santorumRick Santorum is at it again, alienating voters faster than you can change a sweater vest. People were so offended by his "black people on welfare" remark -- and denial -- yesterday that the debacle turned into a whole "blah people" meme on Twitter. But what it really showed me is that Rick Santorum is just not into connecting with people. 

Yesterday he found yet another way to NOT connect with voters. He got his appearance at College Convention 2012 off to a condescending start. "Does anyone know what the national motto is?" Hardly anyone raise their hand, so he said, "That's what I'm talking about." Grimace. But one student picked up on that "pursuit of happiness" idea and asked Santorum why he won't let gay people be happy and marry each other. Instead of giving a REAL answer, Rick decided to piss off the questioner and pretty much everyone else in the room by comparing gay marriage with polygamy. BOOOO!

No really, that's what everyone said. Santorum was boo'ed. Okey dokey, let's walk through this one. Someone says, "Hey candidate, we share a VALUE, the pursuit of happiness. Yet one of your stances seems at odds with the value. How come?" And Santorum's response is, because what you want is ICKY. Ew, it's like polygamy -- weird! So that was pretty smart of Santorum.

Okay, fine, maybe that questioner wasn't planning on voting for Santorum anyway. Maybe Rick was in a room full of liberals and libertarians, the least likely people to ever even say "bless you" when Santorum sneezes, much less vote for him. But every candidate should know by now that EVERYTHING goes on the Internet. And now we have yet another little scene of Rick Santorum insulting gay marriage and getting boo'ed. For someone who has had hardly any media attention all year, this is not helping.

You know what was so brilliant about President Clinton? He was genuinely curious about other people. That's what enabled him to hoodwink so many voters into supporting him -- even though we all kind of found him kind of slick. We love nothing more than a candidate who thirsts to know more about what we want -- not someone who wants to tell us what we should want. I think Rick has revealed this week that he's the latter kind of candidate.

Do you think Rick Santorum's answer to the question about gay marriage hurt his campaign?

 

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