Santorum Suspends Presidential Campaign

bobwrit writes with this excerpt from CNN: "Conservative challenger Rick Santorum announced Tuesday that he is suspending his Republican presidential campaign after a weekend of 'prayer and thought,' effectively ceding the GOP nomination to front-runner Mitt Romney. Santorum made his announcement after the weekend hospitalization of his 3-year-old daughter Isabella, and in the face of tightening poll numbers in Pennsylvania — the state he represented as a U.S. senator — ahead of the April 24 primary. 'Ladies and gentlemen, we made the decision to get into this race around our kitchen table, against all the odds,' Santorum told a news conference, flanked by emotional family members. 'We made a decision over the weekend that while the presidential race for us is over, and I will suspend my campaign effective today, we are not done fighting.'"

Comments

Re:Color me surprised. Or not.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ron Paul is the best candidate America had in over 50 years.

GOP lineup -- same prob as 2004 Dem ticket

[Anonymous Coward]

The GOP lineup has the same problem as the 2004 lineup that failed to defeat GWB. I took one look at that ticket and said: A Massachusetts old money man + a slick trial lawyer. That was everything the moderate GOP voter hates about the Dems, and wouldn't make anybody switch. They finally realized they needed something different and went with Obama.

The GOP is making the same mistake. The fact that the front runner is from MA is pure coincidence. It's wealthy businessmen, religious fanatics, and a guy who was fresh in the 90s.

The only "something different" candidate is Ron Paul; but he's too different. The GOP needs something fresh. I'm not sure where it'll come from, but these guys are not fresh. Really, for someone like myself with weak party affiliation the GOP is dead after GWB. The organization itself is defective. Not to say that the Dems are much better. It's the slightly less evil party.

I think we need just a bit more time for things to get so bad that sane people with the capability to lead will want to run on a 3rd party ticket. The two main parties are rapidly on their way to ruining their respective reputations. Not this time though. Not. Ready. Yet.

Re:GOP lineup -- same prob as 2004 Dem ticket

[MightyMartian]

Look. Anyone with any sense knew that the Tea Party was going to hamstring the Republicans in the 2012 race. The Democrats knew it, which is why Obama isn't sweating, and hasn't been since he saw how the Republican True Believers all fell in love with a moron (namely Sarah Palin). For the core Republican leadership and strategists, it was equally clear. The Tea Party wasn't some general movement, no matter how much its advocates stated, it was a Libertarian populist movement that was sucking the blood out of the Republican party.

The only thing that was going to cure that was to let the lunatics run the asylum for a while. Everyone knew Romney was going to get the nod, but would be badly damaged in the process. By having the likes of Santorum and Gingrich, men who never ever ever ever ever ever had even the slightest chance of becoming President, cut him to pieces, all that happened was the Tea Party movement managed to hamstring the whole party. But by November of this year, the Tea Party and a goodly chunk of the retrograde social conservatives will be utterly discredited. Romney will limp through to a loss, but the message will be clear; "America does not want extremists, or even people who play extremists on TV."

After this year, the sane candidates will come out of hiding, they're careers and reputations not utterly savaged like Romney's. The next GOP candidate won't have an incumbent to deal with and won't have the Tea Party cancer eating away at the party's strength. I think this whole race has been nothing more than a tactical day at the nut house, and the Republicans will have learned their lesson.

I mean, the Republicans came back from Goldwater. Of course, it was with Nixon, so maybe they don't want to have it map that closely to elections past.

Re:GOP lineup -- same prob as 2004 Dem ticket

[Black Parrot]

The Tea Party wasn't some general movement, no matter how much its advocates stated, it was a Libertarian populist movement that was sucking the blood out of the Republican party.

No, it was (mostly) a bunch of middle- and working-class retirees, unwittingly carrying water for billionaires.

And after the first few weeks, only "populist" if being funded by the usual Republican operatives counts as being populist.

I think this whole race has been nothing more than a tactical day at the nut house, and the Republicans will have learned their lesson.

It will be interesting to see if they learn the appropriate lesson, but I don't expect it.

They had a good scam that served them well for half a century: pretend to be conservative rather than plutocratic, and lure people to vote against their own self-interest by playing on their fears, intolerance, and bigotry.

But they've had to keep narrowing that "base" (as the media insists on calling them) by ever more radical rhetoric against everyone else, and now it's getting so narrow that the coalition of plutocrats + bed wetters + social conservatives + bigots doesn't add up to enough people to reliably win elections anymore.

Plus, the plutocrats been appealing to those groups so long that the nutters are starting to run the nuthouse.

But where can they turn? The plutocrats (the real Republican base) certainly aren't going to give up their desire to enrich themselves at public expense, and the nutters aren't going to give up their nuttery.

I suspect the actual lessons to be learned are:

a) the plutocrats will realize they need to divorce the others, and will start looking for a new scam to replace the old one

b) the nutters will conclude that they weren't nutty enough, and crank it up two notches next time around.

