Category: Rick Santorum

Santorum: The Fight and the Fighter

Posted on Comments

TROY, Michigan
Last night, when I neared the Colonial Valley Suites in Davison, I immediately realized a huge crowd had turned out for Rick Santorum’s event at the Crystal Hall. Cars were parked alongside the road. Pulling over to park the rented Toyota by the roadside, I had to walk a few hundred yards to reach the place, and went in through a side door.

Inside, police on security duty looked at me dubiously, but I spotted a familiar face — one of Santorum’s Michigan campaign workers — and said, “Howdy.” He recognized me and said hello, indicating to the cops that I was OK, thus avoiding the whole show-me-your-credentials hassle involved in covering a presidential campaign once it gets heavy-duty.

Gosh, I miss Iowa. Back in the summer days leading up to the Ames Straw Poll, when the media were ignoring Rick Santorum’s campaign, it was possible to just show up and hang out with the candidate. Now a cordon of uniformed police and plainclothes guys with wires in their ears separates him from the pressing throng of humanity: Hundreds of supporters hoping to get an autograph and a handshake, while scores of media — photographers, TV camera crews, reporters — try to wedge their way through and get a picture or shout questions.

“Pack journalism” has never appealed to me. Lacking the herd instinct, I always want to go somewhere and find some angle to cover that everybody else is ignoring. So when the former underdog zooms up to become a contender, I’m uncomfortable with the feeling that I’m just another piranha in the media feeding frenzy.

It’s kind of demoralizing, in a way, despite knowing that I was way ahead of the pack, pushing the “Santorum Express” in early December, when the polls showed him in sixth place in Iowa, and the only causes for hope were an endorsement by Pastor Cary Gordon, unexpected praise from Sarah Palin and an ominous earthquake in Vanuatu. I remember our phone interview while Santorum was on a layover in the Fort Worth airport, having taken the cheapest avaiable flight from Iowa to D.C.

Recalling the unheralded underdog’s long fight against impossible odds, and knowing that almost none of the other reporters following Santorum around now were giving him any credence back then, I resent having to jostle elbow-to-elbow with these Johnny-come-lately media types, just to get in a question or shoot a photo. As I say, it feels rather demoralizing.

My bruised feelings, of course, fade to insignificance when I imagine what it must feel like to be Santorum, the hardest-working candidate in the 2012 race, still running uphill against Mister Inevitable, Mitt Romney. It’s got to be difficult to keep focused on the message, while the media keep trying to write you off — again! — and most of the coverage you get is a predictable repetition of a familiar meme: “Another Shocking Controversy!”

Maybe that’s why I relate to Santorum: He keeps getting unfairly dissed, but when he dares to mention this fact, the people who dissed him then turn around and accuse him of “whining.”

OK, so what to do about it? To quote Al Davis, “Just win, baby.” Bill Kristol thinks Santorum might be able to do it:

 I’m sure the intensity is with Santorum, and my guess is the momentum is with him as well.

While I hesitate to believe in miracles, we have to keep in mind that Rick’s got the Dominican Sisters of Mary on his side. If, despite all the media abuse he’s taken the past two weeks, Santorum manages to pull off an upset Tuesday here in Michigan, his critics will be enraged and humiliated — and so Santorum just keeps campaigning as hard as he can.

But Lord, it’s gotta be tough to keep going.

Sunday, while I was driving up I-75 on my way to the event in Davison, I switched on the local classic rock station and heard a Romney ad that compared Santorum to “liberal Carl Levin.” Imagine what it feels like to be Rick Santorum, a lifelong conservative, and to know that this is what your more moderate opponent is saying about you.

