The Many Frothy Faces of Rick Santorum

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.

Will Bunch of Attytood has been following Santorum for years and has an excellent analysis of The Rick Santorum that America Doesn't Know.

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.  

Mr. Narrow-Minded!

Rick Santorum does not believe in contraception.  Rick Santorum does not believe in abortion.  Rick Santorum does not believe in insurance fully paying for prenatal tests like amniocentesis which can determine fetal problems in the womb.  Rick Santorum does however, believe in medically induced miscarriage.

Do you know what that means?

That means that Rick Santorum doesn't have to take contraception, get an abortion or any prenatal tests.  It means that his wife's medically induced miscarriage in 1996, was supported by Rick Santorum. It also means that a medically induced miscarriage, by any other name, is an abortion.

In the 19th week of her pregnancy, Karen discovered during a routine exam that the fetus she was carrying had a fatal defect and was going to die inside of her. A long-shot surgery was performed that required cutting directly into the womb. It carried a high risk of infection and was performed not to save the fetus, but to reduce Karen’s complications while she attempted to go full term.

Two days later, she became severely feverish. She was rushed to the hospital and placed on intravenous antibiotics, which reduced her fever and bought her some time, but could not eliminate the source of infection: the fetus.

Karen was going to die if her pregnancy was not ended, if the fetus was not removed from her body. So, at 20 weeks, one month before what doctors consider ‘viability’, labor began as a result of the antibiotics and the infected fetus was delivered. It died shortly thereafter. Once the Santorums had agreed to the use of antibiotics, they believed they were committing to delivery of the fetus, which they knew would not survive outside the womb.[...]

The procedure, whereby labor is induced to remove the fetus before it has any chance of surviving on its own, is considered by Mr. Santorum to be a ‘partial-birth abortion’, and he is correct. He also personally authorized one to save his wife, whom he loves.

But Rick Santorum is now a candidate in the Republican Tea Party primary for the presidency.  He is taking a very strong stand against every other woman's rights to contraception, medically induced miscarriages/abortion, partial-birth abortion and prenatal tests. Now, Santorum doesn't  care if the reason for an abortion is incest, rape or to save the life of the mother. His opinions stem from his belief that these rights were not God given and therefore cannot be given at all. That means he wants to take them away. This is what Rick Santorum has to say on these issues:

ABORTION: I have my own views on these things. They are deeply held beliefs. But not everything that I disagree with morally should the government be involved in. Only where there are real consequences to society or to the rights of individuals do I feel a need to speak out and that's why I do on the issue of abortion, because we have another person involved in the decision. But in the issue of contraception that's certainly not the case.

CONTRACEPTION: The whole conception of sexual liberation, sexual freedom had had its downside — and certainly birth control is part of that — with dramatic increase in sexually transmitted diseases, dramatic increase in out-of-wedlock births and dramatic increase in the number of abortions."

PRENATAL TESTS: One of the mandates is they require free prenatal testing in every insurance policy in America. Why? Because it saves money in health care. Why? Because free prenatal testing ends up in more abortions and therefore less care that has to be done, because we cull the ranks of the disabled in our society."

Rick Santorum is a political operative who sees the issues from his own religious world view. His message is now being championed by his followers and broadcast by the media without in depth scrutiny.  However, when scrutiny is applied, what is left is misinformation, falsehoods and arrogance. The TRUTH:

ABORTION:  This is a difficult decision that is made by a woman who is pregnant. She does have the right to consult others but the decision to abort or have a "medically induce abortion" is hers and hers alone.   When Santorum says there is "another person involved" he is referring to what he believes is a living being inside the mother.  That is his belief and therefore, he should not have an abortion and he alone can decide not to have an abortion, if he ever finds himself pregnant!


CONTRACEPTION: Santorum has a right to his belief system. But Rick Santorum also needs to understand the facts about contraception.  It does not dramatically increase "sexually transmitted diseases." It does not dramatically increase "out-of-wedlock births". It does not dramatically increase the number of "abortions." If properly used, contraception does just the opposite. Maybe Mr. Santorum needs some instruction on the use of contraception!

