Live-Slogging the Rick Santorum Concession Speech

The Santorum room on the CNN live-stream is eerily quiet until the campaign fluffer starts them chanting “We pick Rick! We pick Rick!” Rick Santorum, in a powder blue tie and grey suit, takes the stage. Santorum doesn’t look happy. Of course, Santorum doesn’t look happy. He never looks happy. But he looks even unhappier tonight. “Three states, three winners,” he says, “What a great country.” He makes his supporters applaud Newt Gingrich. “Great job. Good job,’ he says. Then he thanks his wife. Again. “We have six of our seven children with us,” he says, and points to them. There are a lot of ugly sweater vests in the crowd onstage.

Santorum rebuts Hillary Clinton’s it takes a village—timely!—and then says “it was a family decision to step forward” into the presidential race and “back into the firing line.” He says “something” about America “was out of whack,” and that inspired Teabaggers to take to the streets. He says his family saw the Tea Party and decided they were going to take action against the government “robbing every man, woman and child” and business in America…

He reminds us his granddaddy was a coal miner who “dug his way to freedom” for his family. He then evokes 9/11 and says “this campaign was not going to be about tearing anybody down. It was not going to be about negative values…it was going to be about the working class values.” He says President Obama was right when he said Americans hold on tightly to their guns and their Bibles. “Those are the people left behind,” he says. He seems to be explicitly saying that red states are suffering at the hands of the blue states.

“Let me assure you, we’re going to Florida. And then we’re going to Arizona and Colorado” and every other state, he says. “And we’re going to deliver a different message” from the other Republican candidates. “I plan to be a little different. I’m going to talk about how we’re going to have a Republican Party…that makes sure everyone in this country has the opportunity to rise.” All of a sudden, he’s John Edwards? If he talks about the Two Americas, I hope Edwards sues him. Santorum says that the idea that if we just cut taxes and regulations everything will be fine is not true. He says we need to create educational and training opportunities to ensure that even poor kids can dream to become President of the United States.

Someone just bellowed “something-something-GAY!” from the back of the room. Heckler? Or homophobe? Could be either. Anyway, Santorum is again talking about how marriage is a great poverty deterrent. (He is, by the way, not mentioning the actual word poverty, because that has all sorts of liberal cooties all over it.) Santorum talks about “that beating sound.” Is he talking about masturbating? Nope! It’s the pulse of America! He thanks South Carolina for “that beautiful muzzle,” and then he corrects himself, “that beautiful muzzle-loader I got yesterday.” And then he’s out. Man, there are a lot of babies in this crowd.

The only speech that’s left is the conquering hero. Current results have Newt Gingrich up by 14 points. I wonder how smug he’ll be? Won’t be long until we find out.