Ex-GOP candidate says ‘pure democracy not the way to run a country’

Former Republican Pennsylvania Senator and presidential candidate Rick Santorum has said that Ohio’s vote to back abortion rights and marijuana legalisation shows that “pure democracies are not the way to run a country”.

The rightwing commentator, who was booted from CNN after making disparaging comments about Native Americans, appeared on the far-right network Newsmax on Tuesday night to take part in its election coverage.

“Remember these elections, off-year elections, odd number elections are very low turnout elections,” he said, according to Mediaite. “They are base elections and the Democrats have traditionally, number one, outspent us, not just on odd number year elections, but generally speaking.”

As the bases of the parties are in flux, with Democrats attracting more college-educated suburban voters and the Republicans garnering the support of working-class voters, including growing numbers of Black voters and socially conservative Latinos, some observers have noted that non-presidential year elections, which in the past have the turf of Republicans with the backing of older voters who tend to vote more often, might grow to become more Democratic territory.

“Their base is more ginned up to go out and vote generally than Republicans,” Mr Santotrum said of Democrats. “We’ve seen this now for the last several years, and so a base election, they — Democrats — outspend, and you put very sexy things like abortion and marijuana on the ballot, and a lot of young people come out and vote.”

“It was a secret sauce for disaster in Ohio. I don’t know what they were thinking, but um, that’s why I thank goodness that most of the states in this country don’t allow you to put everything on the ballot because pure democracies are not the way to run a country,” he added.

More than 56 per cent of voters backed establishing a constitutional right to abortion and 57 per cent voted to legalize marijuana.

“Yikes – the marijuana thing, we have just unthinkingly as a country embraced that,” Newsmax host Greg Kelly said.

“Rick Santorum can’t hide his love for authoritarianism after Americans rejected the extreme politics of MAGA Republicans,” the account Republicans against Trump wrote on X.

“What’s funny about Santorum’s comments about abortion and weed being sexy for young people in a pure democracy is that the median voter age in Ohio is 51,” Biden DNC delegate and former Obama White House staffer Christopher Hale added.

Bridgeport, Pennsylvania councilman Tony Heyl said: “You know things are going well when Rick Santorum is sad.”