PRENATAL TESTS:  Prenatal testing does NOT end up "in more abortions."  Santorum's statement implies that the prenatal testing is the 'cause' for the abortion.  In reality it is just the opposite. Prenatal testing is done for a variety of reasons regarding the health and safety of both mother and child.  But many women who have prenatal tests, have already made the decision that they would terminate the pregnancy if the test determined that the fetus had a genetic fetal problem. Many women who would not have an abortion, no matter what the test result showed, might therefore decide not to even have prenatal testing. The test does not determine the decision.  The choice is the mothers!  

Mr. Santorum's conclusions belittle the difficult and painful decision of the mother.  He should know.  His  wife, Karen, was in that situation.  She made the decision by consulting with her husband, as she had a right to do. It was their decision.  No one second guessed them.  No one tried to take away that right. Rick Santorum is now working very hard to take away every woman's right to these individual medical choices.  

So who would vote for him?

Fanning the Flames of Culture War

 

The Republican Tea Party presidential primary is in flux.  Rick Santorum had previously been discounted by the politic pundits until he recently started winning among the voters.  Santorum is now the new GOP Tea Party frontrunner.  The most recent Gallup national tracking poll shows Santorum with a 6-point lead over former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

In his recent campaign speeches, Santorum is repeating his assertion that President Obama’s agenda is based on a "phony theology."  Santorum is claiming that the Obama administration is anti-church. He was quoted by the New York Times.

“It’s about some phony ideal, some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible, a different theology,” he said. “But no less a theology.” 

In later comments to reporters, Mr. Santorum said while there are “a lot of different stripes” of Christianity, he believes that “if the president says he’s a Christian, he’s a Christian.” 

“I’m just saying he’s imposing his values on the church, and I think that’s wrong,” he said, adding that he did not believe Mr. Obama was less of a Christian for doing so. 

But the Obama campaign called the comments “the latest low in a Republican primary campaign that has been fueled by distortions, ugliness and searing pessimism and negativity.”

Assertions that Mr. Obama is not a Christian, or that he is not an American, were rampant in the 2008 campaign. 

Rick Santorum's words are carefully chosen. His ideas are deliberately framed. The effect is knowingly to fuel the flames of a culture war.

Santorum isn’t really advancing a theological argument. He’s fanning the flames of culture war, speaking in a code that is easily deciphered by those determined to paint Obama as something other than a real American, those who want to believe he is a crypto-Muslim, those for whom his birth certificate is less than valid proof of his citizenship.

Santorum has many more novel, unorthodox and narrow minded ideas. He also believes that large-scale public education is an outdated idea.  He believes that any form of contraception is “not okay.” And he has  stated that he didn’t want to “make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.”

Of course in true hypocritical Santorum style, he later claimed that he didn't say the word 'black'.  He actually said the word 'blah'.  

Many Protestants may looking at Santorum in a different light once they understand culture war extends to them.  Back in 2008, here is what Santorum had to say about the state of Protestantism.

In a 2008 speech at Ave Maria University, Rick Santorum, a devout Catholic, warned about the dangers of “the NBA” and “rock concerts,” but also said that while Protestants founded America, mainline Protestantism is in such “shambles” that “it is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it”:

We all know that this country was founded on a Judeo-Christian ethic but the Judeo-Christian ethic was a Protestant Judeo-Christian ethic, sure the Catholics had some influence, but this was a Protestant country and the Protestant ethic, mainstream, mainline Protestantism, and of course we look at the shape of mainline Protestantism in this country and it is in shambles, it is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it. [...]
Whether its sensuality of vanity of the famous in America, they are peacocks on display and they have taken their poor behavior and made it fashionable. The corruption of culture, the corruption of manners, the corruption of decency is now on display whether it’s the NBA or whether it’s a rock concert or whether it’s on a movie set.

Listen here: 

 

Meanwhile, the rest of Santorum’s speech dwells on his now-typical hyper-puritanical warnings about “Satan,” and the dangers of “sensuality,” “rock concerts,” and “the NBA” that sound like they were plagiarized from Dana Carvey’s Church Lady skits on SNL.

To that I say, Rick Santorum is a turd.  Oh, I didn't say turd, I said Rick Santorum is a 'blah!'

The Phony Arguments

 

Garry Wills takes a realistic look at the Republican Tea Party in hi s article Contraception's Con Men.