Santorum’s own ads, as well as his campaign mailings, are playing off Romney’s attacks while continuing to present a positive message:

“Rick Santorum: He’s fighting for us.” Will this work? It”s hard to tell, and polls are always a lagging indicator, but it’s got to be encouraging to Santorum when he gets a reception like the one that greeted him when he was introduced Sunday in Davison:

You’ll notice I panned the camera twice over the crowd, to try to give you a sense of the size of the attendance. Some reports had the crowd size at 300, but I estimated 400. Either way, they were fired up, and the candidate himself was pretty fired up, too. This is from my American Spectator column today:

The attacks are a ridiculous distortion of Santorum’s record. During his years in Congress, Santorum amassed an admirable record as a fiscal conservative and, as recently detailed by Jeffrey Anderson and Andy Wickersham in the Weekly Standard , had one of the highest ratings from the National Taxpayers Union. Addressing the accusations of liberalism from Romney on the stump, Santorum sometimes seems astonished that anyone would believe such charges – especially considering the source.
“In 1994, [Romney] ran to the left of Ted Kennedy, and if you have any doubt, go look at the last debate between the two them – it’s hard to tell them apart,” Santorum told the audience Sunday in Davison, contrasting Romney’s failed Senate bid with his own successful upset victory that year over Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. Harris Wofford.  “Now for someone to run, in a critical election year – 1994, the year of the revolution, the Contract With America – who says, ‘no I won’t be a Reagan Republican, not I don’t support the Contract With America, I’m not a conservative,’ to now go and run ads here in the state of Michigan, and say, ‘Oh, Rick Santorum, because he voted for this bill or that bill’ — out of the 4,000 votes that I cast in the United States Senate — ‘is not a conservative,’ just doesn’t hold water.“ . . .

Please read the whole thing.

Today I’m heading to Lansing to see Rick Santorum’s 3 p.m. rally there, then returning via Royal Oak to catch up with Mitt Romney’s campaign at a 6:45 event. Santorum’s primary night event Tuesday is in Lansing, and then on Wednesday I’ll be heading back to Ohio to begin my coverage of the campaign leading up to Super Tuesday, March 6.

Once again, I’ve fallen so far behind on my thank-you e-mails I know I’ll never catch up, but thanks to all the people who have contributed to the Shoe Leather Fund the past week to keep me on the road: Jeff in Walla Walla, Mike in El Segundo, Dianna in San Jose, Joseph in Cumming, Jill in Las Vegas, Will in Wimberley, Stephen in Plano, William in Dallas, Gregory in Everett, Brian in Maryland, Michael in North Carolina, Karen in Jamesville and Mike in New Hampshire.

It takes a couple of days for money from the tip jar to clear the bank, so your contribution today — $10,  $20, $50 — will provide money for me to travel Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Thanks in advance for your support.

 





 

PREVIOUSLY:


Nuns for Santorum

Posted on Comments

Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist pose for a photo with
Rick Santorum in Lincoln Park, Michigan, Friday, Feb. 24, 2012

TROY, Michigan
It’s gonna be kind of hard for Mitt Romney to compete with Rick Santorum in terms of his straight-out appeal to Catholic voters in Michigan. At last night’s Lenten fish fry at a Catholic church in Walled Lake, Santorum began by saying, “I love the smell of fish on a Friday night.” Here’s my video showing the kind of rock-star reception Santorum got from the crowd there:

The contrast was obvious to Paul Egan of the Detroit Free Press:

A long line of people waited to get inside more than an hour before Santorum was scheduled to visit in Walled Lake, in western Oakland County.
The fish fry organized by the St. William Dads’ Club in a Roman Catholic parish was a venue that contrasted sharply with cavernous Ford Field, where former Massachusetts governor and Michigan native Mitt Romney spoke in Detroit today with tens of thousands of seats to spare.
Santorum, a Catholic, praised the religious tradition of abstaining from eating meat on a Friday, especially during the holy season of Lent.
“I love the smell of fish on a Friday,” Santorum said when he entered the gym to loud applause.
“The only thing I request is when you take that picture, put it up on your Facebook page.”

