I assume you’ve been paying close attention to Rick Santorum’s rhetoric. If you’re not, then jeez, this must be a really boring political season for you. But if you are paying attention, then you know that Rick Santorum says things, and that the things he says, they mean things, other things, important things. Republicans seem to agree: Santorum is a good speaker, which is important in a President, unless that President is Barack Obama, in which case good speaking skills only prove what a strange, dangerous Other he is.
Santorum does a good job of laying down verbal signposts in his speeches. You can tell when he wants you to pay attention because he uses vocal inflections to drive home how much he cares about freedom and families and this great country. If the voice in your head reads those italicized words with a gravitas-infused drop in pitch and decrease in speed, then congratulations, that’s how it’s supposed to work.
Santorum’s been getting plenty of praise as a passionate and able public speaker, which, compared to Mitt Romney, he is. But like any other public speaker, he’s got his crutches. Like Dwayne Wade with the game on the line, you know he’s gonna go right and you know there isn’t much you can do to stop him. So the next time you’re listening to the former Senator, keep an ear open for Rick’s rhetorical go-to moves.
The Air Pass, or Why? Because I Just Asked and Answered My Own Question
In high school gym class, we played a game created by our gym teacher, Elmer Schwankl (real name, no gimmicks). The game was called—wait for it—SchwanklBall, and it was awesome. Among the rules: you could handle the ball but couldn’t take more than two steps with it unless you executed an “air pass.” To perform an “air pass,” a player simply threw the ball in the air and then ran under it to catch it again. Santorum’s favorite rhetorical construction, the one he uses most frequently, is a verbal version of the “air pass.”
What does the air pass sound like in a speech? It sounds like this. Does it work? Yes, it works. Does it engage the audience? Apparently so.
Why does it work? Because it allows the self-interlocutor to define the terms of an issue however he’d like. Does it free the speaker to ignore contrary points of view? Yes, yes it does. Does it also imbue the speaker with an aura of pseudo-intellectual curiosity? Yes, it does that too.
Why does Santorum do it? To let you know he’s making a point. Does it get annoying when used too much? I think so, but then I also think “Two and a Half Men” is howlingly unfunny, so there’s another way in which I differ from the average Santorum supporter.
This construction’s been popular among American conservatives since at least the George W. Bush era. Witness Curt Schilling’s Congressional testimony on steroids all the way back in 2005:
Members of the Committee, do I believe steroids are being used by Major League Baseball players? Yes. Past and present testing says as much. Do I believe we should continue to test and monitor steroid usage in Major League Baseball? Absolutely.
Do conservatives consider this effective argumentation? Yes, absolutely. Is this construction nothing more than rhetorical icing slathered over simple, declarative sentences? Yes, absolutely. Can this construction be used to humorous effect outside politics? It sure can, Other Barry, it sure can.
“So They Can Control Your Lives,” or Paranoia Strikes Deep
At this point in the discussion, I am legally obligated to name-check both Richard Hofstadter and his seminal (author’s note: in a column about Santorum? WORD CHOICE) The Paranoid Style in American Politics. With that formality out of the way, I am now free to examine what kind of rubes fall for this crap.
“So they can control your lives,” is a newer addition to the Santorum rhetorical arsenal, but it’s a powerful dog-whistle. A reasonable observer might ask, “Who’s the ‘they’ in that sentence?” to which a Santorum supporter might respond with a scoff and another question: “You mean you don’t already know?”
In this construction, “controlling your lives” is an end in and of itself. The goal is not to control your lives in order to do something else; mere control is all “they” desire. This was a brilliant literary device when Orwell first invoked it, and Santorum would seem to be happy with the implied parallels; if Santorum’s right, then “they” are nothing less than the second coming (first coming? Coming? Author’s note: WORD CHOICE) of Big Brother.
In his latest factually questionable broadside, Santorum has positioned “us” as “the ones who stand for science and technology,” while Democrats want people to fear oil drilling, “so they can control your lives.” That’s it. Full stop. There’s no insinuation of Democrats getting rich off non-fossil fuels, no whisper of crony capitalism, no tacit “ya want an omelette, ya gotta break some eggs” defense of petroleum extraction. The goal is to “control your lives,” and somewhere, the imaginary hag-faced Democrats who actually want this are gathered around their cauldron, gnashing their teeth and searching frantically for a way to stop Rick Santorum from telling the truth so damn hard.
The Chavez-Ahmadinejad Axis, or Good Ol’ Fashioned Hyperbolic Cray-Cray
Did you know the presidents of Venezuela and Iran are creating, “jihadist camps in Central, uh, Latin America, which Rick has been warning about?” It’s true, and according to Foster Friess, thank god someone’s talking about it!
Rick Santorum said so, and obviously, he wouldn’t speak about an issue he doesn’t know about. Like the time he said “any type of sexual activity has no place in the military,” which has to come as a shock to married service members. But, again, Rick Santorum has declared it thus, and attempts to claim otherwise are indicative of a marrow-deep liberal bias. Article 120 of the UCMJ defines “wrongful sexual conduct,” which would seem to imply that the UCMJ also recognizes “rightful” sexual conduct, but please, spare Rick Santorum your logical trickery, for this is the form taken by the Father of Lies.
This is what pundits euphemistically term “red meat.” It “energizes the base,” which is Punditese for “fires up the rubes.” It’s not intended to be factually accurate; it’s intended to appeal to what people feel the answer should be, data and facts to the contrary be damned. At their core, these factually challenged statements are a form of argument-by-anecdote, which Republicans have loved ever since Ronald Reagan invented his first welfare queen. I bet if you think about it, you can think of at least one conservative who has resorted to argument-by-anecdote, and I’d encourage you to do as they do and draw broad, sweeping conclusions from that single data point. It’s always fun to see how the other half lives, amirite?
If at any point in reading this you’ve thought to yourself, “Well, people will see through that, surely,” then I have a bridge in Brooklyn you may be interested in purchasing. At the presidential level of politics, there are very few amateurs—operatives know what works and what doesn’t, and few campaigns have either the willingness or ability to run real-time experiments. So, if Rick Santorum’s words sound increasingly unhinged, keep in mind that there’s at least one American out there who holds a diametrically opposed viewpoint. It’s a big country, and what sounds crazy to some Americans often sounds like a breath of fresh air to other, dumber Americans.