By a revolting combination of con men and fanatics, the current primary race has become a demonstration that the Republican party does not deserve serious consideration for public office. Take the controversy over contraceptives. American bishops at first opposed having hospitals and schools connected with them pay employee health costs for contraceptives. But when the President backed off from that requirement, saying insurance companies can pay the costs, the bishops doubled down and said no one should have to pay for anything so evil as contraception. Some Republicans are using the bishops’ stupidity to hurt the supposed "moderate" candidate Mitt Romney, giving a temporary leg up to the faux naïf Rick Santorum; others are attacking Barack Obama as an "enemy of religion."

Pusillanimous Catholics - Mark Shields and even, to a degree, the admirable E. J. Dionne - are saying that Catholics understandably resent an attack on "their" doctrine (even though they do not personally believe in it). Omnidirectional bad-faith arguments have clustered around what is falsely presented as a defense of "faith." The layers of ignorance are equaled only by the willingness of people "of all faiths" to use them for their own purposes. Consider just some of the layers:

The Phony Religious Freedom Argument 

The bishops’ opposition to contraception is not an argument for a "conscience exemption." It is a way of imposing Catholic requirements on non-Catholics. This is religious dictatorship, not religious freedom.

Contraception is not even a religious matter. Nowhere in Scripture or the Creed is it forbidden. Catholic authorities themselves say it is a matter of "natural law," over which natural reason is the arbiter - and natural reason, even for Catholics, has long rejected the idea that contraception is evil. More of that later; what matters here is that contraception is legal, ordinary, and accepted even by most Catholics. To say that others must accept what Catholics themselves do not is bad enough. To say that President Obama is "trying to destroy the Catholic Church" if he does not accept it is much, much worse.

To disagree with Catholic bishops is called "disrespectful," an offense against religious freedom. That is why there is a kind of taboo against bringing up Romney’s Mormonism. But if Romney sincerely believed in polygamy on religious grounds, as his grandfather did, he would not even be considered for the presidency - any more than a sincere Christian Scientist, who rejects the use of medicine, would be voted for to handle public health care. Yet a man who believes that contraception is evil is an aberrant from the American norm, like the polygamist or the faith healer.

The Phony Contraception Argument

The opposition to contraception has, as I said, no scriptural basis. Pope Pius XI once said that it did, citing in his encyclical Casti Connubii (1930) the condemnation of Onan for "spilling his seed" rather than impregnating a woman (Genesis 38.9). But later popes had to back off from this claim, since everyone agrees now that Onan’s sin was not carrying out his duty to give his brother an heir (Deuteronomy 25.5-6). Then the "natural law" was fallen back on, saying that the natural purpose of sex is procreation, and any use of it for other purposes is "unnatural." But a primary natural purpose does not of necessity exclude ancillary advantages. The purpose of eating is to sustain life, but that does not make all eating that is not necessary to subsistence "unnatural." One can eat, beyond the bare minimum to exist, to express fellowship, as one can have sex, beyond the begetting of a child with each act, to express love.

The Roman authorities would not have fallen for such a silly argument but for a deep historical disrelish for sex itself. Early Fathers and medieval theologians considered sex unworthy when not actually sinful. That is why virgin saints and celibate priests were prized above married couples. Thomas Aquinas said that priests must not be married, since "those in holy orders handle the sacred vessels and the sacrament itself, and therefore it is proper (decens) that they preserve, by abstinences, a body undefiled (munditia corporalis) (Summa Theologiae, Part 3 Supplement, Question 53, article 3, Response). Marriage, you see, makes for defilement (immunditia). The ban on contraception is a hangover from the period when the body itself was considered unclean, as Peter Brown overwhelmingly proved in The Body and Society (1988).

The Phony "Church Teaches" Argument

Catholics who do not accept the phony argument over contraception are said to be "going against the teachings of their church." That is nonsense. They are their church. The Second Vatican Council defines the church as "the people of God." Thinking that the pope is the church is a relic of the days when a monarch was said to be his realm. The king was "Denmark." Catholics have long realized that their own grasp of certain things, especially sex, has a validity that is lost on the celibate male hierarchy. This is particularly true where celibacy is concerned.

