Santorum neologism spreads to Romney

February 14, 2012

A new website SpreadingRomney.com now appears prominently among Internet search results for Mitt Romney's last name and defines romney as: "to defecate in terror". Spreading Romney was inspired by the santorum neologism coined in Dan Savage's column  in response to comments made by former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum about homosexuality; Savage's readers voted to define santorum as: "the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex."

While defining romney as a, the word "terror" in the definition given at SpreadingRomney.com links to an article that appeared January 5 in  titled "Mitt Romney's Dog Incident Comes Back To Haunt Him". The article describes a 1983 incident where Romney was reported to have affixed his family’s pet named Seamus to the roof of their vehicle for 12 hours while on a car trip to Canada; press coverage of the matter recounted how the animal let loose its bowels due to a fear response during the experience.

Similar to online searches leading to the santorum neologism website originally created by Dan Savage, SpreadingSantorum.com, queries for Romney yielding top search results for SpreadingRomney.com are not limited only to Google but extend to other search engines including as well.

 quoted search engine expert, who observed that the website had likely risen of late in search results: "I don’t recall seeing it recently, so it appears to be a new gain."

 reported that as of yesterday, SpreadingRomney.com had received 3,416 clicks from  and 1,261 posts on. The site appeared third in a Google search for Romney, directly below the former Governor's Wikipedia page.

In a 2003 interview with the Associated Press, Rick Santorum compared legalizing to supporting. Readers of the  advice column selected a new definition for the Senator’s last name, and Savage created a website SpreadingSantorum.com to promulgate the spread of the phenomenon. The term became a prominent result in searches online, and gained dominance on including Google, Bing, and Yahoo!.

Rick Santorum himself has acknowledged and discussed the existence and prevalence of the santorum neologism phenomenon; he was quoted by  on his assessment of Google's response: "To have a business allow that type of filth to be purveyed through their website or through their system is something that they say they can't handle. I suspect that's not true." Santorum criticized the response of the press to the phenomenon in a 2011 radio interview, saying, "It's offensive beyond, you know, anything that any public figure or anybody in America should tolerate, and the mainstream media laughs about it."

The company manages the  for the website SpreadingRomney.com; the site was registered by an, Indiana-based company named Ayokay LLC which was formed on January 1. The website reportedly started operating on January 10. commented upon it on January 12 on her program . The founder of SpreadingRomney.com, Jack Shepler, informed Sullivan that he holds no ties to any political campaign group and formed the website out of a.

 noted that there may be another this time derived from the last name of presidential candidate Newt Gingrich; linking to an established website for SpreadingGingrich.com. That site is currently asking visitors to submit suggestions for a new definition of gingrich.