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Zeke Miller has a piece this morning arguing that Rick Santorum may excel in the Iowa caucuses, but given the campaign’s message, he’ll likely struggle to compete just about everywhere else.
To help prove the point, Miller points to quotes like these.
Indeed, Santorum appeals to Iowa voters with a mix of unusual lines that won’t play outside the Hawkeye State.
“Diversity creates conflict. If we celebrate diversity, we create conflict,” Santorum told the audience in Ottumwa.
I mean, really. Who says things like this?
Even among those who celebrate uniform homogeneity most realize that the American ethos finds an inherent good in diversity. E pluribus unum … a nation of immigrants … strength through diversity — these are staples of American thought and have been for generations.
“If we celebrate diversity, we create conflict”? What?
This, of course, isn’t the only thing that’s likely to stand in Santorum’s way once the dust settles in Iowa. The former senator has invested enormous energy in the Hawkeye State — Santorum is the only candidate to visit every county in Iowa — but the focus and lack of resources have left him with no meaningful prospects anywhere. Santorum has no national network and no meaningful campaign infrastructure outside Iowa, and though he’d likely get a significant boost if he manages to finish first on Tuesday, it’s tough to see a single other primary or caucus state where the Pennsylvanian can expect to be competitive.
And that would be the case even if Santorum had a fantastic message. As “diversity creates conflict” helps demonstrate, he doesn’t even have that.
Update: A conservative blogger alerted me to a more detailed report on this, suggesting Zeke Miller’s report was misleading. Santorum, instead of saying “If we celebrate diversity, we create conflict,” actually said, “If we celebrate diversity then we lay the groundwork for that conflict.”
I’m not sure how much that improves matters, but quotes should always be accurate, and Miller’s report apparently omitted some of Santorum’s words. The meaning appears to be practically identical, though.
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K in VA on January 01, 2012 11:24 AM:
I'd dearly love to see Little Ricky fade into oblivion, not to be heard from again until the day one of his daughters very publicly comes out as a radical feminist lesbian Democratic candidate for some public office in a very blue state.
Walker on January 01, 2012 11:25 AM:
Remeber, this is someone who has said that it is intolerance and bigotry for someone to point out his anti-homosexual beliefs.
Gummo on January 01, 2012 11:30 AM:
“Diversity creates conflict. If we celebrate diversity, we create conflict,”
How delightfully anti-American!
Santorum for Traitor-in-Chief!
withay on January 01, 2012 11:34 AM:
Romney or Newt will see his success in Iowa as a good reason to choose him as the running mate. A sweet ticket to defeat either way.
David Carlton on January 01, 2012 11:37 AM:
Actually, I think lots of people believe what Santorum is saying. Take the Tea Party: They want to "take their country back," right? From whom? The majority of the electorate who voted for Obama? You have to realize that many Americans identify the country with their own group [this is notoriously true of white southerners], and while they can't simply impose their will on the rest of the country, that doesn't mean they don't want to and won't respond to someone who says this. Of course, the irony is that Santorum's people [Italian Catholics] would have been considered enemy aliens by Iowa evangelicals within my memory. Culture wars make strange foxhole mates.
Kathryn on January 01, 2012 11:38 AM:
What does "diversify creates conflict" mean to Mr. Santorum, inquiring minds want to know? Would Mr. Santorum divide his supporters into white supporters, Hispanic supporters or supporter, black supporters or supporter, etc. It's nonsensical really and kind of sad.
Santorum seems a sincere but frighteningly misguided zealot. His beliefs are not rooted in facts, but in right wing Catholic ideals that I doubt the Pope even shares. The Roman Catholic Church membership is loaded with diversity for all it's many faults.
hate this inkblot crapthca stage!
john sherman on January 01, 2012 11:39 AM:
Maybe that's why the House spent an entire day reaffirming "One Nation Under God" as the national motto; that "E pluribus unum" one looks like it could make trouble.
schtick on January 01, 2012 11:42 AM:
I would really love to see the outcome of a primary with "none of the above" in the listing.
crapcha....captic rityearc....no
susan on January 01, 2012 11:43 AM:
I fail to see any daylight between this man and the Taliban mullahs. he is promoting the English-speaking version of Sharia law the his ilk so loudly vilifies.
hells littlest angel on January 01, 2012 11:47 AM:
What is diversity in Iowa? People who like mayonnaise and people who like Miracle Whip? Ivory and ivory, live together in perfect harmony.
martin on January 01, 2012 11:50 AM:
Yes, once the master race has taken over, all will be well in Santorum's Thousand Year Reich.
stormskies on January 01, 2012 11:57 AM:
Yes, once the master race has taken over, all will be well in Santorum's Thousand Year Reich.