Santorum was swarmed by well-wishers at Walled Lake, but drew a smaller crowd at the Knights of Columbus hall in Lincoln Park, where some locals in attendance said they had only learned three hours before the event that Santorum would be there. Among those in attendance in Lincoln Park, however, were 12 members of the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist in full habit — kind of a natural photo-op for the media in attendance:

Joe Klein of Time magazine interviews the sisters. I’ve got audio of an interview with Sister Maria, who is from the Bronx, N.Y., and was quite outspoken in her support for Santorum. But I don’t have time to transcribe that interview now, because Santorum is speaking this morning at the Americans for Prosperity forum here in Troy.

Watching Fox News this morning, I haven’t seen any coverage of Rick Santorum’s campaign in Michigan. So I guess the question must now be asked, “Why does Rupert Murdoch hate nuns?”

PREVIOUSLY:


Fear and Loathing in Romneyland

Posted on Comments

Herman Cain tour bus at the American Polish Cultural Center
in Troy, Michigan, Thursday, Feb. 23, 2012

WASHINGTON, Michigan
Shortly after I arrived at Rick Santorum’s Michigan state headquarters in Troy yesterday evening, I was talking to one of his campaign workers, Joe Cella, when a volunteer walked in and said, “Hey, Herman Cain’s doing a thing with Pete Hoekstra tonight at the Polish center. We’re going to go do a lit drop.”

(“Lit drop” = passing out leaflets, etc.)

The mention of Herman Cain’s name got my attention. I inquired when and where this event would be. The American Polish Cultural Center, 2975 East Maple Road, 7 p.m. And so my plans — to the extent that I actually ever have anything worthy of being called “plans” — were instantly changed.

Before I left my sister-in-law’s house in Johnstown, Ohio, Thursday afternoon, I’d obtained three crucial bits of information:

  1. The address of Mitt Romney’s Michigan state headquarters, 33300 Five Mile Road in Livonia.
  2. The address of Rick Santorum’s Michigan state headquarters, 700 E. Big Beaver Road in Troy.
  3. The phone number of Dennis Pedrie, a senior partner in Ali Akbar‘s political consulting firm.

Dennis lives in Michigan and I’d asked Ali to see if Dennis could help find me a sofa to crash on during my trip here. More on that later. My first objective was to reach Romney HQ, and I Tweeted my itinerary as I traveled north:

  • 3:06 p.m.: On the road to Michigan, doing 70 in a 55 mph zone in OH
  • 3:27 p.m.: Just crossed Sandusky River near Bucyrus, OH
  • 4:08 p.m.: Approaching Bowling Green OH
  • 4:27 p.m.: Hello, Toledo. Goodbye, Toledo.
  • 4:54 p.m.: Lake Erie to my right? I must be in Michigan now.

At least, I think it was Lake Erie. My knowledge of Midwestern geography is limited. You’ve seen one Great Lake, you’ve seen ’em all.

Finally, I pulled up in front of the Civic Center Office Plaza in downtown Livonia, site of Romney’s Michigan HQ and, as I was walking toward the entrance, two guys came walking out, each carrying stacks of Romney yard signs. “Is the office still open?” I asked, because it was now after 5 p.m. Yeah, they said, go on in.

The Romney office is on the second floor, and I walked right in. On the wall beside the entrance, there were a number of what looked like children’s drawings — as if a junior high school had a “Draw a Mitt Romney Campaign Poster” contest — and in the foyer was a table with pamphlets, bumper stickers, etc. Turning the corner, I beheld the phone-bank room, with six or seven volunteers working the phones.

A lady at one of the back tables spotted me and came forward to greet me. Just as I shook her hand and started to introduce myself, however, my cell phone began ringing in the pocket of my overcoat.

“Excuse me,” I said to the lady, and looked at the phone to see who was calling: Mike Rogers of Granite Grok.

“I need to take this call,” I told the Romney volunteer lady, and retreated to the foyer area to talk to Mike. He was calling from an airport, about to board a flight back to New Hampshire, and said he’d been reading my campaign-trail blogging. As I was talking to him, however, a couple of young guys came out of a back office in the Romney headquarters, and I overheard one of them mutter the phrase “Santorum blogger.”

