Top Headline Comments 4-11-12

Happy Wednesday. It's another early day for me, but at least this time I brought news.

The EU Court of Human Blah Blah says that solitary confinement at U.S. supermax prisons does not violate prisoner human rights and so will allow the extradition of Al Qaeda hostage-taker Abu Hamza and four others to stand trial and receive possible sentences to federal pound-them-in-the-ass prisons.

The Weekly Standard has a good piece about how Senate majority leader McConnell steered the JOBS Act to get by reluctant Democrats.

Indonesia was just hit with a major earthquake, in the 8.6 range (USGS is still revising the official number). There has already been one 6.5 aftershock.

T-Paw has officially retired his campaign debt, with help from Rep. Bachmann and Gov. Romney. He also filed papers to officially disband his campaign.

There's going to be an overabundance of Santorum campaign post-mortems today. Let me summarize. Some folks will say it was the primary schedule that sunk him. Some will say it was the Establishment futzing with the rules (e.g. in Florida and Michigan). Some will say it was his social conservatism. All of these people are wrong, especially the last group.

Santorum started this race last year as a long-shot candidate who was widely perceived as not representing all that many Republicans. He ended the race as a long-shot candidate, still perceived as not representing all that many Republicans, but who indisputably attracted solid, respectable support from a core Republican constituency. That's not a shot at him. When a "sure thing" collapses (ahem Hillary), that's news. When a long-shot doesn't quite make it to the finish line, that's just the expected outcome.

It's not like Santorum lost to some upstart that had barely been in politics or anything else before (again, Hillary). Santorum lost to the presumptive nominee, the one everyone thought was going to win. It was, as is typical for Republicans, simply Romney's turn; he paid his dues in 2008 and, no surprise, here he is in 2012. The good news for Santorum is that next time, whether that's 2016 or 2020, he'll have a strong claim for it being his turn.

posted by Gabriel Malor at 06:26 AM

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