There was broad disagreement with Pius XI’s 1930 encyclical on the matter. Pope Paul VI set up a study group of loyal and devout Catholics, lay and clerical, to make recommendations. The group overwhelmingly voted to change the teaching of Pius XI. But cardinals in the Roman Curia convinced Paul that any change would suggest that the church’s teachings are not eternal (though Casti Connubii had not been declared infallible, by the papacy’s own standards).

When Paul reaffirmed the ban on birth control in Humanae Vitae (1968) there was massive rejection of it. Some left the church. Some just ignored it. Paradoxically, the document formed to convey the idea that papal teaching is inerrant just convinced most people that it can be loony. The priest-sociologist Andrew Greeley said that Humanae Vitae did more damage to the papacy than any of the so-called "liberal" movements in Catholicism. When Pius IX condemned democracy and modern science in his Syllabus of Errors (1864), the Catholic historian Lord Acton said that Catholics were too sensible to go crazy every time a pope does. The reaction to Humanae Vitae proves that.

The Phony "Undying Principle" Argument

Rick Santorum is a nice smiley fanatic. He does not believe in evolution or global warming or women in the workplace. He equates gay sex with bestiality (Rick "Man on Dog" Santorum). He equates contraception with the guillotine. Only a brain-dead party could think him a worthy presidential candidate. Yet he is praised by television pundits, night and day, for being "sincere" and "standing by what he believes." He is the principled alternative to the evil Moderation of Mitt Romney and the evil Evil of Newt Gingrich. He is presented as a model Catholic. Torquemada was, in that sense, a model Catholic. Messrs. Boehner and McConnell call him a martyr to religious freedom. A young priest I saw on television, modeling himself on his hero Santorum, said, "I would rather die than give up my church’s principles." What we are seeing is not a defense of undying principle but a stampede toward a temporarily exploitable lunacy. Acton to the rescue!

  This is just another example of religion being used to destroy the freedoms of those who don't agree.

It's a "Medically Induce Miscarriage," Stupid!

 

 Whenever you see the word 'Abortion' replace it with the words "Medically Induced Miscarriage."

Rick Santorum’s wife, Karen, had a second trimester abortion in October 1996. The Santorum’s, however, don’t like to describe it as an abortion. Instead, they call it a "medically induced miscarriage." Yet for many, this is a distinction without a difference.

That's right folks, they like it to sound as if they had no choice! But it was an abortion, which Karen chose to have to save her life. 

So from this day forward, remove the word 'abortion' and replace it with the words "medically induced miscarriage." 

 

 

The Santorum Plan is God's Plan

A group of evangelical and social conservative leaders recently voted to back the candidacy of Rick Santorum in the race for the GOP Presidential nomination. Is this support just a last attempt to stop front-runner Mitt Romney? Or is it an acknowledgment that Santorum's positions fit the beliefs of the more conservative element of the GOP? Santorum has unwaveringly opposed same-sex marriage, adoption by same-sex couples, abortion, partial-birth abortion, contraception, global warming and evolution. Here are Santorum's positions on these issues:

Same-Sex Marriage

"And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing."

Adoption by same-sex couples

"The state is not doing a service to the child and to society by not putting that child in a home where there is a mother and a father. This is common sense. This is nature. Even fathers in jail who had abandoned their kids were still better than no father at all to have in their children's lives."

Abortion

"I believe that any doctor that performs an abortion, I would advocate that any doctor that performs an abortion, should be criminally charged for doing so."

And on debating the partial-birth abortion ban in 1996, Santorum said: “Mr. President, I just need to restate, we have quoted physician after physician, obstetrician after obstetrician, pro-life, pro-choice, people who have performed abortions—this is not Rick Santorum or James Inhofe or Mike DeWine or Bob Smith—these are physicians, obstetricians, who are saying that this procedure is never, never, never medically necessary to save the health or life of the mother. Never. Never.”

Even though Santorum has previously testified that there are no circumstances where abortion is necessary to protect the life of the mother, his wife Karen had a second trimester abortion in October 1996. The Santorums were told that if she did not induce her labor, she and the baby would more than likely die. The decision was made to induce labor, and abort the fetus. However, the Rick and Karen don't call it an abortion. Rather, they refer to it as a "medically induced miscarriage."

