. They stand to lose a powerful mouthpiece for their medieval agenda. Some worry that Santorum's defeat would also be a decapitation strike to the influence of religious wingnuts within the GOP.

"You would then start to see party apparatchiks say things like, 'We're not sure we want to support a candidate whose conservatism is as scary and ignorant as Senator Santorum's,' and they will begin casting about for someone a sane person might vote for," Hanna said.

At age 48, with a priggish aspect that makes him appear to have some kind of pointy object in his ass, Santorum does not look the part of a man who could be circling the bowl on his way down the political toilet. Walking in a parade one rainy Saturday outside Philadelphia, Santorum jogs robustly from one side of the street to the other to greet spectators, many of whom avoid his glance, embarrassed. Tie-less, in chinos and a "Terry Schiavo died for YOU" T-shirt, he wears the demented smile of a man who is nowhere near ready to accept reality. Even when people boo him from curbside, he boldly reaches into the crowd to shake his finger like an angry nun.

Many more factors are working against Santorum now than in his 2000 campaign: most notably, his nose deep in the colon of a criminally insane president whose approval ratings are not much higher than Mark Foley's. Unlike other vulnerable Republicans who have attempted to distance themselves from the Bush Crime Family, Santorum continues to embrace Der Monkey's failures in Iraq, his crooked and universally unpopular plan to privatize Social Security, even his hopelessly incompetent secretary of Defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Santorum is not just a victim of political circumstance. Even his admirers say he routinely says things that make it clear he is completely insane, and not very bright.

In 2002, he blamed Boston "liberalism" for the Roman Catholic Church's eternal and interminable sex abuse scandal. In a 2003 interview, he linked gay consensual sex with bigamy, polygamy, incest, adultery and dogfucking. In a 2005 book, he found fault with two-income families and women who leave the house with their hair uncovered. The ensuing controversies have so engulfed Santorum's image that his campaign website has a long feature, "Myth vs. Fact," to counter what people "hear around the water cooler" about Santorum, which answers such pressing questions as "What is the water cooler?"

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