Rick Santorum has been taking trips to Iowa which is assumed to be in preparation for running for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. Even former Bush and McCain strategist Mark McKinnon finds this to be a scary prospect.He believes Santorum represents everything that is bad about the Republican party, plus there are some strange questions about his character:
Santorum is a strong neoconservative who represented Pennsylvania in the House of Representatives and the Senate over a 16-year period and rose to the No. 3 leadership position among Republicans.
Santorum once grouped gay sex with incest, polygamy, and bestiality, and he believes consenting adults have no constitutional right to privacy when it comes to sexual behavior. He is a strong supporter of teaching intelligent design. He is anti-gay, anti-immigrant—supporting the most extreme anti-immigrant legislative proposals though he is the son of an Italian immigrant father—antiabortion, and anti-anything that smacks of progressive thinking, centrism, bipartisanship, or moderation in the Republican Party.
Santorum was one of only two senators who voted against Robert Gates to be secretary of Defense because Gates advocated talking to Iran and Syria, which Santorum said would be talking to “radical Islam” and would be a grievous error.
Santorum represents, in my view, much of what is wrong the in the Republican Party. While I disagree with him on some fundamental issues, I am much more concerned with his lack of character.
Here’s why.
Early in 2008, Santorum claimed a John McCain presidency would be “very, very dangerous for Republicans.” OK, he was entitled to support the candidate of his choice, but launching vicious frontal attacks on McCain that continued well after he received the nomination did nothing but hurt the GOP and its chances.
McKinnon had some additional examples and then described the really weird one:
I’m a pretty tolerant guy, but beyond his ideology, some of Santorum’s behavior is just a little bizarre. For example, Santorum has six children. In 1996, he had son born prematurely who lived for only two hours. He and wife brought the child home and introduced the dead infant to the rest of their children as “your brother Gabriel” and slept with the body overnight.
Santorum once grouped gay sex with incest, polygamy,…
Ok, grouping together gay sex with polygamy and incest makes sense, can’t someone find all are acceptable or all unacceptable? One can say: I don’t want the government to dictacte what adult consenting cousins do, what consenting multiple husbands or wifes do, or what consenting same sex couples can do. Don’t liberals lump those together? I can’t speak for Santorum as I don’t know him at all, but if he sees all those categories as wrong, and in addition finds beastiality wrong, why not lump them together? More specifically is any liberal saying that gay sex is ok. but polygamy isn’t? What is the argument against polygamy?
“What is the argument against polygamy?”
Do you watch Big Love? There is no argument against polygamy as practiced by Bill’s family–four consenting adults.
The problem is seen in the compound where polygamy also involves forcing under age girls into the situation as well as driving away young men to reduce competition.
Of course the argument here isn’t really with polygamy but some associated activities which can be separated from polygamy.
I think we are in agreement then. Nothing wrong with grouping all types of sexual activity together. With the exception of the Government’s role of protecting those who can’t protect themselves, such as children or animals, either the government should stay out of legislating what activity is or isn’t acceptable or it should. My only point was there is nothing wrong with grouping all such activity together, whereas the article seems to object to grouping gay sexual activity with other types.
Their real objection (coming from the perspective of a Republican strategist who wants to be able to win elections) is that Santorum’s views on social issues such as gay sex is too far to the right to have a chance at winning.
Santorum is horrible, but the event McKinnon describes as utterly weird I think makes perfect sense. I don’t think grieving is helped by not making a solid connection with the person whose death you are mourning.
Some of the stories linking to the orginal post included the the story on the son alone. While it does sound a little strange, I agree with Mike (again those rare words) that this shouldn’t have any bearing on voting for Santorum. (Besides, there are already enough meaningful reasons to oppose him). Still, as this is the passage which has received the most attention I thought I should include it here. Personally I found the description of his far right wing views as being even too far right for the Republican author to be the more significant part.