Here’s proof that we’re living in crazytown: After all the different reports about what the Republican party did wrong during the 2012 election, Rick Santorum goes and delivers a cogent analysis of one of the party’s major messaging problems. As Politico reports, Santorum complained that during the Republican National Convention in Tampa, they only celebrated the CEO and not the worker on the stage:
“One after another, they talked about the business they had built. But not a single—not a single —factory worker went out there,” Santorum told a few hundred conservative activists at an “after-hours session” of the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference in Washington. “Not a single janitor, waitress or person who worked in that company! We didn’t care about them. You know what? They built that company too! And we should have had them on that stage…when all you do is talk to people who are owners, talk to folks who are Type A’s who want to succeed economically, we’re talking to a very small group of people,” he said. “No wonder they don’t think we care about them. No wonder they don’t think we understand them. Folks, if we’re going to win, you just need to think about who you talk to in your life.”
You guys, Santorum is right about this. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for Republicans to put a few blue-collar speakers on their stage. But they didn’t, and at some points the RNC looked like an empowerment seminar for CEOs. Of course, Santorum‘s complaint is just part of his whole political posturing—he’s always fancied himself as the Republican Party’s blue-collar everydude—and his politics are just as pro-business and anti-worker as any other Republican. But still, in many ways, this speech sounds like the kickoff for the Santorum 2016 campaign. Get ready to find a whole lot of Santorum on your blue collars for the next few years!