In addition to being Town Meeting Day in Vermont, where hardy New Englanders can vote for the usual slate of local issues — school budgets, parking meters, firehouses, local taxes and the willfully optimistic call to overturn Citizen’s United and thus end corporate personhood — today Vermonters can also plunk down their votes in the presidential primary races. And, as Vermont doesn’t require voters to declare a party affiliation for the primary, folks who lean left can nonetheless vote in the Republican primary, and in so doing toss a spanner in the Republican machinery.
One might argue — indeed, John Scalzi already has — that it’s not at all necessary to try to sabotage the GOP’s chances at the White House this year, as they’re doing that just fine all by themselves. Nonetheless, there remains an important, existential question: given the best of intentions, is it possible to hold one’s nose long enough to cast a vote for Rick Santorum?
Scalzi tags a recent piece from the not-news folks at The Onion — Voters Slowly Realizing Santorum Believes Every Deranged Word That Comes Out Of His Mouth — as being all the more dread in its pronouncements for being absolutely true.
Uneasy voters told reporters it was becoming more and more evident that comments from Santorum defending sodomy laws as acceptable restrictions on ”wants and passions” and characterizing pregnancy occurring through rape as a ”gift” from God were not politically calculated but were, in fact, spoken out of sincere, startling conviction.
“I honestly thought he was just playing up to the far-right voters, because that’s what Republicans are supposed to do in the primaries,” said Grand Rapids, MI resident Dan Banks, who explained he had dismissed as manipulative campaign rhetoric Santorum’s assertion that President Obama would send Christians to the guillotine. ”But now it’s dawning on me that this guy means it, all of it. Every single thing he says is an accurate depiction of how he sees the world.”
“So, when he said that Satan was currently attacking the United States, he meant exactly that,” added Banks. ”Satan, the devil himself, is attacking the United States. Rick Santorum believes this is a real thing that is actually happening. I…wow. Just wow.”
Just wow, indeed.
How about a vote for Ron Paul, instead?