*********
And they all live in PLEASANTVILLE the movie that Santorum wrote, directed, and starred in ......
Squid696 on January 01, 2012 11:59 AM:
I really wish he had a transcript to go with this. I hate relying on a selected quote, even when it seems as clear-cut as this.
DAY on January 01, 2012 12:01 PM:
Fundamentalism is strict adherence to specific theological doctrines usually understood as a reaction against Modernist theology.
In other words, as they sang in Inherit the Wind, "Give me that Old Time Religion, it's good enough for me."
Plays well in Iowa, not so much in the Other America.
T-Rex on January 01, 2012 12:09 PM:
White supremacists love Iowa because it's a last bastion of white racial purity. But Santorum may also mean that conformity must be the law of the land, and deviations from it harshly suppressed. In other words, if you aren't Christian, you should damn well celebrate Christmas anyway, and call it Christmas, not "holidays," strong emphasis on the word Christ, and you should not complain when your tax money pays for a Nativity scene on the court-house lawn. If you're left handed, you should damn well learn to write with your right hand like normal people. If you're a gay man, you should deny it, work to "convert" other gays, and marry a woman who thinks God has chosen her to "cure" you. If you're black, you should suffer the harshest social ostracism for daring to suggest that there is anything about American history that is not pure, good and wonderful, or that your ancestors shouldn't have been grateful to be brought here. Otherwise, not only your patriotism but that of everyone who ever heard you speak is highly suspect. If you are even related to someone you never knew who wasn't a drum-beating American patriot, you had better "refudiate" all of his views loudly and constantly, and even then we'll know it's secretly in your blood. Basically, that's conservative philosophy and the conservative mind-set.
Brenna on January 01, 2012 12:23 PM:
@withay -
I think Chris Christie is a lock for VP.
Daddy Love on January 01, 2012 1:11 PM:
To be fair, it did poll better than his first idea, "In white there is right."
jjm on January 01, 2012 1:27 PM:
The GOP seems mostly to be made up of very, very narrow minded people, with an even more cramped view of their 'fellow Americans.' Frank Bruni in the NYT ends up commending (!!???) Romney for not being as extremist and therefore not alienating huge swaths of our populace -- rendering him alone among the GOP candidates capable of actually running the government of so many diverse people.
But ... seriously, Romney's as narrow minded as the rest. He sees everything through the lens of privileged white people (while accusing Obama of being like Marie Antoinette!).
The case against diversity is made by people whose minds and hearts are not big enough to grasp anything or anyone that isn't exactly like themselves. They have no horizon beyond what they see in their own mirrors.
As the essayist/ novelist Natalia Ginzburg once wrote, we promote all the little virtues like thrift--but what about "the BIG virtues?" like hospitality, generosity, kindness even to strangers?
So egocentric, we imagine the entire society in our image and no other. What a stupid, endless mirroring that leads us nowhere.
LJL on January 01, 2012 1:29 PM:
You ask who says, “Diversity creates conflict. If we celebrate diversity, we create conflict." It's the White Tribe who say that because it is congenitally uncomfortable with the new multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-gendered, multi-educated America they find themselves surrounded by. They want their White, Christian patriarchy back where Ozzie knew best and Harriet knew her place. That's why this nonsense strikes such a responsive chord with the corn huskers in Iowa and elsewhere.
hornblower on January 01, 2012 1:49 PM:
IDIC
c u n d gulag on January 01, 2012 1:55 PM:
After Iowa, "Frothy Freaky Boy" is praying that "God will provide," and bring him the nomination.
Rick - God's not that into you. And neither is his son.
navamske on January 01, 2012 2:53 PM:
@David Carlton
You've interpreted the syntax of the sentence incorrectly. When they say, "We want to take our country back," they mean back to about 1692.
Skip on January 01, 2012 2:55 PM:
Santorum's an idiot. There's wide diversity even among the most lock-step white Christian males. Just look at penis lengths.
dr2chase on January 01, 2012 2:55 PM:
But-but-but... Santorum is *Catholic*. Not so long ago, he was one of "them".
navamske on January 01, 2012 3:01 PM:
@Brenna
I could see Christie sweeping the veepstakes by a wide margin.