The party's civil war will continue, because there's no exit strategy for when the nuts start taking over the nuthouse. Some chance the party will fall apart and be replaced by a new one, as has happened before in the USA, but I expect that to take years, if it happens at all.

Re:News for Nerds?

[C0R1D4N]

F) Penn Jillette style atheist nerd free love libertarian

Re:Ron Paul

[quangdog]

I actually really like about 80% of what Ron Paul claims he'll do. The other 20% scares the living heebie-jeebies out of me though.

Re:Ron Paul

[Tassach]

Ron Paul's strength is that he accurately identifies a lot of problems.

Ron Paul's weakness is that his "solutions" to those problems are dangerously naive, based on long-discredited theories, or are just downright crazy (or all of the above).

Any enthusiasm about RP has to be tempered with the realization that even a broken clock tells the right time twice a day.

Re:"Nerds don't care about politics" -- tomhath

[NiceGeek]

and it wasn't the entire "left" making the Santorum comment was it?

To my dearest genius

[apparently]

The second part of your point (respectfully bolded for your genius):

Its only when the US goes fucking up in other countries (which seems to be quite often lately) do we notice, mostly because we have to go in and help clean up your mess.

Contradicts the first part of the point that you thought you were making:

I know many Americans are too arrogant to grasp this, but most of the world's population don't actually know let alone care about most things that happen in the USA.

Given the above,

Regardless of your personal view of how important US politics may be, even on a global scale, Slashdot is meant to be a Tech. news site. Lets keep it that way please.

Regardless of your clear genius, the political direction of the US Congress, Presidency (and judiciary that they put into power) directs the crafting and execution of legislation that applies to geeks. If your head wasn't preoccupied with spelunking the deeper regions of your colon, you'd be aware of such geek-centric topics as net neutrality, copyright, and piracy, and how US policy is deeply intertwined with global policy.

Re:Ron Paul

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

No. We need the fed. We need the FCC. we need the FAA. We need the FDA and FTC.

We need competent people running them.

We don't need smaller government. We need smarter government. Going on a witch hunt because somehow the fed is offensive is the LAST thing we need.

Re:"Nerds don't care about politics" -- tomhath

[rrohbeck]

+1. This.
The best Republican prez since Clinton.

Not really immune

[Weaselmancer]

Certainly the ones outside the States (or at least, mostly immune).

Do you really think that? A dyed-in-the-wool fundamentalist Christian that thinks the Apocalypse is a good thing because he gets to meet his BFF Jesus that day, in charge of the second largest nuclear arsenal in the world?

Still think you're immune?

Re:Ron Paul

[dkleinsc]

So I'm among those who like about 60% of what Ron Paul stands for and am seriously worried about the other 40%. (For the record, I like about 30% of what Obama stands for and am seriously worried about 70%, and for Romney the split is closer to 5%/95% with the 5% varying from hour to hour.)

The parts I'm all for: drug legalization, bringing the troops home, restoring civil liberties, and cutting back on big military spending.

The parts I'm seriously concerned about: Returning to a gold standard, eliminating all social welfare programs, pretty much complete deregulation of economic transactions, and eliminating any restrictions on what the states can do within their borders. The reasons:
A) Returning to any sort of metallic standard is basically decreeing 0% inflation. This sounds like a good thing for those with wealth trying to hang onto it, but most economists think somewhere around 2% inflation is actually closer to the ideal, and some argue that 4% is better. Current mainstream macroeconomics thinks that lower inflation generally yields higher unemployment, which was part of the argument of William Jennings Bryan's bimetalism campaign back in the 1890's.

B) Eliminating social welfare programs is just plain stupid, because those without jobs and without welfare will do what they need to do to eat. Private charities can't handle the case load (they're already overbooked), so that means that people will be turning to crime in increasing numbers with the goal of keeping a roof overhead and food on the table. Many of those people will get caught and thrown in prison, costing the government even more than welfare does.

C) Deregulation of business makes for unlevel economic transactions with all the advantage invariably going to the side with the largest supply of capital, legal advice, and market share. In other words, if you think software EULAs and cell phone contracts are one-sided now, you ain't seen nothing yet.

D) The basic problem I tend to have with "state's rights" arguments is that the rights in question have almost always been the right to oppress black people (southern politicians were using that exact phrase in 1860 and 1960 to mean precisely that). Which seems to be activity that Ron Paul at least in the past was a supporter of.

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

[durdur]

RP is right about our military spending. It is just wacko that we spend more now than we did when we had an actual hostile superpower (the USSR) to contend with. He is also right that the government should just butt out of people's private lives (but curiously, he doesn't think women should be able to choose to have abortions). On most other topics, he is a nutter, pure and simple.

Re:News for Nerds?

[TapeCutter]

Some nerds read it on CNN, others read it on FOX, all of them come here seeking someone who can agrue about it. It explains why slashdot always posts TFA a day or two after the MSM, and why nobody RTFAs on slashdot.