Too liberal for the primary, too conservative for the election

By Cassie Bishop /// Opinions Editor

As I fluffed my New York Times, like any good IA student, I noticed an article titled “Paul Ad Calls Santorum A Fake Conservative.” I was perplexed and read on. The campaign ad in question was referenced again, so I went to the friend of procrastinators and news-seekers alike: youtube. I typed in the title of the article and the video popped right up.

I have never been a fan of ads that attack rather than promote. This 35-second video gave me, along with a laughably hideous impression of the GOP’s current status, the impression that Ron Paul just sucks so much that he is not even able to make a video that promotes his campaign. I doubt that was what Ron Paul was going for, but I’m sticking to it.

Anyway, from a liberal perspective, the list of things that Rick Santorum has done that excludes him from the “true conservatives” don’t place him much closer to my heart: he voted to raise the debt ceiling, doubled the size of the department of education, sent billion of tax dollars to Egyptian and Korean dictators and the goddamned fascist even gave Planned Parenthood money. 

I am just going to say from the get-go that I am relatively well informed as far as 19-year-olds go, but not an unbiased encyclopedia of information. Don’t hate.

1. I don’t know how I feel about raising the debt ceiling. I discussed the idea in my high school government class, but that was almost a year ago and a lot of those memories possess an opaque veneer now. Moving on...

2. I don’t have a huge background on the “doubling the size of the department of education” thing, but really, Ron Paul? Really? You’re hating on him because he allocated funds to our incredibly problematic system of education?! Yeah, totally. What a bastard. 

3. Didn’t the Reagan/Bush administration groom, train and arm Osama Bin Laden? Yup, sometimes people fuck up and a lot of the time those people fly under the Elephant. Suck it and move on, Ron Paul.

4. I know that Planned Parenthood is evil for assisting women in evilly and brutally murdering their precious, perfect little unborn babies and that Planned Parenthood is not incredibly popular right now—especially not with conservatives—but come on. He gave them some money so that women could choose responsibly. It’s rarely to get an abortion, so calm your little self, Ron Paul, and give Planned Parenthood a rest.

That kind of makes it sound like I love Rick Santorum. Well, I just watched a campaign video from Santorum’s official website and it was muckrakin’ on Mitt Romney—as well as using some psychological bullshit fear tactics—and Santorum is an insane prick who I would not under any circumstances vote for. 

So, I continued reading the article with all of these new videos and facts flashing like a Vegas casino in my mind. Pretty much, the rest of the article is a less eloquent analysis than my last few paragraphs. 

But why the balls are Republicans fighting so hard to “out-conservative” one another? It makes no goddamned sense. Yes, it is most likely that—Sorry, but who the hell is Buddy Roemer? My bad for the interruption, but I was checking my GOP progress knowledge against the New York Times and this old dude comes up as a candidate. For real? There’s another one? 

Yes, it is most likely that Mitt Romney will win the primary, but we all know what’s coming in November. Obama. I mean, they’re all too goddamned conservative. That may win the primary but even though some of America does agree with the psycho views that these GOP candidates preach, it is not a large enough percentage to beat Obama. He is not that liberal of a democrat, so that leaves America with electing a right-ish Democrat or an in-fucking-sanely right conservative. It is not going to happen.

The Republicans are sinking their own ship by thrusting such a right-y into the GOP seat, but hey—it is kind of fun to watch in a disgusting “what the hell-balls are you thinking?!” kind of way. At least Rick Perry is out of there. He still got over ten percent of the vote in Iowa. Christers.