Busted.

By the time I got off the phone with Mike, one of the young Romney guys was standing there in a polite-but-serious posture. The dude looked like he might have played linebacker in high school. A brief conversation ensued, which I summarized on Twitter:

5:39 p.m.: Folks at Romney Michigan HQ recognize me, invite me to leave. Must be the hat.

Continue reading Fear and Loathing in Romneyland →

New TV Ad Quotes Mitt Romney

Posted on Comments

This will probably be denounced as an “unfair attack,” given that Romney’s entire campaign has been about avoiding his own record:

In a press release, Rick Santorum campaign spokesman Hogan Gidley said: “Since Mitt Romney refuses to talk about his own liberal record, we figured we’d show people what Mitt Romney says about Mitt Romney. We wanted to give Governor Romney’s long-held positions and statements an opportunity to be heard.”

Notice that when I quote a press release, I tell you I’m quoting a press release? That’s arguably more honest than booking Chris Christie onto Fox & Friends to spin for Romney the day after a debate and pretending that it was just a coincidence.

It would behoove those who talk about liberal media bias, and who boast of being “Fair and Balanced,” occasionally to acknowledge their own biases. If Fox News executives want to change the name of their morning show to Romney & Friends, OK. But don’t pretend that your biased coverage isn’t biased.

And don’t imagine we’re too stupid to notice what you’re doing.

Erick Erickson, Santorum Consultant?

Posted on Comments

JOHNSTOWN, Ohio
In the preceding post, I described Erick Erickson as hating Rick Santorum “with the heat of ten thousand suns,” which evidently prompted commenters to call my attention to Erickson’s post-debate analysis at Red State:

It was the last debate. Newt Gingrich won it.
He was the only candidate who repeatedly steered the questions toward Barack Obama. He was the only candidate who dared point out that the media barely touched Obama’s infanticide support as an Illinois State Senator. He returned to the role of elder statesman.
The crowd leaned to Mitt Romney. It was probably inevitable. Mesa, AZ is the second largest concentration of Mormons in America and the State Republican Party handled getting the seats filled. It threw Rick Santorum off his game. The crowd booed Santorum taking on Romneycare’s individual mandate.
Santorum did not shine. He came in, it seemed, prepared to be beaten up. He was off his game. In the second half of the debate he did better. But the beginning was stumbling, bumbling, angry, and in the weeds. One thing he did very, very well is steer the contraception issue to families.
If Santorum can consistently steer this issue back to stable families, he has an issue that will win over independent voters. Note to the Santorum campaign: you will actually win the debate even in the general election if you focus your social values critique on the integrity of the American nuclear family.

To quote P.J. O’Rourke: “What the f–k? What the f–king f–k, huh?”

Certainly I cannot be the only conservative who recalls how Erickson spent the final week before the Iowa caucuses furiously attacking Santorum in what was, so far as I could figure, a final desperate attempt to salvage hope for a Rick Perry comeback. And yet now Erickson deems it his prerogative to offer strategic “messaging” advice to the Santorum campaign?

This is not to say that Erickson’s advice is wrong, of course. But this kind of sadistic “frenemies” stuff — Erickson relentlessly pounding on Santorum for months and then expecting Santorum to heed his advice — just boggles my mind. Why does Erickson, who has made it abundantly clear that he would rather have Romney than Santorum as the GOP nominee, make this show of pretending to want to help Santorum?

Alternate explanatory theories come to mind, but I need to get on the road to Michigan, and don’t have time to delve into it now. Let the commenters attempt to explain this weirdness.

UPDATE: Bill Quick offers his own assessment of the debate, acknowledging his pro-Gingrich bias and, hey, NTTAWWT. It was a good night for Newt, but the problem is that Newt is now down so low that a comeback appears impossible for him. (Was I the only one who noticed that Gingrich refrained from attacking Mitt last night? Is anyone else even slightly curious about that oddity?)

