It really doesn't.
In the first place, none of us would vote for him. We know he's a piece of rotten pond scum (with no offense intended to fresh, unspoiled pond scum). We know his politics and policies make him totally abhorrent to any sane, rational, democratic mind, so his little financial/ethical scandals or the lack thereof are meaningless.
In the second place, however, his supporters do not see anything wrong with his behavior. They do not expect their superiors to be held to the same standards, whether morally or ethically. This is how they can vote with a clean conscience for a philanderer like McCain or Gingrich, not bat an eye at the whole Bristol Palin pregnancy thing, and tolerate a dozen double standards an hour. The rank and file BELIEVES IN double standards. They have no problem with the banksters getting away with massive nation-destroying greed because, well, because they're rich and they're allowed to! God wouldn't let them get away with it if God didn't want it to be that way.
This is why you can't reason with them. Their "logic" is very different from ours. If you point out to one of them that Bill Clinton may have had affairs and he was almost hounded out of office by a guy who had even worse morals, it simply won't compute with them. Newt Gingrich, in their universe, is ALLOWED to have lax morals and be forgiven. His excuses, just like John McCain's or Larry Craig's, are accepted by the followers because that double standard is part of their belief system. It's not part of ours, and that's why Bill Clinton's infidelity was bad, but Ensign's wasn't.
For a lot of the people who support Santorum and Gingrich and even Romney, death is more real than life, and it's made that way because the institutions that maintain control over the masses know that they can do so by reinforcing both a fear of death and a belief that death is more real and much more longer lasting than mere life. Life becomes insignificant -- for the masses, but not for the elites -- and they have to look at the glory to come after death but not seek death. It doesn't make any sense to those of us who are rational, because it's a direct contradiction. But it works for them. It enables them to live in a world that frightens them almost beyond bearing and yet death frightens them more.
Because of this, Rick Santorum's favorable mortgage, his cyberschooling of his kids, none of that matters to the people who vote for him.
It really doesn't.
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