A reviewer of Santorum’s 2005 book, “It Takes a Family,”
wrote in The Philadelphia Inquirer that Santorum is
“one of the finest minds of the thirteenth century.”
This is no insult: it is the heart of Santorum’s appeal to conservative
evangelicals.
Rick Santorum likes to characterize himself as a working man. But in reality, since losing his last election in 2006, Santorum has earned
$970,000 in 2010 despite seeming sort of unemployed. He is good at criticizing others for a way of life he believes is other than Christian. In 2008, before he was running for president, Santorum actually argued that people who don't share his political views
aren't really Christian.
But is there such thing as a sincere liberal Christian, which says that
we basically take this document and re-write it ourselves? Is that
really Christian? That’s a bigger question for me. And the answer is,
no, it’s not. I don’t think there is such a thing. To take what is
plainly written and say that I don’t agree with that, therefore, I don’t
have to pay attention to it, means you’re not what you say you are.
You’re a liberal something, but you’re not a Christian. That’s sort of
how I look at it.
When you go so far afield of that and take what is a
salvation story and turn it into a liberation theology story, which is
done in the Catholic world as well as in the evangelical world, you have
abandoned Christendom, in my opinion. And you don’t have a right to
claim it.
Rick Santorum recently criticized Obama’s worldview as a “phony theology not based on the Bible.” That is his way of telling his followers that President Obama, a liberal, is not Christian. Although he doesn't spout biblical verse to support his political and social positions, he is the poster child for the evangelical movement by
appealing to "natural law."
Santorum attacks gay rights and abortion not by spouting biblical
verses or goading his audiences’ gut feelings, but by playing the
medieval scholastic theologian and reasoning from first principles.
There is no need to quote St. Paul to prove that homosexual sex is an
affront to the natural order and same-sex marriage a detriment to
civilization: Santorum appeals to natural law, what he calls the
Catholic Church’s “operating instructions for human beings.”[...]
Santorum is not a fundamentalist frothing at the mouth, screeching
out biblical commands (he cites “Divine Providence” often in his
writing, but rarely turns to scripture). When liberal students booed
after he expressed his views on same-sex marriage at an event in New
Hampshire, he did not shout them down, but tried to engage them in a
philosophical discussion. [...]
Natural law is a noble tradition that has shaped Western
jurisprudence, but in the hands of conservative activists like Santorum
it has become a dangerous cult of first principles. Santorum’s positions
are perfectly logical if you accept his founding presuppositions — but,
in his view, those presuppositions are not open to question. The genius
of this emphasis on foundational assumptions is that if you can dismiss
your opponent’s first principles, if you can accuse him of denying
humanity’s “natural purpose,” you can claim to win the debate without
ever considering the content of his argument.
This tactic destroys the possibility for real political dialogue,
since one need only engage with those who share one’s own
presuppositions. Despite Santorum’s calm debating style, his preference
for home-schooling his children and rants against modern higher education suggest he has little genuine interest in open argument and free inquiry.
Natural law uses secular language and allows politicians to couch their public remarks in a more generic way other than citing biblical verse.
You’ve probably heard all the good ones about GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum by now. The one about his “Google problem.” The one about the “man-on-dog sex”
(prompting the greatest journalistic response ever, when the reporter
told Santorum that he was “sort of freaking me out.”) The one about how the Catholic Church’s priest sex abuse scandal was caused by Boston liberalism, or the one about how President Obama should be anti-abortion because he’s black and abortion is like slavery. And so on and so forth.
That’s the Rick Santorum that America has come to know over the last
15 years or so – an unapologetic and almost goofy culture warrior whose
obsessions – like thinking that gay sex is a gateway drug to bestiality –
make him a hero to social conservatives and often a laughing stock to
most everyone else. Santorum’s rise in the 2012 presidential race has
people talking about whether his views on social issues – talk of annulling gay marriages, seemingly questioning the right to even birth control --- make him too extreme to be president – and that’s an important topic to discuss.
But I also think Santorum’s weird sexual bluster can obscure who he
really is, and what truly matters about his suddenly surging campaign.