Santorum supporter Ed Morrissey summarizes his reaction:

Unfortunately Santorum seemed almost overprepared for the fight. Instead of providing a brief response and refocusing attention on current issues like the economy, Santorum kept explaining, and explaining, and explaining, and added an apology or two along the way. There is an axiom in politics: Explaining is not winning. Save the explanations for your web page, not for debates. Santorum came across as measured, honest, and open, but ended up sounding defensive almost all night long. . . .
Does this debate move the needle for anyone? I doubt it. Gingrich had a very good debate but not a real gamechanger, and his position in the polling has dropped so low nearly everywhere that he’d practically need the other three men on stage to declare themselves Kennedy Democrats in order to get out of that hole. Santorum may have rattled the confidence of some new supporters and give undecideds less reason to join his column, but it wasn’t a terrible performance such as Rick Perry’s debates in September and October, and Santorum did have some good moments as well.

That generally comports with my own view. My problem in judging a debate performance is that I know I’m not neutral. Why the hell would I even watch a debate if I didn’t care who won?

Because I know I’m not neutral, I don’t trust my own subjective impressions of the event, but neither am I willing to outsource my thinking to the media. Neither the New York Times nor Fox News nor Erick Erickson is going to tell me what to think and, while I acknowledge the ability or major media institutions to influence political outcomes — i.e., by telling other people what to think — I try to keep in mind the distinction between (a) what actually happened and (b) what the major media say happened.

Perceptions have a way of becoming realities in politics, and there are times when the stimuli and and the reactions become conflated: We begin judging events by the reactions of others, rather than judging events as independent phenomena in their own right.

Nobody is paying me to tell people What It Really Means, nor am I being paid to tell politicians how to run their campaigns. In fact, I’m being paid precious little to tell anybody anything at all.

There are times when I feel like I’m just unloading my twisted brain onto the blogosphere for the amusement of the readership — maybe I should write a book, Monetize Your Insanity: Psychosis for Fun & Profit — and as long as y’all keep hitting the tip jar to keep the show on the road, that’s OK with me: “A Road Man for the Lords of Karma.”

UPDATE II: Linked at Memeorandum in connection with Byron York’s Washington Examiner column, “In Arizona, GOP debates end on low point.” Byron’s good people. I expect to see him in Michigan between now and Tuesday.

 




 

PREVIOUSLY:

 

Have the Deciders Decided? Examining the Post-Debate Examinations

Posted on Comments

JOHNSTOWN, Ohio
This morning, I woke up and switched on Fox & Friends and watched them bring on Mitt Romney’s proxy Chris Christie to lead the 8 a.m. hour. Steve Doocy’s first question to Christie — this is from memory, but close enough to an exact quote that I’ll put it inside quotation marks — was: “All the conservative blogs say Mitt Romney won and Rick Santorum had a bad night.”

Really? Of course I’m prejudiced by my pro-Santorum sentiments, but this seemed an odd way to start the morning’s schedule at Fox News, as if they were delivering the Official Message.

My general impression of last night’s debate was that Newt Gingrich had the best performance, and that Santorum escaped without any major harm. That was important, because this was the debate where Santorum could expect to be required to answer for everything “controversial” he has ever said, and he never really got cornered.

But if you watched CNN before the debate, you noticed that some of their commentators — particularly Ari Fleischer — were trying to raise expectations: Santorum needed to clearly win the debate, or else he would be judged the loser. And when it was over, Fleischer and others on CNN (including Erick Erickson, who hates Rick Santorum with the heat of ten thousand suns) were declaring Romney the winner on the basis of such calculations. (For some reason, CNN didn’t book Dana Loesch as a commentator on the Arizona debate.)

