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Saturday, January 21, 2012

What is the matter with Rick Santorum?

No eye contact?
In the debates, when Santorum is sticking it to somebody—and he’s usually done his homework—he doesn’t look them in the eye. I want a President who will level his gaze at his opponents when he stabs them... 
I know that some of you are going to say that this reaction to Santorum’s posture in the debates is far overblown, and not far from David Brooks’ hanging an entire epistemology on the perdurable unfalsifiability of trouser creases, but this matter of orientation and proxemics gives me a gut reaction that I don’t like. It’s almost as though Santorum is squeamish about telling the unpleasant truth about his rivals. And that may make him a kinder and more shamefast person, but it is worrisome in a candidate.
Collins gets a negative gut reaction to Rick Santorum?  Well as Frank Luntz notes, politics is gut.  Frank Luntz goes on to state:  "80 percent of our life is emotion, and only 20 percent is intellect. I am much more interested in how you feel than how you think. I can change how you think, but how you feel is something deeper and stronger, and it's something that's inside you. How you think is on the outside, how you feel is on the inside, so that's what I need to understand."
Update:  Santorum battling for third place with Ron Paul in South Carolina...
Update:  No one home at Santorum Sanctum?
Related Posts:
Did Mitt lose South Carolina over Mormonism?
Can Newt win the nomination and then prevail in the general election?  
Update II:   Here is Piers Morgan showing again why he is a hack journalist.  Now Rick Santorum's answer is a good pro life answer--but maybe Rick should have thrown that one back at Piers a bit and challenged him what his motivation was in asking the question in the first place?  Rick (and probably Piers) must know that this question brings up something that is in fact exceedingly rare--why not point that out too?  And even when he is facing Piers, face to face, Rick does not maintain eye contact.  I think it is more of a personal habit than anything else--but it does lessen his public speaking effectiveness.  

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