Dear God, Santorum Is Right For Once

Little Ricky’s “Elephant Poop In The Room” column in the Inquirer today has some suppositions about the Democratic presidential primary that I think are incorrect, but on balance, I (aaarrrgghhh!!!!) have…to…agree…with…him.

(Man, that was difficult. I’m going to need therapy if I have to keep doing that.)

Here is what he said (sorry about the plug for Prager)…

Last week, when I was on the Dennis Prager radio show, a call came in from a Philadelphia-area Republican. At least he had been a Republican. He called in to announce proudly that he had switched parties to vote in the Democratic presidential primary. He was going to vote for the candidate who opinion polls say would be the weakest Democrat in the November election. That's a foul!

After the interview, I wanted to find this man and yell: "Don't vote!"

Having devoted almost all of my adult life to encouraging people to vote, it truly pains me to write that phrase. Every fiber of my political being recoils at the idea of discouraging any American, any Pennsylvanian, from voting. I've always believed that when it comes to civic participation, the higher the voter turnout the better on Election Day. It doesn't matter if it's higher Republican turnout, Democratic turnout, or Green Cheese Party turnout. It didn't even matter to me if increased turnout hurt my own election prospects. Representative democracy isn't a spectator sport, and participating means voting.

However, Republicans and independents voting in Pennsylvania's Democratic primary is a terrible idea. Republicans and Democrats, people who actually believe what their party stands for, should have the right to choose their own nominees.

Now again, we’re talking about PA and its closed primary system. Michigan, for example, has an open primary where Democrats and Republicans can vote for each other’s candidates (you can argue that that violates the intent of the primary, though, which is a good point - a related post on this topic is here).

I’ve given Santorum "the business" plenty of times in the past for good reason and will do so again in the future I’m sure, but for now, he deserves credit for trying to get some of his brethren to act like adults.

How dare he do the right thing when I was all ready to dump on him again!