Now that his Presidential campaign is over, I'm trying to pin down exactly what it was that I liked the least about Rick Santorum.
I know, I know. So many possibilities to choose from.
Personally, I think that sweater vests are a crime against Nature. If God had wanted us to garb our torso and our arms differently, then God would not have invented the seam. It was God who invented the seam, right?
You will note that nowhere in the Bible are sweater vests mentioned. And all those Biblical people were fully clothed, at least after Genesis Chapter 3, Verse 7 ("They realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.")
I definitely didn't like Rick Santorum's sweater vests. I think that sweater vests looked better on Herbert Hoover. But are his sweater vests the thing that I liked the least about Rick Santorum? I would have to say no.
I wasn't all upset with Santorum's positions on economic issues, because I'm not sure whether he had any. What was the Santorum jobs program? I don't know. What was the Santorum tax proposal? I have no idea. I assume that if he wanted me to know, then he would have told me.
As for his positions on so-called "social" issues, I can't think of a single one where Rick Santorum and I agreed. But when referring to a Republican Presidential candidate, I'm sort of used to that. I could say the same thing about Rick Perry, or Herman Cain, or Michele Bachmann. So I can't really say that this was the thing that bothered me most about Rick Santorum specifically.
I certainly was put off by the two common features of virtually everything Rick Santorum said: (1) he was sure that he was right; and (2) he was wrong. Not wrong in the Concord, Massachusetts/Concord, New Hampshire; John Wayne/John Wayne Gacy sense of being wrong, but along the lines of "that boy is just wrong in the head." Listen to some of the stuff that Rick Santorum said, just in the last few months:
"One of the things that I will talk about, that no President has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception."
"President Obama wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob!"
"I had the opportunity to read [JFK's famous speech on the separation of church and state] and I almost threw up."
"The American Left [] hates Christendom."
"A third of all the young people in America are not in America today because of abortion."
"I don't care what the unemployment rate's going to be. Doesn't matter to me."
"If you're not happy unless you're married to five other people, is that OK?"
In Santorum's case, you sort of felt (as Joni Mitchell once said) that Santorum wouldn't ride on a double-decker bus unless there were a driver on the top. And the way that he said all of that . . . if Rick Santorum thought that he were truly infallible, then maybe he should have run for a different elective office: Pope.
But that is not what I liked the least about Rick Santorum. What I liked least about him is this: He was in Congress for 18 years, and as far as I can tell, he never accomplished anything. Think about it. When did you ever hear Rick Santorum say, "I am very proud of the fact that I [fill in the blank]"? Rick Santorum never did nothing for nobody.
That's pathetic.
I'm tired of electing people who want to be something. I want to elect people who want to do something. And if you ain't done nothing for almost two decades straight, then you just ain't the right person for the job.
Even a sweater with sleeves wouldn't cover that up.
Courage,
Alan Grayson