After several months of fruitless fighting and terrifying campaigning, America's gentle, besweatered hatemonger Rick Santorum has announced he's aborting his bid for President. It seems the best way to deal with the Santorum campaign in death is the way we dealt with it in life: like it was all one terrible, drawn-out joke. Rick Santorum was the worst. But how bad was he, exactly? Let's turn to our friend, the analogy, for help.
Rick Santorum's campaign for President was the political equivalent of drunk sex that goes on to the point of chafing in spite of the fact that neither party is capable of orgasm.
He was never going to get the nomination. Party establishment wasn't wet for him, and at times, Rick seemed like he was running for America Pope instead of President, especially when he said anti-constitutional things like how the Establishment Clause made him want to barf all over or that Barack Obama was a snob for suggesting that kids go to college. But he kept jackhammering away anyway.
Rick Santorum's campaign for President was so bad that it felt like being in labor with a giant baby for several months.
He was supposed to quit ages ago, back before Huntsman and Bachmann and Perry and even Cain dropped out. But Santorum stayed stubbornly embedded in America's political process, refusing to budge in spite of our pushing and heaving. Even after pulling bush league stunts like the time he said that he didn't like welfare because he didn't want to make black people's lives better by giving them someone else's money, and then three days later explained that he was actually saying "blah people." Because nothing is a scourge on society like giving money to the unstylish and indistinct.
Rick Santorum's campaign for President was so bad that it felt like sitting on the train next to someone mumbling to themselves during one of those unfortunate trips where the train randomly stops underground for track work.
It was supposed to be an amusing little jaunt — a 10 minute ride punctuated by nonsensical urban mumblings of a guy who says things like women shouldn't be in combat because of their emotions getting the best of them (and presumably moving them to just start firing a machine gun in all directions while crying). We thought we'd be getting off at the next stop, but were delayed. And thus we were treated to an endless stream of paranoid rambling about how birth control is a license to do things that are contrary to the way things should be.
Rick Santorum's campaign for President was the political equivalent of an ill-fitting sweater vest.
Useless on its own, tacky, retro, and undesirable to a large percentage of the population. And the only people who like him are hipsters or elderly.
Rick Santorum is the annoying friend who is in love with America and won't leave America and Mitt Romney alone so they can make out.
Mitt's electoral dominance had been hard-fought but decisive, and even though the rightest of the right wing is hesitant to support the father of Romneycare, as of a few weeks ago Santorum would have had to win 70% of the remaining up-for-grabs RNC convention delegates in order to win the nomination. But he just couldn't take the hint! We liked him as a friend because he's such a good listener. He's like a brother to us.
Rick Santorum's campaign was like getting into a heated internet argument with a Twitter account that turns out to be a Christian bot.
Rick Santorum's well-established anti-birth control stance has been central to his public rhetoric. And so it came as quite the surprise to people when he denied ever mentioning contraception on Morning Joe the other week. He demand that Puerto Ricans speak English if they want to be part of the US.
Rick Santorum is Ned Flanders.
Rick Santorum is a Ditka mustache and a new haircut away from becoming that character from The Simpsons known for his diddly speech tic and tendency toward cheerfully spouting churchy proclamations. Especially since he made bravely standing up against porn one of his campaign promises, a Flandersy move indeed. Yes, he's a family man with eleventy children whom he loves very much — but he's also a dangerous, regressive zealot who saw it fit to run for the highest office in the country on a "everybody has the freedom to do what Rick Santorum wants" platform.
And some say Rick is like a flower that in the spring becomes the rose.
We'll miss your crazy ass, Santorum. Here's hoping Fox gives you a job saying terrible shit on TV.