Partial-birth abortion

"This isn’t taught in any medical school. It isn’t done in any hospital. It isn’t done by any obstetrician. This is a rogue procedure for the convenience and economic benefit of abortionists and abortion clinics. Of course, it is not medically necessary. It is not even medically recognized."

Contraception

Many of the Christian faith have said, well, that’s okay, contraception is okay. It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.

Global Warming

"I believe the earth gets warmer, and I also believe the earth gets cooler, and I think history points out that it does that and that the idea that man through the production of CO2, which is a trace gas in the atmosphere and the man-made part of that trace gas is itself a trace gas, is somehow responsible for climate change is, I think, just patently absurd when you consider all of the other factors, El Niño, La Niña, sunspots, you know, moisture in the air."

Evolution

"What we should be teaching are the problems and holes and I think there are legitimate problems and holes in the theory of evolution. And what we need to do is to present those fairly from a scientific point of view. And we should lay out areas in which the evidence supports evolution and the areas in the evidence that does not."

Santorum's position against evolution has made him the 'King of creationism.' Santorum believes that what he believes, should be taught to all those who do believe or don't believe, what he believes. That is because Santorum believes that this is God's plan. Rick Santorum wants to replace the teaching of real science with creationism.

Since January 1st, three state legislatures in Missouri, Indiana, and New Hampshire have all introduced bills that would force schools to teach creationism as an accepted science even if students, parents, and teachers are not Christians. Such bills infringe upon religious freedom as protected by the United States Constitution. Since 2004, 12 states have tried to pass creationism bills. Only one, in Louisiana, has become law. You may be wondering, where did all of these bills come from?

It turns out, all creationism bills introduced since 2004 are inspired by an amendment drafted and proposed by then Senator and current Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum in 2001. Santorum offered the amendment to be included in the No Child Left Behind Act. The amendment, which failed, promoted the teaching of intelligent design and questioned the academic standing of evolution in US public schools. Santorum didn’t craft the language of the bill by himself, however. He had help from Phillip E. Johnson of the Center for Science and Culture which is run by a conservative think tank known as Discovery Institute. Johnson is the founding adviser of the Center and is considered the founder of the intelligent design movement. He is also known as a member of the group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis, a prominent AIDS denialist group and has written that HIV does not cause AIDS, which explains why many religious extremists make such claims.

The amendment would have allowed schools and teachers to dispute evolution which the scientific community regards as the only credible, and thoroughly tested, scientific explanation for the development and diversification of all life on Earth. But people like Santorum, Johnson and other religious extremists want to replace the teaching of real science with creationism, a Biblical theory that is classified as pseudo-science by an overwhelming majority of scientists. There is no evidence supporting creationism, whereas plenty of evidence exists to support evolution.

So the next time you read a headline about a new creationism bill being introduced in a state, you’ll know exactly where the bill came from and who is responsible for trying to force religion upon our children.

Given his positions on social issues, Bruce Epperly ponders whether Santorum is the "Jesus candidate."
At least his wife, Karen, thinks so.

For me it’s not just another political race. It’s about going on to the battlefield and defending God’s truth in the World.

Santorum Also Means Hypocrite!

Will Bunch says the media has focused on recent events involving Rick Santorum, but there is more to know about this guy. Bunch has succinctly assembled a "Pennsylvanian's brief guide to the Rick Santorum you don't know."

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 Walmart, 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 would 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 separation 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.

Rick Santorum has been a vocal advocate against many social issues including abortion, birth control, sexual freedom, gay marriage, gays in the military, evolution, global warming and unions. But time after time he has shown he is a hypocrite. In 1996, Santorum's wife, Karen, was pregnant. In her second trimester she became ill and was told that if labor was not induced, that she and the baby would more than likely die. The decision was made to induce labor, and "abort the fetus."

On the campaign trail Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum is an anti-abortion extremist, arguing that abortion should be prohibited even in cases of rape and incest, even in cases when the mother’s life is in danger.

However, critics accuse Santorum of being a cruel abortion hypocrite, asking other women to take risks he and his wife chose to avoid.

Numerous sources report Santorum’s wife Karen had a second trimester abortion in October 1996. The Santorum’s, however, don’t like to describe it as an abortion. Instead, they call it a medically induced miscarriage. Yet for many, this is a distinction without a difference.

