I confess--I liked Santorum

Oh, stop it.






So it took a while for the whole thing to wind down, but with Gingrich's weird (what about his campaign was *not* weird?) concession speech, we've just about closed the book on the GOP 2012 primaries.

I included the video clip above because I love Shep Smith's brutal honesty--all too rare on any cable channel--and it raises a point that I think really did not get enough attention.

Why were some of these guys ever, EVER, taken seriously as presidential candidates?

I mean, come on, Herman Cain? If you're talking about reality-show contestant, maybe. An entertaining speaker, OK. But a serious candidate for president of the United States?

Rick Perry was a dumber George W. Bush and yet still thought this country would go for him. Think about that--Or don't, he obviously didn't.

And Gingrich? How could anyone, especially those in his own party, think his candidacy was a good idea?

This isn't hindsight being 20/20. I was appalled at some of these candidacies from the beginning. Gingrich in particular is a disgraced former politician who damaged his party, has been consistently wrong about everything from foreign policy to education, and has exposed himself not only as a hypocrite but as a shameless shill who will say and do anything to get on television.

A few years ago, when it seemed his political career was effectively over, he was happily appearing at wonkish policy conventions, endorsing things like cap and trade and early iterations of Obamacare. Gingrich Badger didn't give a sh*t: he could pick up the check, get treated like a big shot, sell a few books—he was happy as a clam. But then Fox News started treating him as a go-to pundit when they wanted scathing put-downs of Obama, and his delusions of grandeur kicked in, again.

I'll be honest, I thought Rick Santorum was also kind of a joke at the beginning of this process. But something happened. Santorum went out and campaigned, and low and behold people responded. You can be appalled at his message, and scared that we have people who embraced it, but there was nothing fake about this guy. He had a vision, he articulated it, and people responded. He connected with people, in a way that a Gingrich or a Cain would never really try. I have to respect that.

You can also respect, to some degree, Ron Paul. Ron Paul is a classic third-party candidate. He's radical, idiosyncratic, and has a fervent if small following. It just shows how savvy he is to realize that he has to keep calling himself a Republican in order to get on Fox News. If not for that, he'd be totally ignored.

I know, the process had to play out; this is our system. But what an indictment of our political and media cultures that these frauds and con men could get this far as presidential candidates, simply because they had money and almost unlimited access to television cameras.