I sin endeløse søken etter en kandidat som er mer spiselig enn den valgbare, men kjedelige og venstreorienterte Mitt Romney, er turen nå kommet til Rick Santorum, som nå leder enkelte meningsmålinger. Lenge lå han langt bak, men er i det siste kommet helt frem i teten.

Dagsavisen omtaler ham 27/2 som ”Troens kandidat” og sier at ”Rick Santorum er mannen som kan fravriste Mitt Romney seieren [i nominasjonsprosessen], og som kan ende opp som Republikanernes presidentkandidat til høsten ... Santorum leder nå på de fleste nasjonale meningsmålingene etter tre strake nominasjonsseiere”.

Santorum er altså den foreløpig siste i rekken av alternativer til Mitt Romney, en rekke som har inkludert Michelle Bachman, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, og Newt Gingrich. Alle disse har vist seg å være helt ubrukelige og falt ned fra lederposisjonen, og vi regner med at Santorum vil lide samme skjebne.

Santorum er den verste kandidaten i det republikanske partiets historie, i hvert fall etter Pat Robertson, som forsøkte å bli nominert i 1988.

For å vise hvor ille Santorum er er det tilstrekkelig å gjengi noen sitater fra hans egen munn:

"America's conservative heritage never pursued a limitless freedom to do whatever one wants so long as no one is hurt. That kind of "freedom" to be and do whatever we want, irrespective of the choice is a selfish freedom that cannot be sustained or afforded. Someone always gets hurt when masses of individuals do what is only in their own self-interest ...

Freedom is liberty coupled with responsibility to something bigger or higher than self. It is a self-less freedom. It is sacrificial freedom. It is the pursuit of our dreams with an eye toward the common good. Freedom is the dual activity of lifting our eyes to the heavens while extending our hand to our neighbor.

The only orthodox conservative philosophy that matches with this is compassionate conservatism."

...

"One of the things I will talk about that no president has talked about before is I think the dangers of contraception in this country, the whole sexual libertine idea.... It's not okay because it's a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be. They're supposed to be within marriage, for purposes that are, yes, conjugal...but also procreative.

That's the perfect way that a sexual union should happen. We take any part of that out, we diminish the act. And if you can take one part out that's not for purposes of procreation, that's not one of the reasons, then you diminish this very special bond between men and women, so why can't you take other parts of that out? And all of a sudden, it becomes deconstructed to the point where it's simply pleasure. And that's certainly a part of it—and it's an important part of it, don't get me wrong—but there's a lot of things we do for pleasure, and this is special, and it needs to be seen as special....

I'm not running for pastor, but these are important public policy issues."

...

"This is not a political war at all. This is not a cultural war. This is a spiritual war. And the Father of Lies has his sights on what you would think the Father of Lies would have his sights on: a good, decent, powerful, influential country—the United States of America. If you were Satan, who would you attack in this day and age? There is no one else to go after other than the United States and that has been the case now for almost two hundred years, once America's preeminence was sown by our great Founding Fathers."

Sanrorum hevder altså - sitatet er fra 2008 - at kampen i USA er en spirituell kamp mot Satan.

...

"I'm someone who takes the opinion that gaming is not something that is beneficial, particularly having that access on the Internet. Just as we've seen from a lot of other things that are vices on the Internet, they end to grow exponentially as a result of that....

Freedom's not absolute. What rights in the Constitution are absolute? There is no right to absolute freedom. There are limitations. You might want to say the same thing about a whole variety of other things that are on the Internet—"let everybody have it, let everybody do it." No. There are certain things that actually do cost people a lot of money, cost them their lives, cost them their fortunes that we shouldn't have and make available, to make it that easy to do."

Dette siste - "Freedom's not absolute. What rights in the Constitution are absolute? There is no right to absolute freedom" - er stikk i strid med den amerikanske uavhengighetserklæringen, som sier at "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men."

Hvis republikanerne velger Santorum til sin kandidat, noe de neppe vil gjøre, vil uttrykket "pest eller kolera" om alternativene ved høstens presidentvalg bli så bokstavelig som det noen gang kan få blitt.

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http://www.dagsavisen.no/verden/troens-kandidat/

http://www.vg.no/nyheter/utenriks/presidentvalg-2012/artikkel.php?artid=...