As he slowly sinks into obscurity Rickey Santorum is flailing about for something..., anything that will bring his poll numbers up, and in the process is dispensing with some of his "deeply held" convictions.
The Beaver County Times reports:
BEAVER FALLS - U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum said Saturday that he doesn't believe that intelligent design belongs in the science classroom.Read it here. The Demagogue looks back at previous statements on the subject by the Senator and notes how radical a change in position this statement is [here].
Santorum's comments to The Times are a shift from his position of several years ago, when he wrote in a Washington Times editorial that intelligent design is a "legitimate scientific theory that should be taught in the classroom."
Well, well now Rickey. Jettisoning that piece of unpopular baggage wasn't too hard, was it? What's next? Fighting the war on terror? Opposition to abortion on demand? Once you start the process of revising your principles, there's no telling where it will take you.
And just in case there is somebody left who hasn't noticed that panic has set in, we have the spectacle of an incumbent two-term Senator issuing a debate challenge to his opponent a year before the election.
Rollcall reports:
Sen. Rick Santorum has formally challenged his probable Dem opponent, Bob Casey Jr., to debates -- a year before the election.Read the letter here.
Isn't that the sort of thing challengers are supposed to do? I understand the reasoning. Almost everyone agrees that Bobby Casey isn't the brightest bulb on the tree, and the assumption is that his mental deficiencies will be shown up in a debate. So far, Casey has been the invisible candidate, buoyed by voters' fond memories of his father's administration, and has done quite well staying out of the spotlight while Rickey flounders. Dragging him into debates, Republicans hope, will start to drive his poll numbers down. But that is a mark of desperation.
And, to complete the trifecta, Santorum has begun to criticize the administration's handling of the "War on Terror."
As the Inkie reports:
Americans have soured on the war in Iraq because they do not understand it as part of a long and necessary fight against "Islamic fascist forces" bent on destroying democracy - and the White House is partially to blame for not articulating the stakes, U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum said yesterday.
...It was a rare if tempered criticism of the White House for Santorum, a conservative who has been one of Bush's most loyal votes in the Senate. Although he has taken on the White House on several issues lately, Santorum has mostly refrained from publicly criticizing the war.
After the speech, Santorum was more direct, telling reporters that the conduct of the war had been "less than optimal" and that "maybe some blame could be laid" at the White House. But the only specific mistake he named was how the war has been presented to the public.
Read it here.
There is a medical/psychological concept called "decompensation" [look it up, that way you'll remember it]. That seems to be what is happening to Rickey's campaign. It's still early, and anything can happen, but already I'm hearing from some Republicans that they are writing Santorum off and are looking instead to pick up a Senate seate in New Jersey to balance the loss in Pennsylvania.
Stay tuned.... Things are gonna get a lot crazier than this before the elections.
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