Recently when asked about exceptions for rape and incest Santorum said that any exception to a prohibition on abortion “would be taking a life - and I would advocate that any doctor who performs an abortion should be criminally charged for doing so."

In essence, Santorum is arguinging that the doctor(s) that saved the life of his wife should be criminally charged for doing so.

To be sure, the Santorums did not want to terminate Karen Santorum’s pregnancy in 1996. But they did, and Karen Santorum is still alive. Most people would agree the Santorums made the right decision. However, if presidential candidate Rick Santorum has his way, women in the future would not have the same life saving opportunity granted to Karen Santorum.

The decision that the Karen Santorum had to make was her decision and her choice. She was lucky that she had that choice. No one begrudges the decision she made, it is the hypocritical stand of her husband which is at issue.

"Rick Santorum is a Christian Right Wing zealot who is obsessed with violating our personal lives and privacy. He would restrict women, outlaw homosexuality, ban birth control, tell unmarried couples what they can and cannot do, would throw senior citizens into poverty, thinks Americans should suffer, and he would enter America into even more wars. He is a Bible obsessed buffoon who has no grasp on American history, believes the Bush policies are worth continuing, and to top it all off, he’s a hypocrite.

The Upside Down World of Rick Santorum

When I was growing up, my parents wanted me to go to college. Actually there was no question whether or not I would attend college. Of course, I would. It was the way to attain knowledge, power and higher income. Some kids chose not to go to college and decided to work in factories, or find a trade to pursue. But back then, there were plenty of jobs and the industry was local.

Today, with a college degree, it is hard to find employment. Today, without a college degree, those factory jobs don't exist.

So what did Rick Santorum focus on recently when he was criticizing President Obama? Santorum was outraged that President Obama should want all children in America to go to college. That's right, Santorum thinks Obama's comments are not only an insult to Americans but shows hubris on the part of the President.

“I was so outraged at the President of the United States standing up and saying ‘Every child in America should go to college.’ Well, who are you? Who are you to say that ‘every child in America go’? I mean, the hubris of this president to think that he knows what’s best for you. I have seven kids. Maybe they’ll all go to college. But if one of my kids wants to go and be an auto mechanic, good for him. That’s a good paying job. Use your hands, use your mind.

This is the kind of snobbery that we see from those who think they know how to run our lives.

Rise up America. Defend your own freedoms. And overthrow these folks who think they know how to orchestrate every aspect of your life.”

It's kind of amusing, even hypocritical that Rick Santorum would say that, "This is the kind of snobbery that we see from those who think they know how to run our lives." Really Mr. Santorum? What about you, do you want to run my life? Oh, yes you do.

As an example of Santorum's control issues, here are several statements that prove how ignorant, fanatical, heartless, and dangerous Rick Santorum is.

“Suffering, if you’re a Christian, suffering is a part of life. And it’s not a bad thing, it is an essential thing in life … There are all different ways to suffer. One way to suffer is through lack of food and shelter and there’s another way to suffer which is lack of dignity and hope and there’s all sorts of ways that people suffer and it’s not just tangible, it’s also intangible and we have to consider both.”
~Rick Santorum, saying that Americans should suffer because suffering is good.

“I believe that any doctor that performs an abortion, I would advocate that any doctor that performs an abortion, should be criminally charged for doing so.”
~Rick Santorum, advocating for arresting doctors that provide crucial medical services to women.

“If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [gay] sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does. It all comes from, I would argue, this right to privacy that doesn’t exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution. In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing.”
~Rick Santorum, comparing homosexuality to bestiality, and saying that we don’t have the right to have consensual sex. He’s also saying we don’t have the right to privacy.

“One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country. It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be. [Sex] is supposed to be within marriage. It’s supposed to be for purposes that are yes, conjugal…but also procreative. That’s the perfect way that a sexual union should happen…This is special and it needs to be seen as special.”
~Rick Santorum, opposing contraception and frighteningly suggesting that he would make pre-marital sex illegal.

The chutzpah of Santorum thinking he can regulate my sexual preferences, practices or desires. Or that he can tell me what I can or can't do with my body, my life. If he wants to suffer, I say give it to him! "Rise up America. Defend your own freedoms. And overthrow these folks who think they know how to orchestrate every aspect of your life.”