TAKING THE REPUBLICANS SERIOUSLY
IT'S NOT POSSIBLE

By: Justin Raimondo

I was hoping never to have to write about the Santorum surge, yet I knew, in my hearts of hearts, it was meant to be. After all, the more Newt Gingrich talked – and talked, and talked – the more likely even Republican primary voters were to be repulsed by the vastness of his self-regard. It was inevitable that the Gingrich bubble would burst, and the next logical place for the thoroughly neoconized – that is, lobotomized — conservative “mainstream” to go is certainly not Ron Paul.

Santorum inherited those voters by default. For these people, the Iraq war never happened, or, if it did, it occurred in an alternate universe where the Iraqis pelted us with rose petals upon our arrival, instead of a hail of bullets, just like Richard Perle and the gang said they would. They have learned nothing since the Bush era: frozen in time, they are the party’s zombies, cheering the slogans of a long discredited cause. Santorum and Romney are competing for the Republican undead vote, with the latter doing his best to prove his pro-war credentials. The military option in Iran, said Romney during what was billed as the final debate, is not just “on the table – it’s in our hand.” Well, not quite yet, Mitt: you haven’t got your finger on the trigger just yet. And god willing you never will.

Yet Santorum manages to out-warmonger even this, boasting that he went up against George W. Bush in pushing “crippling sanctions” on Iran, and pointing to his campaign to fund Iranian exile groups – money he claims has been cut by the evil Obamaites, who are more than glad to fund the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Libya. Santorum scores extra points for implicitly pandering to the Obama-is-a-secret-Muslim meme: although we probably won’t see him signing on to the theory that Obama is the love child of Malcolm X, that part of Santorum’s debate performance was a dog whistle aimed in the direction of outright loons.

Like Michele Bachmann, whose penchant for making up “facts” may have had something to do with her campaign’s early demise, Santorum just doesn’t know what he’s talking about:

“When I was born, less than 10 percent of the federal budget was entitlement spending. It's now 60 percent of the budget. 

”Some people have suggested that defense spending is the problem. When I was born, defense spending was 60 percent of the budget. It's now 17 percent. If you think defense spending is the problem, then you need a remedial math class to go back to.”

In 1958, when Santorum was born, defense spending was 38 percent of the total budget: it’s now 58 percent if you count the interest on the military spending portion of total federal outlays and the costs of past wars, including veterans’ benefits and medical care. The “official” figure is 20 percent, so the Senator doesn’t even get that right. I understand what launching a presidential campaign on a shoestring entails, but if he’s going to make this one of his talking points, couldn’t he at least do a few minutes of pre-debate Googling?

It was amateur hour on the debate stage in Arizona on Wednesday night, and Santorum was far from alone is playing loose with the facts. Both Romney and Santorum have taken up this Hezbollah-in-Latin-America theme, a campaign talking point that stands right up there with the most far out of Laurie Mylroie’s fantasies and the Niger uranium forgeries in terms of credibility.  Yet that hasn’t stopped the neoconservatives from pushing this idea for years, with little or no real evidence to back it up: indeed, the lack of evidence provides plenty of space for pure speculation, which is what they’re best at.  You can be sure that when some right-wing “anti-terrorist” expert pontificates before a congressional committee, they’re bound to bring up the alleged “Hezbollah training camp” that supposedly exists on Margarita Island, a small, balmy island off Venezuela’s north coast. With it’s low-growing vegetation, small size, and paths well-worn by the inhabitants, Margarita Island is as unlikely a place for a terrorist training camp as, say, Fire Island. It would be discovered five minutes after being set up: the sound of shots would echo through the inlets and coves like thunderclaps. As Michele Salcedo put it in the Florida Sun-Sentinel:

“Recently, Gen. James T. Hill, the commander of the U.S. Southern Command, told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that ‘radical Islamic groups associated with Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Gamaat and others’ are ‘operating out of ..... locales, like Margarita Island off Venezuela.’

“Hill has never visited the island.

“The net fishermen, small-business owners, bank presidents and government officials who call Margarita Island home say Hill is all wrong. They would like him to take a drive around the island and through the peninsula to see what they already know.

“Strangers would have a hard time hiding here. The rough, low-growing vegetation offers no cover. Munitions explosions would echo off the mountains and amplify off the water. The coves and inlets are as familiar to the people who live here as the creases in their weather-worn faces. A dozen flights wing to and from Caracas each day, giving passengers on board a birds-eye view of the peninsula.”

The Romney-Santorum theme of a looming Latin American jihadist threat is a narrative that defies refutation for the simple reason that there is zero evidence to support it. When one boils down these reports, such as one issued by the American Enterprise Institute, the most one can say is that Hezbollah’s fundraising activities are international in scope and include contributions from some sources in Latin America. This is a very far cry from setting up operational centers and “terrorist training camps,” but that doesn’t deter the authors of this particular narrative, who aren’t interested in evidence, only in scaremongering. In short, the whole thing is a complete fabrication, on the same level as the Obama-is-a-secret-Muslim meme. All of which makes it hard to take the two leading Republican candidates seriously.