By Wayne Allyn Root
You have to put those Rick Santorum pills back into your medicine cabinet. Santorum is bad medicine. Someone wrote the GOP the wrong prescription. And taking the wrong medicine can kill you.
Rick Santorum is the wrong guy, at the wrong place, at the wrong time. He reminds voters- especially female and independent voters- of everything they hated about George W. Bush. And that’s saying a lot. Bush did so much damage to the GOP brand, he almost destroyed the party forever. It was George Bush who brought us Barack Obama. Few Americans voted for Obama, they just voted for ABB (Anyone But Bush).
Now the GOP has a golden opportunity. Obama has wrecked the U.S. economy from sea to shining sea. He has turned off voters by the millions. By historical standards, based on the current disastrous economic and unemployment numbers, Obama is virtually unelectable. Credit Obama with one thing- he is a magician. He has made voters forget Bush in only three years. That’s a pretty darn amazing trick. So Obama’s next job should be as a Vegas lounge act, but he’s certainly facing long odds for re-election to the White House.
The proof is in the polls this week. This has been perhaps the worst month for the GOP in modern political history. The message is no longer jobs, rising gas prices, chronic long-term unemployment, or crumbling real estate. The message is about women’s health, the right to use contraception, Planned Parenthood funding, Rush Limbaugh’s use of a crude term to describe a young female law student, and whether Republicans like sex, or hate women. It just doesn’t get any worse than this. And in every poll this week, Mitt Romney is leading President Obama.
The GOP has been handed a miracle. His name is Barack Obama. It’s almost impossible to lose to Obama. Think of his actions in the past month. He’s bribed women with free contraception. He’s bribed Hispanics by hinting he’ll give amnesty to illegal aliens in his second term. He’s bribed homeowners with a $25 billion bank settlement aimed at those who don’t pay their mortgages. He’s bribed environmentalists by cancelling the Keystone Pipeline. He hands out gifts like he’s Santa Claus.
And yet he’s still losing to Mitt Romney. You know, the stiff guy. The heartless “vulture capitalist.” The guy that his own GOP opponents use as a Piñata. After all that bribery. After all the harsh attacks on Romney…by Republicans. After all the stupid things said by Republican Presidential candidates and conservative talk show hosts. After all that, Romney is leading. That’s called a gift from God.
All Mitt has to do to insure victory is avoid talking about his wife’s two Cadillacs, his $250 million fortune, his money in the Cayman Islands, and his dog on the roof of the family car. Shut up and you take back the White House. You’d think conservatives would be rejoicing. Licking their lips. They’ve found a new Gipper, as handsome as a movie star, with the perfect family, and a 20% Reagan-like across the board tax cut. It’s time to party like it’s 1980 again.
Enter Rick Santorum. It appears that conservatives and Christians have decided to self-destruct. By choosing Santorum, GOP voters are trying desperately to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. They must desperately want four more years of Obama and the Democrat Party. You know, that socialist organization that stands for massive taxes, spending, entitlement and debt, income redistribution, sky high taxes, sky high electric bills, free healthcare of all (at a cost of trillions), and a country based on social justice and affirmative action. Oh, and don’t forget amnesty for illegal immigrants and a union in every workplace. Lovely agenda.
Looking at that agenda, you’d think winning might just be important to someone other than Charlie Sheen. But the conservative and Christian base just can’t get away from Rick Santorum. They want to party like it’s 1875. They want to turn the clock back to Victorian America, Prohibition, banning of sin, and chastity belts.
Here is what common sense should tell conservatives. The Tea Party chose to purposely stay away from social issues. They literally banned talk of anything besides economics. They chose to promote smaller government, lower taxes, less spending, fewer entitlements and lower debt, not the right to contraception. Amazing how that works! It’s like magic. Embrace issues that a majority of Americans believe in, and presto — you win elections. Sure enough by avoiding divisive and unpopular social issues, the Tea Party led the GOP to the biggest landslide victory in modern political history in 2010.
Understanding that, why would you choose to change the topic to social issues? To contraception? To calling women who have sex “sluts?” To banning pornography in a nation that obviously watches it in record numbers? That was Rick Santorum’s latest gem only days ago. As President he says he will ban porn- from the bedroom to your hotel room. Now that should really turn on voters. The country has no jobs and Santorum wants to change the topic to banning personal behavior in your bedroom. “Ban the porn, because I stand for smaller government.” Now that’s a rallying cry for conservatives. Marching in lock step to mass suicide.
Think of it this way folks. America is like a bankrupt company, heavily in debt, bleeding jobs, desperately in need of a turnaround. What America needs is a businessman, not a community organizer. And not a Pope either.
What America needs is someone who understands how to turnaround a failed company. How to create jobs. And yes, even how to fire people doing a bad job (think millions of government employees employed in useless jobs, think poorly performing teachers). We need someone who knows how to slash a budget, in order to save the company (or in this case, the country).
To choose Rick Santorum is self-destructive. It’s painful to watch. It’s political suicide. My advice as an objective outsider to Republicans — go back to the medicine cabinet, take those 100 pills out of your hand, put them back in the bottle, and put the bottle back. Charlie Sheen was right. It’s time for the GOP to choose WINNING.
Wayne Allyn Root is a former Libertarian Vice Presidential nominee. He now serves as Chairman of the Libertarian National Congressional Committee. He is the best-selling author of “The Conscience of a Libertarian: Empowering the Citizen Revolution with God, Guns, Gold & Tax Cuts.” His web site: www.ROOTforAmerica.com
