Red States, Blue Movies

Via Tengrain's place, we have a Think Progress piece that indicates that Mitt will be going after pornography if he wins the presidential election. As an aside, given Mitt's notorious flip-flopping, he probably has a stack of porn that can be seen from space.

If Mitt pursues this crusade against smut (and in the interests of full disclosure, the best smut on the internet can be found here), Mitt could possibly lose the conservative vote. Put bluntly, Red Staters do love their porn, with Utah residents widely reported the top consumers. Conservatives have long had a conflicted relationship with porn- in the 1980's, the regressive Meese Commission compiled its report on the dangers of pornography after viewing a staggering amount of porn, and infamous fundamentalist pastor Jimmy Swaggart had a high profile sex scandal.

Of course, this is not to say that Mitt himself likes porn. There's no evidence that he has cyber sister wives so he can engage in polygamy by proxy. There's absolutely no publicly available evidence that Mitt is a "brony", and no reason to believe that he blew off Rafalca's performance in London out of fear that the NBC cameras would catch him "clopping", rather than clapping. That being said, Mitt may claim to hate porn, but he sure loves that porn money. Mitt Romney sat on the board of the Marriott hotel chain (which makes millions of dollars off of pay-per-view porn) from 1992 to 2001. Mitt was even characterized as a "major pornographer" by a critic in his 2008 presidential bid. As is typical, Mitt takes an "I've got mine, screw you" approach to porn- he's made his porn money, but he wants to pull up the ladder behind him, leaving up-and-coming entreporneurs destitute.

One is also left to wonder whether retired porn star Jenna Jameson will reconsider her support of Romney, of if she also takes that "IGMSY" attitude toward up-and-coming performers.

This unsolicited hard-line attitude toward porn could represent another unforced error on the part of Romney. The GOP conservative base and the disaffected libertarian wing of the party seem to love their porn, let's see if they tell Mitt that he can take their porn when he pries it from their lubed, dead hands.