2012 GOP, who's it going to be?

RichVR · 2012-03-30T21:39:48.000Z

Cummon Jason, you can almost see him thinking, “Whatever you do don’t say nigger. Call him a naysayer. Call him niggardly about defense spending. Call him negotiating with terrorists. Just don’t say nig… DAMN IT!”

ShivaX · 2012-03-31T00:37:49.000Z

Jason McCullough:

He’s a crazy religion culture warrior, not a southern good-ol-boy.

You say that like one somehow exempts one from the other.

Anders_Hallin · 2012-03-31T02:10:18.000Z

madkevin:

Also, if my family is anything to go by, Catholics are crazy racist, although that might be more of the Roman part than the Catholic part of Roman Catholicism. My family’s xenophobia extends not just to other culture and races, but to other parts of Italy. (My father, for example, refers to anybody north of Rome as “the Swiss”.)

That’s just Europe - the lack of a movie industry that has sounded the depths of racism just means that a lot of Europeans don’t have enough self-awareness to realise that a lot of them are racist as hell compared to many/most Americans.

Anders_Hallin · 2012-03-31T02:12:30.000Z

Jason McCullough:

Probably just misspoke when the word popped into his head, which is itself I think is hilarious commentary on the people he’s hanging out with no - how often do you accidentally say it? - but I really doubt he constantly uses the word all the time as Rich suggests. He’s a crazy religion culture warrior, not a southern good-ol-boy.

He is from Pennsylvania, though, which I hear can be… odd in some places.

strategy · 2012-03-31T04:28:22.000Z

Anders Hallin:

That’s just Europe - the lack of a movie industry that has sounded the depths of racism just means that a lot of Europeans don’t have enough self-awareness to realise that a lot of them are racist as hell compared to many/most Americans.

So very true.

madkevin · 2012-03-31T05:07:47.000Z

Diddums:

Does he refer to everything south of Rome as “North Africa”? I always chuckle when my Milanese friends do that.

He’s from Naples, so there isn’t all that much south of there to begin with. Although he does refuse to recognize Sicily as being part of Italy.

TranquilityBase · 2012-03-31T07:21:16.000Z

I wonder now if Santorum will still keep his hostile stance toward teleprompters…

Having spent a lot of time recently in doctor’s and specialists offices, I’ve been (mis) treated to a lot of this guy’s speeches via the magic of waiting room television, and he’s bumbled and stammered through them all. Whether or not he was about to blurt out something bad here, he clearly isn’t gaining ground by continuing to leave his mouth on autopilot.

Houngan · 2012-03-31T08:14:43.000Z

Anders Hallin:

He is from Pennsylvania, though, which I hear can be… odd in some places.

Western Pennsylvania is identical to Eastern Kentucky or West Virginia, so yeah.

Lorini · 2012-03-31T08:23:54.000Z

The people who are voting for him don’t give a shit about that. Bet he wouldn’t have lost 5% of his support had he dropped the N bomb.

charmtrap · 2012-03-31T09:21:14.000Z

TranquilityBase:

I wonder now if Santorum will still keep his hostile stance toward teleprompters…

He’s naturally wary of new technology, having just emerged from the 1950’s.

Lorini · 2012-03-31T09:47:05.000Z

charmtrap:

He’s naturally wary of new technology, having just emerged from the 1850’s.

Fixed.

Gordon_Cameron · 2012-03-31T09:56:06.000Z

Lorini:

The people who are voting for him don’t give a shit about that. Bet he wouldn’t have lost 5% of his support had he dropped the N bomb.

I don’t know about his hardcore supporters, but if he was caught on videotape saying that word in its entirety, his aspirations to any national office would be over in perpetuity, irrevocably.

jeffd · 2012-03-31T10:00:51.000Z

Finally listened to that clip. Holy shit. I mean I don’t like the guy so it’s hard for me to be charitable, but I really can’t think of what he might have stopped himself from saying there, other than the n-bomb.

Huzurdaddi · 2012-03-31T10:07:27.000Z

So now we are buzzing about something that we think someone we don’t like was, we guess, about to say before he stopped himself.

Oh liberal hive mind. Never change.

There are plenty of valid reasons not to like Santorum. Buzzing about a non issue is retarded.

Please carry on.

John_Many_Jars · 2012-03-31T10:42:36.000Z

Huzurdaddi:

So now we are buzzing about something that we think someone we don’t like was, we guess, about to say before he stopped himself.

Oh liberal hive mind. Never change.

There are plenty of valid reasons not to like Santorum. Buzzing about a non issue is retarded.

Please carry on.

That all you’ve got? :)

Malcolm_Tucker · 2012-03-31T10:55:58.000Z

Nigger and negotiator start with the exact same phoneme in standard nonregional American English. Niggotator.

No, I guess nigger has an i as in ‘bin’ and negotiator has an e as in the first one in ‘believe’. Hmm.

Papageno · 2012-03-31T10:56:38.000Z

Huzurdaddi:

So now we are buzzing about something that we think someone we don’t like was, we guess, about to say before he stopped himself.

Oh liberal hive mind. Never change.

There are plenty of valid reasons not to like Santorum. Buzzing about a non issue is retarded.

Please carry on.

Your implication here is that a conservative could come up with a theory on what he was starting to say that isn’t laughable on its face. Yeah, it’s the liberal hivemind, that’s the ticket. Good luck with that.

Lorini · 2012-03-31T10:59:35.000Z

Gordon Cameron:

I don’t know about his hardcore supporters, but if he was caught on videotape saying that word in its entirety, his aspirations to any national office would be over in perpetuity, irrevocably.

Um, they already are.

charmtrap · 2012-03-31T11:08:37.000Z

Although it’s fun to speculate given his retrograde social views, I don’t think it’s necessary to be uncharitable. There’s no possible way he stopped himself from saying that word. It’s simply not remotely credible that he uses that word on a regular enough basis that no-one knows about it.

Hugin · 2012-03-31T11:19:49.000Z

Malcolm Tucker:

Nigger and negotiator start with the exact same phoneme in standard nonregional American English. Niggotator.

No, I guess nigger has an i as in ‘bin’ and negotiator has an e as in ‘believe’. Hmm.

Er…wha?

Look, I said from the beginning, there’s no way to know what he meant to say there. I find it funny because it’s a funny moment. I don’t care if Santorum is racist or not, because he has about 6000 other policy issues I diametrically disagree with him on. Him popping the n-word is about as relevant to me as finding out Rush Limbaugh doesn’t like Firefly.

But, that being said, “nih” and “neh” are two different sounds. And Santorum and I are from the same region. And I see no reason why Santorum would feel a need to catch himself to stop uttering “negotiatior”.

Now, maybe he just had a complete brain fart that derailed everything he was trying to say and he had to stop and reboot with a totally different phrase. If so, he picked the worst possible time to stop and restart, which again, makes it just damned funny.

He’s not going to be president. He was never going to be president. He’s just a tool for the base to register their dissatisfaction with Romney, who they (rightly) recognize as a hapless plastic man. But I see no reason why anyone needs to contort themselves to give Rick “Blah people” Santorum the benfit of the doubt. He’s a hateful neanderthal on every other social issue under the sun, demonstrably hideously sexist and homophobic, from an area that’s the north’s happy little slice of the deep south, heaven forfend we allow something he said that sounded like it might have been racist, might have been something racist.