Mr. Unmentionable: The Astrology of Rick Santorum

The Iowa Caucus, first of the Republican tests to see who will win that party’s nomination, was held last night. This quaint political exercise, with meetings featuring citizens making speeches, is held in schools, community centers and even people’s homes. Generally deemed irrelevant, the Iowa Caucus revels in the importance of being the first primary in the country (though technically it’s not a primary; it’s a more participatory form of election, called a caucus).

The 2012 primary cycle is a purely Republican affair. It’s a process designed to choose Obama’s opponent in the forthcoming Mercury retrograde 2012 election. That’s important because Obama is considered weak, being blamed for a bad economy and for not having managed to reduce this country’s high unemployment rate. This mix of factors lends a certain underlying tension to these primaries since anyone who emerges as the Republican frontrunner could very well be the next president. And guess who came up on the shovel? The seemingly least likely candidate of all — Rick Santorum, former governor of, and senator from, Pennsylvania.

The entire Republican field this year is a motley crew — a parade of charlatans, bible thumpers and wannabes who can hardly be considered ‘presidential timber’ but who may reflect the positions of Iowa Republican caucus voters. The New York Times reported Tuesday that 58% of caucus participants were evangelical Christians, while Current TV’s Politically Direct mentioned that 87% were over 30 years of age. The caucus itself is a beautiful example of on the ground politics. If all politics were done on this level, our nation would be saved. Say what you want about the candidates themselves, the caucus participants were well-informed and passionate about the political process.

As everyone knows by now, the winners of the Iowa Caucus are Mitt ‘Mr. Moderate’ Romney (by a barely-there eight vote margin), Rick Santorum. Eight votes — divided over the whole state, with about 100,000 votes cast — is a tie. However, Romney (the technical winner) spent 18 times more money than Santorum did; for his part, Santorum spent a year visiting every county in Iowa, earning the respect of voters. Then (in a respectable 3rd place showing) came Ron Paul. But the surprise of the night was the undeniably strong showing of Rick Santorum who, until this past week, was running behind Michele Bachmann with 7% poll numbers. Who is this guy, really?

Beginning in 1994, Rick Santorum served two terms as senator from Pennsylvania. A strong ‘social conservative’ (meaning anti-sex and anti-woman, pandering to the sexually wounded), he has openly stated his desire to ban homosexuality, abortion, and birth control, and generally anything that two consenting adults might do in their bedrooms that does not consist of married, heterosexual sex. During an interview with an AP reporter in April 2003, Santorum created a tidal wave of reaction when he compared homosexual sex to bestiality and incest — the infamous ‘man on dog sex’ remark. Dan Savage, a widely-syndicated columnist (of the Savage Love column) and author (who started at The Onion), was so incensed by Santorum’s remarks that he sponsored a contest to come up with a sexual definition of the term ‘santorum’.

The winning entry: ‘the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes a byproduct of anal sex’. This is what comes up when someone Googles the word ‘santorum’. (It currently seems to have #3 ranking.) Frothy. I am sure you will never forget that.

In 2006, Santorum suffered a humiliating defeat in his bid for a third term in the senate and returned to Pennsylvania, where he has been living on what Paul Krugman calls ‘wingnut welfare’, i.e., a position as ‘senior fellow’ at the right-wing Ethics and Public Policy Center. (The infamous Koch brothers, funders of the Tea Party movement, are major funders of the center.)

So, with nothing better to do and lots of time on his hands, Rick Santorum decides he will run for president. And, in the ‘family values’ tradition begun by the ever-popular Ronald Reagan, Santorum hopes to create a better country through the elimination of sexual freedoms everywhere. Plus he is big on Israel, like most fundamentalist Christians. He is the kind of guy who would not hesitate to bomb Iran in the name of the lord, to protect Jerusalem.

We can get a better idea of the man’s inner workings by looking at his chart. The first thing that stands out is his Sun/Nessus conjunction in Taurus. This is actually Sun square Chiron and conjunct Nessus. Santorum’s sense of self, his expressive abilities, his male ego (basically) are all caught in a square of two centaurs, which implies injured, compromised or sacrificed in some way.

We see someone who lives life as a conventional, security-seeking, family provider who is convinced of his own ‘rightness’ in terms of his particular lifestyle and beliefs. And yet, his very essence is infused with the energy of lustful impulsiveness which leads to acts of sex outside the bounds of marriage. In Taurus Sun/Nessus like this is about inflicting his values on everyone else. And they emerge from a sense of being wounded, whether true or not (Sun square Chiron). With this aspect structure the story of father is going to be interesting and likely challenging to hear.

Part of his inner conflict, on a less than tangible level, has its roots in a Uranus-Neptune square, part of a cycle that comes rarely — about every 35 years. Neptune trying to function in dark, intense, sexual Scorpio is lost in its own spiritual fog, suppressing the dark, ugly reality of what lies beneath. Meanwhile, Uranus in Leo would tear the lid off in order to freely express from the heart, regardless of the chaos and disruption it would create. For Santorum, neither choice is acceptable; he probably panics when he gets Viagra spam. So he turns to the structured world of Saturn in Sagittarius, expressed as a set of rigid moral behaviors and beliefs which he would impose on the rest of the world in order to conceal his own psycho/sexual dilemma. When you think of Saturn in Sagittarius, imagine a vision of God wearing armor.

The picture is completed by the thoroughly feminine Venus/Eris conjunction trining Uranus. Located squarely in the sign of ‘I Am’, we are witness to an underlying psychological need to identify as a fully sexual human being. Eris’s placement here is ironic; not only is she the symbol of personality/identity chaos (so evident in his inner life), Eris also represents the part of the psyche who speaks truth to power against an overarching patriarchy — ideally, that is. She is the castaway woman. Or, she represents the jealous element of the psyche that wants control over everyone’s fun. (If you happen to believe in reincarnation, you can’t help but wonder if Rick Santorum wasn’t a woman in his last life.) Add in the rebellious, ‘anything goes’ energy of Uranus and you have a bomb ready to explode.

He has a lot of planets in fire signs — Venus, Uranus, Eris, Saturn — giving the sensation of a hellfire and brimstone bully, with a smiling face. And guess what — he could be our next president. That is not a prediction, just an acknowledgment of a very real possibility.

We’ll leave the last word to Carl Jung, from his book Concerning Rebirth: “Every calling or profession has its own characteristic persona. … A certain kind of behavior is forced on them by the world, and professional people endeavor to come up to these expectations. … One could say, with a little exaggeration, that the persona is that which in reality one is not, but which oneself as well as others think one is.” (Emphasis added.)

— by Justine Rowinski with Eric Francis