US Elections

The eight nuttiest moments in Rick Santorum's Republican convention address

By Jonathan Bradley in Sydney, Australia

29 August 2012

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Has Rick Santorum got crazier or did we just forget while he was out of the spotlight how nutty he could be? His speech today at the Republican National Convention was stunningly awful: a series of mixed metaphors and non-sequiturs. Forget bad policy; this was bad oratory. How bad?

I'm glad you asked.

1. At age seven, my dad came to Johnstown, Pennsylvania from the mountains of northern Italy, on a ship named Providence. How providential that one day his son would announce for president just down the road from the deep mines where his father — my grandfather — mined coal ’til he was 72 years old.

Actually, I think this was the result of planning. Santorum didn't announce his presidency at a random site and only later realise it was where his grandpa performed hard labour as a senior citizen, right?

2. Graduate from high school, work hard, and get married before you have children and the chance you will ever be in poverty is just two percent. Yet if you don’t do these three things you’re 38 times more likely to end up in poverty!

Science! He measured it with a hardworkometer!

3. We understand many Americans don’t succeed because the family that should be there to guide them, and serve as the first rung on the ladder of success, isn’t there or is badly broken ... A solid education should be the second rung on the ladder to success, but the system is failing ... It’s a sturdy ladder to success that is built with healthy families, education and hard work.

A ladder built out of families. Except the second rung is made of education.

4. From lowering taxes to reforming social programs, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are dedicated to restoring the home where married moms and dads are pillars of strong communities raising good citizens.

I've got a pretty good imagination, but I'm not sure how lowering taxes will restore homes with married moms and dads. Does Rick Santorum think America has a family tax?

5. The fact is that marriage is disappearing in places where government dependency is highest.

Jonathan Bernstein: I assume that's very old women, right? If only they didn't get SS/Medicare...

6. And this summer [Obama] showed us once again he believes in government handouts and dependency by waiving the work requirement for welfare.

Yeah, this isn't true. Republicans know it isn't true. They keep saying it anyway.

7. America is still the greatest country in the world – and with God’s help and good leadership we can restore the American Dream. Why? I held its hand. I shook the hand of the American Dream. And it has a strong grip.

The American Dream has a hand? Is it the hand used to climb that ladder made out of families?

8. I thank God that America still has one party that reaches out their hands in love to lift up all of God’s children — born and unborn — and says that each of us has dignity and all of us have the right to live the American Dream.

I've got nothing snarky to say about this. It's gross that Rick Santorum is exploiting his daughter as part of his quest to try to control what women can do with their own bodies.

Tags: Republican National Convention, Republican Party, Rick Santorum

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