Number two

This morning I did something I hardly ever do. I Googled “santorum.” The news about his near-victory was at the top, and the neologism which has been plaguing him is now relegated to number two status.

The Google (and Bing, Yahoo, etc.) problem is complicated, and it is explained here in more detail than most people will want. A lot of Santorum’s supporters think that Google is responsible, and that they are somehow “promoting” the anti-Santorum website, and of course Google has been explaining for years that they are not. The anti-Santorum web site is simply popular, and Google ranking reflects that fact. While there have been instances in which Google has seemingly intervened to downgrade popular but vicious sites, it normally does nothing:

…Google is loathe to touch its results in any way, shape or form. That’s because if it does intervene in any way, there’s some interest group that will immediately claim a bias.

Way back in 2004, an anti-Jewish web site started ranking in Google’s top results for “jew.” Despite Google cofounder Sergey Brin being Jewish and himself disgusted with the result, it stood. Intervention, when Google’s ranking algorithms had spoken, was seen as harmful to user trust.

Google explains and apologizes here for the “jew” search results. Whether they should they apologize for the “santorum” problem or whether that would make the problem worse are beyond my pay grade. What fascinates me right now are the political implications. Millions of Americans will be Googling santorum and seeing what most people consider to be absolutely raunchy filth.

And what about The Children?

There is a case where this result, for this search, is potentially is irresponsible. That’s when children are searching for “santorum,” something that came up when I talked with Talking Points Memo for its story on the Santorum situation yesterday.

It’s fair to say, as the election campaign heats up, some kids might be doing school research about the candidates. Getting that definition is probably what most adults — even gay adults who dislike Rick Santorum — wouldn’t want children to see.

The good news is that if Google’s SafeSearch filter is set to “strict” in Preferences (by default, it’s set to “moderate” and only filters images), Spreading Santorum gets filtered out…

From a political standpoint, this is the sort of thing which has the potential to create a backlash in the man’s favor, and it may have already. It is disrespectful, and it is meant to be. Still, I just can’t see a backlash against the popularity of a disrespectful web site (or a conspiracy theory about it) as enough of a reason to elect the victim of it president.

Santorum’s biggest problem in the national election is that in a hypothetical one-on-one, Obama beats him by ten points. His biggest problem with Republicans ought to be his status as a big government guy. He spouts the social conservative slogans that the hard core socons want to hear, but where it comes to the basic Tea Party principles, he’s weak on states’ rights, and strong on earmarks. Both Bachmann and Perry recently attacked him for the latter, to no avail. That his economic record does not seem to matter is causing some to question the Tea Partiers’ commitment to Tea Party principles, but again, the Tea Party is a coalition of people with various disagreements, and a lot of people claiming to be Tea Partiers do not place the same value on the same principles.

Anyway, I don’t support Santorum, but I think he may be more human than Gingrich.

MORE: Bachmann is now out of the race. I don’t know where her supporters will go, but I doubt it will be to Romney.

AND MORE: Paul Begala is downright mean:

…when you can’t beat the Man-on-Dog guy, who lost his home state by 18 percent, you stink. You really stink.

[…]

There is something that doesn’t love Mitt Romney. Right now that something is the GOP base. It would be ironic if Romney’s futile attempt to earn the love of Republican activists makes it impossible for him to win the affections of independents as well.

The issue here is not Santorum, but the  steadfast single-minded flexibility of the anyone-but-Romney camp. The harder Romney tries to win them over (which he probably can’t anyway), the worse it will be for him.