washington, dc

The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Rick Santorum is an MBA, fancy lawyer, politician and slimy lobbyist. His parents were a clinical psychologist and administrative nurse. He is no more authentically “blue collar” than he is Chinese. Why does the press repeat this stupid, nonsensical claim

Well, the simple answer is this: an appalling number of “journalists” are pathetically gullible and lazy hacks and will swallow any nonsense a candidates’ flack feeds them just so long as it gives them an easy adjective to use to characterize a politician.
The slightly less simple answer is that Santorum’s flacks – a group which by the way includes David Brooks and other conservative cheerleaders along with the guys directly on Santorum’s payroll — have run a shell game on the press that the asleep at the wheel reporters don’t bother to question.
Just watch how David Brooks plays this incredibly transparent street-corner three-card-Monte trick on his readers and the rest of the press:
Step one: ignore the man’s actual personal history (MBA, Lawyer in silk-stocking firm, Politician, Lobbyist) and his parent’s actual occupations (Clinical Psychologist, Administrative Nurse) and use essentially irrelevant facts to imply he comes from a hard-scrabble blue collar life and background.

Brooks in Paragraph 7 — “Santorum is the grandson of a coal miner and the son of an Italian immigrant. For years, he represented the steel towns of western Pennsylvania.”

Step two: suggest his political views make him an authentic representative of working class America.

Brooks in Paragraph 11 — “I do believe that he represents sensibility and a viewpoint that is being suppressed by the political system”

Step three: take steps one and two, add some paragraphs in between them to distract the reader and then flat-out boldly identify Santorum as “working class” and hope nobody notices the quick sleight of hand:

Brooks in Paragraph 12 — “If you took a working-class candidate from the right, like Santorum, and a working-class candidate from the left, like Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, and you found a few islands of common ground, you could win this election by a landslide. The country doesn’t want an election that is Harvard Law versus Harvard Law”

Absolutely unbelievable, isn’t it. Santorum grew up in a middle class home, never worked a single damn day in a factory or hammered a nail in his entire bloody life and all of a sudden he’s frickin’ Rocky.
Look at these utterly nonsensical headlines: “Santorum fits working class bill,” and “Santorum: The Blue-collar Candidate – The former senator touts his working-class roots”
And somebody actually pays the stupid clowns who write this crap as “journalists” who are supposedly reporting the news? Hell, any MSM reporter who repeats this “blue collar” baloney should be instantly fired and replaced with a stenographer who just writes down Santorum’s’ campaign spin word for word. Come to think of it, the media should just get a bike messenger to carry Santorum’s press releases directly to the printing press or news show teleprompter. It’ll be much cheaper and a whole lot more honest.

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