Santorum's big night

Looking for an appropriate image to head up today's blog post, I did a quick google of "santorum."  Boy, was that a mistake!

The three February 7th primary elections that occurred in Missouri, Colorado, and Minnesota, provide yet more evidence that the GOP is a party at war with itself.  Gaff-prone Mitt Romney, the nominal front-runner, got swept by big margins in all three contests.  His vanquisher?  Senator Rick Santorum. 

Romney's got a problem.  An Evangelical problem.  Right-wing Evangelicals don't trust him, can never trust him.  Because he is a Mormon and the former governor of a very blue state.  Because, despite his rhetorical attempts to seem so, he is not a frothing xenophobe, an authoritarian, nor a moralizing prig.  And right-wing Evangelicals know it.  He is not one of them.

Santorum, on the other hand, is all of those things.  And, unlike Newt Gingrich, Santorum is so out of conviction.  When Santorum complains that contraception is "a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be," when he declares that he doesn't "want to give black people someone else's money," Republican Evangelicals swoon.  That's what they want in a presidential candidate. A guy who says it from the heart.

Romney must be exasperated at this point.  Despite shoving his foot into his mouth with the "I'm not concerned about the very poor" remark, he had just won Florida, the biggest primary to date, by a convincing margin, and destroyed Newt Gingrich in the process.  But, hydra-like, another right-wing trog springs up in Gingrich's place. 

This is all another manifestation of the fragmentation between the various factions within the GOP.  Anything can happen from here.  Sit back and enjoy the show, progressives.

Evangelical pastors laying hands on Santorum, praying for victory.   Nothing scarier than a bunch of freaky right-wing Evangelicals hopped up on the Holy Spook...