As a Philadelphia-based political reporter, I arrived in town just seven
months after Santorum became my state’s junior senator. I followed his
12 years on the Washington political stage closely, and I think people
obsessing on the “man-on-dog” stuff are missing the bigger picture. For
one thing, the self-styled “family values” expert has a surprisingly
ambiguous record with his own personal ethics. Also, Santorum’s
legislative record shows that his real workaday agenda was not so much
waging culture wars as protecting the interests of the 1 Percent, the
millionaires and billionaires who funded the modern Republican Party.
You could say that Rick Santorum is just another politician. But that
would be giving him too much credit.
Here’s a Pennsylvanian’s brief guide to the Rick Santorum you don’t know:
1. This compassionate Christian conservative founded a charity that was actually a bit of a scam.
In 2001, following up on a faith-based urban charity initiative around
the 2000 GOP convention in Philadelphia, Santorum launched a charitable
foundation called the Operation Good Neighbor Foundation. While in its
first few years the charity cut checks to community groups for $474,000,
Operation Good Neighbor Foundation had actually raised more than $1
million, from donors who overlapped with Santorum’s political fund
raising. Where did the majority of the charity’s money go? In salary and
consulting fees to a network of politically connected lobbyists, aides
and fundraisers, including rent and office payments to Santorum’s
finance director Rob Bickhart, later finance chair of the Republican
National Committee. When I reported on Santorum’s charity for The American Prospect in 2006,
experts told me a responsible charity doles out at least 75 percent of
its income in grants, and they were shocked to learn the figure for
Operation Good Neighbor Fund was less than 36 percent. The charity –
which didn’t register with the state of Pennsylvania as required under
the law --- was finally disbanded in 2007.
2. Likewise, a so-called “leadership PAC” created by Santorum
that was supposed to fund other Republicans instead seemed to mostly
pay for the lifestyle of Santorum and those around him. My investigation of the America’s Foundation PAC showed
that only 18 percent of its money went to fund political candidates,
less -- and typically far less -- than any other “leadership PACs.” What
America’s Foundation did spend a lot on with what looked like everyday
expenses, including 66 trips to the Starbucks in Santorum’s then
hometown of Leesburg, Va., multiple fast-food outings and expenditures
at Wal-Mart, Target and Giant supermarkets. Campaign finance experts
said the PAC’s expenses – paid for by donations from wealthy businessmen
and lobbyists – were “unconventional,” at best and arguably not legal.
Santorum also funded his large Leesburg “McMansion” with a $500,000
mortgage from a private bank run by a major campaign donor, in a program
that was only supposed to be open to high-wealth investment clients in
the trust, which Santorum was not, and closed to the general public.
3. Santorum was never above mingling his cultural crusades with the everyday work of raising political cash. In
2005, Santorum made headlines – not all positive – for visiting the
deathbed of Terri Schiavo, the woman at the center of a national
right-to-die controversy.What
my Philadelphia Daily News colleague John Baer later exposed was that
the real reason he was in the Tampa, Fla., area was to collect money at a
$250,000 fundraiser organized by executives of Outback Steakhouses,
a company that shared Santorum’s passion for a low minimum wage for
waitresses and other rank-and-file workers. Santorum’s efforts were also
aided by his unusual mode of travel: Wal-Mart’s corporate jet. And he
canceled a public meeting on Social Security reform "out of respect for
the Schiavo family" even as the closed fundraisers went on.
4. Santorum didn’t seem to be against government waste when it came to his family.
During his years in the Senate, Santorum raised his family in northern
Virginia and rarely if ever seemed to use the small house that he
claimed as his legal residence, in a blue-collar Pittsburgh suburb
called Penn Hills. So
Pennsylvania voters were shocked when they found out the Penn Hills
School District had paid out $72,000 for the home cyberschooling of five
of Santorum’s kids, hundreds of miles away in a different state. The cash=strapped district was unsuccessful in its efforts to get any of its money back from Santorum.
5. Washington's lobbyist culture -- Santorum was soaking in it. The
ex-Pennsylvania senator spent much of his final years in government
trying to downplay and defend his involvement in the so-called "K Street
Project," an effort created by GOP uber-lobbyist and tax-cutting
fanatic Grover Norquist and future felon and House majority whip Tom
DeLay. By all accounts, Santorum was the Senate's "point man" on the K
Street Project and he met with Norquist -- at least occasionally and
perhaps frequently -- to discuss the effort to sure that Republicans
were landing well-paying jobs in lobbying firms that were seeking to
then access and influence other Republicans.