WTF? Now craptcha uses diacritics?
John in TX on January 01, 2012 3:15 PM:
"Diversity creates conflict. If we celebrate diversity, we create conflict," Santorum told the audience in Ottumwa.
Decoded message to bitter, old white Tea Partyers: "If we keep letting the spics and niggers in, they're going to take over."
Rick "Frothy Mixture" is a profoundly creepy person and deeply delusional. In a sane world he'd be banished from public life, perhaps even thrown in an asylum. His ugly racist messages may have appeal for Iowa Evangelicals but the rest of the country will continue to view him as the slimy, creepy laughingstock that he is.
chi res on January 01, 2012 4:14 PM:
Hey, Ricky-boy, why don't you come to my neighborhood and spew that hateful shit.
I wouldn't bet a nickel on you coming out alive.
zandru on January 01, 2012 4:40 PM:
@T-Rex: Nice summary!
In fact, you bet "diversity creates conflict." But it's a conflict that can result in a superior course of action to a too-traditional path unanimously agreed to by an echo-chamber group of overprivileged WASPy men.
You want to see some stupid echo-chamber-driven decisions? Look at the CIA in the 1950s, 1960s, etc. They were nearly all Yalies, from the Skull'n'Bonez frat. Assassinations of democratically-elected leaders. Bay'o'Pigs. Training up local death squads. Tests of how deadly diseases might be spread in biological warfare - by actually spreading diseases through the subway systems of large metropolitan areas. Making people think they were going crazy by dosing them with LSD. Giving AN ELEPHANT an OD of LSD, fer g-d's sake. (Yes, it died.)
They were all basically overgrown frat boys with far too much in common, unlimited funding, operating in secrecy - and there was nobody to tell them NO! Are you out of your frackin' minds?!
"Conflict" is not in and of itself bad, just as politics isn't inherently bad. It's the way people interact.
thebewilderness on January 01, 2012 9:42 PM:
It has been my observation that the word diversity is being used more and more often as a synonym for opposition.
You read the blogs and people claim that it is their first amendment right to express their opposition to facts with their opinion, and if you do not welcome their doing so you are rejecting diversity of opinion.
Delcoed on January 01, 2012 9:50 PM:
Santorum is not a Pennsylvanian. He resides in Virginia, though he still owns a property he sometimes rents out in Pennsylvania. This became an issue in his 2006 wipeout when it was revealed he was billing his Pennsylvania school district for the cyber education of his chilren who lived in Virginia.
Please -- Pennsylvania has enough problems, with Tom Corbett et al. Don't hang Tricky Ricky around our necks, too!
MN on January 02, 2012 2:01 AM:
I consider myself extremely liberal (I certainly don't consider Obama a liberal), but as a student of evolutionary psychology, I have to agree with the statement "diversity creates conflict" as it relates to physical and/or cultural differences within a group, or having sub-groups within a group. Numerous studies have shown that humans tend to favor people more like themselves. I'ts not biological determinism to recognize this; its just a tendency that our better nature (read: intelligence) has to overcome. We need to make diversity work so that we can survive as a species.
Harry Black on January 02, 2012 8:14 AM:
"celebrate uniform homogeneity"? Is there any other type? Benen needs an editor--and a little more political savvy. Santorum shouldn't fade too fast. He helps splinter the Republican field. And since the Republican candidates represent an immediate threat to the well-being of most Americans (the 99%), the more they fight among themselves, the better. Try saying "President Romney" or "President Gingrich" or "President Bachmann" and you will understand why this so important.
daniel rotter on January 02, 2012 11:46 PM:
"Not the same meaning as alluded to in this article."
Yes, it is. Even the fuller quote shows Santorum bashing diversity, which is where Steve's criticism came in.
"...he was just disparaging Democrats, not diversity."
Santorum: "The problem in most countries is that diversity creates conflict. If we celebrate diversity then we lay the groundwork for that conflict."
You must have a different definition of "disparaging" than I have.
D Holmes on January 04, 2012 10:39 AM:
I want to know what does it means when they say we are going to take our country back.To me that seam to mean that this country is one groups country.I have never heard of this statement until Obama became President.Why havn't we here this statement before.We have had 43 Presidents and this was the first one that was not white and now all we can hear is we are going to take our country back what dose that mean? This seam to me that this country is only one certain group country, is that what it mean. I though this was the US but when I hear these words that seam to knock some groups out,and they are not part of the US.