Get ready to hear the talking heads (rightfully) say it again.
There does not seem to be a learning curve with former Republican Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum who squandered a lead due to getting off message in the past. Pundits in both parties agree that he has an incredible narrative out his blue-collar background and he gains support when he talks movingly about it and weaves in comments about ailing jobs and the economic fronts.
Santorum seemed to be the new, strong anti-Romney but deflated once he veered off message and started doing riffs on contraception and about how JFK’s comments about separation of church and state made him want to puke. And he is off message again.
His latest: Barack Obama is putting children at risk by not cracking down on pornography.
As Ronald Reagan would say:
So let this little independent voter registered to vote in California get this straight:
At a time when businesses are hurting, massive number of Americans are looking for jobs, schools are facing cutbacks, entertainers are feeling the pinch, newspapers are downsizing or dying, families are still losing their houses…Santorum is suggesting that a big issue that needs to be addressed is to pornography endangering the youth of America?
So that’s the issue people talk about at water coolers as they hear rumors about layoffs at their jobs?
(Please put your thoughts in comments if you want to argue he is not off message). Mediaite:
Because this election is in no way about the economy, we’ve been spending a lot of time discussing and debating abortion, contraception, and other big social issues. But now one of Rick Santorum‘s more controversial policy positions is making its way to the forefront of national conversation: his pledge to crack down on pornography. On CNN’s State of the Union earlier today, Candy Crowley brought up Santorum’s charge that President Obama and the Department of Justice are not enforcing the law when it comes to illegal pornography.
Crowley read Santorum’s comment that the Obama administration “seems to favor pornographers over children and families,” and asked Santorum if he honestly believed that’s where the president’s priorities are at. Santorum said that “the proof is in the prosecution” and argued that pornographers were more heavily prosecuted than under Obama.
How he answered it:
A skilled politico knows how to get back on message if he gets off message. He can quickly pivot (or change the subject saying something like: “Pornography? Hey, I don’t know much about that issue, I don’t even own a pornograph.”)
Santorum gets off message and stays off message until he suffers politically.
There is no political learning curve (Santorum calling Karl Rove…)
OTHERS:
—Wall Street Journal blog:
GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum on Sunday defended his escalating attacks against President Barack Obama, who he said was going easy on pornographers and the government of Iran.
The former Pennsylvania senator backed up his website’s assertions that the Obama administration “seems to favor pornographers over children and families” because it has “refused to enforce obscenity laws.”
The Obama administration hasn’t as prosecuted pornography cases as “rigorously” as the administration of former President George W. Bush, Mr. Santorum said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“They have not put a priority on prosecuting those cases and in doing so they are exposing children to a tremendous amount of harm,” Mr. Santorum said. His campaign posted its stance on pornography online after people wrote in asking where he stood, Mr. Santorum explained on ABC’s “This Week.”
Here’s why Santorum should stop talking about porn.
Porn is not going to go away. The porn industry is very careful not to violate laws protecting underaged boys and girls from being exploited for porn. If porn is made with underaged performers, those responsible for the project do get caught and do go to prison.
Big porn producers like Vivid and Hustler go out of their way to keep underaged kids out of the business, and they work with the authorities to track down and prosecute anyone involved in pedophilia. They do so because they want to protect their legitimate business from government’s prying eyes.
Any limits on the production of pornography in the U.S. will simply push the producers out of the U.S. and into countries that either don’t have such laws protecting children or don’t enforce them.
Banning something generally is not a good way to reduce demand. It didn’t work with alcohol during Prohibition; it hasn’t worked with harder drugs ever since. Scarcity itself creates demand. But Americans don’t have a right to drugs. We do, however, have a First Amendment right to free speech and to peaceably assemble, even if the assembled people are naked and accompanied by a video camera.
Ultimately, we have bigger problems than restricting what adults can do with other adults. If Santorum really wants to fight obscenity he should focus on limiting the crazy things senators and congressmen do with unconsenting taxpayer dollars.
It’s evidently not the economy, stupid ..
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.