In general, it seemed to me that coverage of last night’s debate was over-hyped, that political junkies were underestimating the degree to which regular people have become jaded after 20 debates.  Here’s the lead of the New York Times article:

Mitt Romney challenged Rick Santorum’s credentials as a fiscal conservative in a fiercely combative debate on Wednesday, trying to redefine Mr. Santorum as part of the problem in Washington and regain his footing in the fight for the Republican presidential nomination.
With the Arizona and Michigan primaries only six days away, followed quickly by a dozen more contests, Mr. Romney arrived here at a critical moment of his candidacy armed with a detailed indictment of Mr. Santorum’s record in Congress. Mr. Romney sought to dismantle his rival’s claim to be the authentic conservative in the race. . . .

“Fiercely combative“? Were they watching the same debate I saw? And does this description of Romney’s political goal in the lead suggest that the reporters were in Romney’s corner?

Trying to avoid such spin can be difficult, and sometimes the spin becomes a story unto itself. At any rate, here’s my own take on it:

The debate was into the second hour, and Mitt Romney had just played the Arlen Specter card against Rick Santorum, blaming Santorum’s 2004 endorsement of his fellow Pennsylvanian for the passage of Obamacare in 2010. Santorum responded by playing the Dukakis card against Romney.
“Yes governor, you balanced the budget for four years,” Santorum told Romney during the Arizona debate televised by CNN. “You have a constitutional requirement to balance the budget for four years. No great shakes. I’m all for — I’d like to see it federally. But don’t go around bragging about something you have to do. Michael Dukakis balanced the budget for 10 years. Does that make him qualified to be president of the United States? I don’t think so.”
As highlights go, it wasn’t spectacular, but Wednesday’s debate — the 20th nationally televised meeting of Republican candidates during this long campaign — was generally lacking in highlights. There were no dramatic gaffes or stumbles, and few memorable zingers. While the commentators on CNN afterwards offered their own “what did it mean” analyses, it is unlikely that the debate changed many minds. . . .

Please read the whole thing at The American Spectator.

UPDATE: Just now watched Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard being interviewed on Fox News, discussing among other things another media-generated meme, the “brokered convention” scenario. Ironically, it was a Weekly Standard article in defense of Santorum’s record on fiscal issues that got a big shout-out from Santorum last night. Yet Hayes goes on Fox peddling the “Santorum under fire” meme?

Meanwhile, here is pro-Gingrich blogger William Jacobson’s takeaway from the Arizona debate:

No question Newt won, but no single huge moment that is likely to shift the polls dramatically (or fundamentally). Just a consistent strong performance, that’s the pretty uniform assessment from relatively neutral people I’m following on Twitter. Really bad night for Santorum, off message, harsh, just strange performance, a missed opportunity. Good night for Romney, no gaffes, mostly strong. Ron Paul was Ron Paul.

Permit me to suggest that Jacobson’s pro-Newt sentiments color his perceptions in much the way that my pro-Santorum sentiments color my own. Was Santorum “harsh”? I didn’t see that. What I saw (and anyone may check the video on this) was that Santorum smiled a lot.

It was Santorum’s wife Karen who gave him that bit of “debate coaching,” by the way. Rick’s got a nice smile and, a few months ago, his wife told him he needs to smile more often. So the idea that the smiling Santorum came off as “harsh” in last night’s debate is something I doubt the average voter perceived. But we’ll only have to wait until next Tuesday — or Super Tuesday, a week after that — to find out what average voters think.

UPDATE II: Beyond the question of who actually “won” the debate, or who wins next Tuesday’s primaries, or even who ultimately wins the GOP nomination, I am intrigued by the way such perceptions are shaped. Look at this headline:

Romney and Paul successfully call
Santorum’s conservatism into question

Is that some right-wing blogger? No, it’s Aaron Blake of the Washington Post. Who deputized Blake to determine whether the attacks on Santorum’s conservatism were successful? By what standard does a liberal journalist judge these things?

The way in which Blake speaks with the journalistic authority of a powerful media institution makes the difference between, “Let me tell you what I think,” and “Let me tell you what to think.”

