The Conservative Tantrum Continues

In the past couple months, conservatives have proven that they don’t know what conservatism means, that they are hopeless suckers for the MSM rope-a-dope, that they are incapable of understanding math, and that they’re whiny hypocrites. Good grief. The latest involves their disparate reaction to two recent “gaffes” by Romney and Santorum.

Yesterday, Romney’s campaign spokesman was asked whether or not Romney had moved too far to the right to win the general election. He said:

“Well, I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It's almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all over again.”

Conservatives went insane. “This proves Romney’s a flip flopper” they whined. Meanwhile, last week, Santorum was asked how he plans to win over voters seeing as how he has no plan to create jobs. Said Ricky:

“I don't care what the unemployment rate is going to be. It doesn't matter to me. My campaign doesn't hinge on unemployment rates and growth rates.”

Conservatives stuck their fingers in their ears and pretended not to hear this one.

So which one is more important? Or said differently, if conservatives weren’t acting like retarded children, which one of these should have bothered them more?

First, note a critical difference between these two gaffes in terms of who said them. Santorum’s gaffe was said by Santorum himself. It thus provides an important insight into his mindset. The Romney “gaffe,” however, was made by a spokesman. It is therefore inappropriate to attribute this to Romney or to whine that he’s gaffe prone or to claim that this gives us an insight into his true mentality... as conservatives are doing. Instead, the proper response to such a comment is to seek clarification from Romney himself. Romney, by the way, immediately rejected this quote when asked about it -- though conservatives continue to whine about it. Santorum, by comparison, doubled-down on stupid and conservatives doubled-down on intentional blindness to keep ignoring it.

Secondly, the biggest test to determine whether criticism is valid or just hypocritical is to ask if the critic would still be upset if someone else had said it. If the Romney question had been asked of Santorum and he gave the same response, would conservatives get all whiny-outraged? Hardly. They would have said, “well, that’s true. That’s why it doesn’t matter that Santorum’s been whining about pornography and Satan because the general election is a whole new contest and everything said now pretty much disappears.” In other words, if Santorum had said this, conservatives would not have called it a gaffe. So calling it a gaffe because Romney’s spokesman said it is hypocritical.

Now compare the response to Ricky’s gaffe. There is no doubt that any candidate who claimed that the unemployment rate doesn’t matter and who says they don’t care about unemployment would be viewed as having committed an horrific gaffe. Yet, conservatives hypocritically ignored this one.

Third, lets look at what was really said. In the Romney case, the aid was responding to a specific question about whether or not Romney could compete in the general election. His answer was both truthful and essentially what any candidate would have said -- general elections are fought differently from primaries and they essentially begin with a clean slate. He never said Romney planned to abandon his values. In fact, Romney’s values weren't even under discussion. What was under discussion was simply the question of candidate packaging. To interpret this as evidence that Romney has no values requires a deliberate misinterpretation because it requires assuming that the answer addressed a different question than what was really asked.

Now lets look at what Santorum said, because unlike the “Romney” quote, this one is vitally important. Rick has claimed repeatedly to be a Tea Party candidate despite the utter lack of an economic plan and lack of any plan to cut spending or the size of government. Rick also has whined that he’s been unfairly maligned as being concerned only about social issues despite the fact he has no economic plan, and he’s spent the campaign slurring Romney’s religion, slurring Obama’s religion, declaring himself the arbiter of what constitutes Christianity, waging a war against contraception, promising to push gays back into the closet, promising to somehow make people marry, and promising to focus the powers of the federal government like a laser beam on pornography.

So when Rick says that he doesn’t care about unemployment, Rick is accidentally admitting both that he does not care about Tea Party values AND that his attack on the MSM for “mischaracterizing” him is a lie. Indeed, Rick entirely confirms everything his critics have been saying with this quote, i.e. that he does not care about economic concerns.

Further, Rick wasn’t done talking when he said the above. He went on to say this:

“We have one nominee who says he wants to run the economy. What kind of conservative says the president runs the economy? What kind of conservative says, 'I'm the guy because of my economic experience that can create jobs?' I don't know.”

Think about this. Rick is essentially saying that HE BELIEVES conservatives should not get involved in trying to make the economy run better -- an interpretation which is completely confirmed by Rick’s lack of any economic plan. This is a declaration of satisfaction with the government the way it is today. And yet, conservatives weren’t stunned by this?

Moreover, Ricky then laughably claimed that his candidacy is about “freedom” (unlike Romney who wants to “control” the economy). Only his definition of “freedom” includes leaving Big Government unchanged, pushing gays into the closet, stopping people from having sex unless they intend to procreate, letting the government decide what people can read, having the government control the internet, forcing taxpayers to pay billions so Ricky can have HHS "promote families" (that’s his economic plan), having the government forcibly unionize companies like FedEx, etc. etc. etc. Again, conservatives ignored this.

Let’s be honest. To attack Romney for something his staffer said, which Romney immediately refuted, and which was both truthful and accurate and wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow if some other candidate had said it, and which wasn’t even discussing the point over which it has been used to attack Romney, is hypocritical and ridiculous and reflects very poorly on conservatives. To simultaneously ignore Rick's quote, which confirms all the worst fears conservatives should have of Santorum -- that he cares about nothing more than forcing his hateful version of Christianity on the country and that he utterly disdains economic conservatism and Tea Party values -- is even worse.

Conservatism has gone off the rails. It is in the midst of a temper tantrum and is acting hypocritically and childishly. It is making itself a laughing stock. And it’s going to take a lot to prove again that conservatives aren’t the mindless, idiotic zombies the left claims. Ug.