6. Santorum had no problem with big government if it was supporting his campaign contributors in Big Pharma.It's
little wonder that Santorum ultimately supported Medicare Part D, a
prescription drug plan for the elderly that has added hundreds of
billions of dollars to the federal deficit and was drafted in such a way
to best help pharmaceutical companies maximize profits from all the
unbridled spending. When Santorum was defeated for a third term in 2006,
an internal memo at the drug giant GlaxoSmithKline said his departure from Washington "creates a big hole that we need to fill.
7. The defender of family values was also slavish in his devotion to a large American corporate behemoth, Wal-Mart: In the wake of the report about Santorum's travel in the Wal-Mart corporate jet, I counted the many ways that Santorum had done the bidding of the world's largest retailer in the Senate,
including battling to limit any increases in the minimum wage and
seeking to make changes in overtime rules that woulld benefit the
company and hurt its blue-collar workforce, tort reform to limit
lawsuits against what is said to be the world's most-sued company, and
changes in charitable giving laws and of course eliminating the estate
tax that would benefit the billionaire heirs of Sam Walton.
8. Santorum has frequently insisted that his political values are guided by his religious values,
and that John F. Kennedy's famous 1960 speech describing a separtion
between the two had done "much harm" in America. But despite inviting
such scrutiny, there's been little discussion of Santorum's ties to
ultra-conservative movements within the Roman Catholic Church Santorum's comments about JFK were made in Rome in 2002 when he spoke at a 100th birthday event for Jose Maria Escrivade Balaguer, founder of the secretive group within the church known as Opus Dei.
Although Santorum says he is not a member of Opus Dei -- which has been
criticized by some for alleged cult-like qualities and ties to
ultra-conservative regimes around the world -- he did receive written permission to attend the ultra-conservative St. Catherine of Siena Church in Great Falls, Va., where
Mass is still conducted in Latin and a long-time priest and many
parishioners are members of Opus Dei, mingling with political
conservatives like Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and former FBI
director Louis Freeh.
9. Santorum isn't above big government-funded boondoggles -- when they're linked to his allies and campaign contributors. Consider the type of project that the Tea Party loves to hate, a $750 million energy plant in Schuylkill County, Pa., that was to convert coal to liquids but needed massive subsidies.
Santorum boasted of his rule in securing an $100 million federal loan
for the project -- which had hired Pennsylvania's top Republican Party
power broker of the 2000s, Bob Asher, as a lobbyist and paid him at
least $900,000. Despite Santorum's efforts, the plant has not been
built.
10. Santorum apparently believes in "an entitlement culture" when it comes for former politicians. After
Tuesday night's virtual tie in the Iowa caucus, the Pennsylvanian spoke
eloquently about his immigrant grandfather working for decades in the
Pennsylvania coal fields and his massive hands; the grandson probably
won't have that problem. Losing an election in 2006 allowed Santorum to
become a poster child for how ex-pols quickly and easily cash in in
America, as a lawyer-rainmaker and joining a "think tank" (that for a
time was called America's Enemies) and as an analyst for the Fox News
Channel and as a board member for Universal Health Services, an ethically challenged company where executives had supported his Senate campaigns. The New York Times' Gail Collins noted that Santorum had earned $970,000 in 2010 despite seeming sort of unemployed.
The real Rick Santorum is indeed a frothy mixture -- of
self-interest, loose ethical standards, and careerism in a career that's
been largely devoted not so much to the social causes about which he
makes headlines as looking out for the interests of big corporations and
the wealthiest 1 Percent of Americans. It's a shame that more voters
don't know that yet. That is the "Google problem" that Santorum actually
deserves.
The dialogue that has surrounded the GOP Tea Party primary has revealed a newly arisen Rick Santorum. It appears that his goal is more focused on social justice rather than corporate needs. There are those who will argue that Rick Santorum wants change our current secular legal system
into one that incorporates religious law.
In reality is Santorum really any different that any other Republican when it comes to holding onto a
common
Republican double standard. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, who
regularly attend church, have their faith questioned repeatedly; while
Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, who rarely attended church, were not
subject to any such doubts.
