Mortifications for the 99%
by digby
It looks like Santorum doesn’t want to be president after all. He wants to be Flagellant in Chief:
Risking the wrath of older voters, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum is calling for immediate cuts to Social Security benefits and says the country can’t wait to phase in reductions as most of his rivals have advocated.
“We can’t wait 10 years,” even though “everybody wants to,” Santorum told a crowd while campaigning in New Hampshire Friday, breaking with opponents who say immediate cuts would be too big a shock to current and soon-to-be retirees.
[…]
He made a similar pitch last week in Fort Dodge, Iowa, when he was getting little attention in the GOP race — and before he came from the back of the pack to nearly win the Iowa caucuses.At that event, Santorum said: “the Democratic National Committee is going to say, ‘Ah,… he’s for changing benefits now.’ Yes, I am. Yes, I am.”
“We need to change benefits for everybody now,” Santorum said at the time. “Is everybody going to take a little bit of a hit? No, but a lot of people will.”
[…]In a brief interview Friday as he plowed his way through a crowd after the Keene event, he was asked if the nation should make the changes now.
“I think we should, yeah,” Santorum said. “Obviously we’re going to have to go through a debate next year and figure out ways in which to make the revenues meet the expenditures.”
He tells voters he would rule out higher taxes or more deficit spending to help the Social Security program. That leaves benefit cuts as the only way to match revenues and costs, he notes.
Right. The fact that social security isn’t contributing to the deficit is irrelevant and it would be against God’s will and the Constitution to raise taxes on the gluttonous 1% and ask them to pay more to pay the actual deficit. It has been decreed that the old the sick and the young who cannot work must pay for the sins of the Masters of the Universe.
It’s rumored that Santorum is associated, if not a member, of this group. It’s all about making people punish themselves.
Update: great piece by Sarah Posner on the problems the religious right is having coalescing around an alternative:
I were the betting sort, I’d wager that no concrete endorsement will come out of this, and there will be regrets afterwards. Those regrets were assuaged in 2008 with the selection of Sarah Palin. If Romney ends up being the nominee, which he in all likelihood will, the pressure will be on to come up with a similarly thrilling (for the religious right) running mate.
I think they’ll want a Southerner too so I’d bet on Perry.
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