Perhaps you don’t care. Perhaps you say, “Well, I hate Santorum anyway, so I don’t care if MSM reporters are promoting prejudicial opinions against him.” But as a phenomenon unto itself — the media exercising influence as “deciders” in a Republican primary — this is fascinating to watch, from the “meta” point of view.


Satan Angered by New Poll Showing Santorum Ahead 34%-18% in Wisconsin

Posted on Comments

MORGANTOWN, W.Va.
Stopped in here at McDonald’s and got online to discover that Satan’s plan to destroy America is now the top story in the country. This is why neutral objective journalist George Stephanopoulos interviewed neutral objective Mitt Romney supporter Chris Christie about the urgently relevant Satan issue today.

Stephanopoulos and Christie: What a team, huh?

Meanwhile, a new poll conducted by Marquette University shows Republican voters in Wisconsin are clearly anti-Satan:

Rick Santorum ………… 34%
Mitt Romney …………… 18%
Ron Paul ………………… 17%
Newt Gingrich …………. 12%

The poll of 424 likely Republican primary voters was conducted Feb. 16-19. Wisconsin’s GOP primary is April 3.

How did I learn about this poll? From a Rick Santorum campaign press release, which is not how neutral objective journalists like George Stephanopoulos get their news tips. Instead, they call up their friends at the Romney campaign, arrange an interview with one of Romney’s prominent supporters, and call that “news.”

Also, neutral objective journalists like George Stephanopoulos never drive to Ohio or stop at a McDonald’s in West Virginia to get lunch off the Dollar Menu and use the free WiFi.

Satan’s minions do it their way. I do it mine.
 





 
PREVIOUSLY:

 

Memo From the National Affairs Desk: Meanwhile, Back on the Campaign Trail …

Posted on Comments

Since I returned home from Florida three weeks ago, people have been going nuts, and the stress of being caught in the middle of the escalating insanity is undermining my health. (The sniffles haven’t turned into pneumonia yet, but I’m still worried.) This means there’s only one thing to do: Road trip.

Get back on the campaign trail, where at least the internecine hatred and madness are supposed to serve some political purpose.

My hope had been to attend Wednesday night’s debate in Arizona, but the travel plans didn’t work out. So the backup plan is now in effect: I’m renting a car and driving to Michigan, with a planned stop-over in Ohio. This should be the start of a two-week excursion that carries me all the way through Super Tuesday, March 6. I’m not sure exactly where I’ll be going during this trip, except that I hope I won’t be going crazy, which is what might happen if I sat around here for the next two weeks.

In all honesty, I had expected that by the time we finished the Florida primary — the end of my extended 37-day campaign expedition that began the day after Christmas — there would be some kind of clarity in the GOP primary campaign. But Mitt won Florida, then Newt melted down in Nevada, then Rick Santorum won a hat-trick on Feb. 7 and, at this point, we’re starting to hear serious discussions of a “brokered convention.”

Lord, help us!

Good News: Santorum has an 11-point lead in Washington State, which votes on March 3 (the Saturday before Super Tuesday) and if he can hold on to that, Santorum stands a good chance of emerging as the winner at Tampa.

More Good News: William McGurn of the Wall Street Journal is defending Santorum against the “extremism” attack. That should help re-assure Republican donors, who are prone to freaking out about stuff like that.

Now, if only we can avoid more lunacy among those of my friends who are either trying to destroy each other, or else trying to destroy me, maybe we can finally get some resolution in this seemingly endless GOP primary campaign which is, I suspect, at the root of this epidemic outbreak of psychodrama within the conservative online community.

Whether or not my blogger friends can stop gnawing at each others’ necks, I’m going to hit the road and try to go cover some actual news, which will have the therapeutic effect of:

A. Distracting me from the online insanity; and
B. Giving me the mental health benefit of driving the highways at high speed, an enormous stress-reliever.

Right now, I’m going to go take a nap and ask you, please, dear readers: Hit the tip jar! 

UPDATE: Is the Drudge Report working for Romney? Or could it be that Satan is really out to get us?

 

 

RECENTLY: