The Week in Santorum

Rick Santorum is the gift that keeps on giving. Here's a recap of some of his more stellar moments on the campaign trail.

On Social Security, he's hewing to the 1% line, complete with scary deficit mantra.

Clearly aware of the risks, Santorum argued that everyone must sacrifice now because the nation's "house is on fire" with soaring federal debt. He argued that he is being courageous and honest by telling Americans they can't afford to wait to rein in Social Security's growing costs. And he said he anticipated possible attack ads on his position.

Has anyone pointed out to him that Social Security does not contribute to the deficit? And that Social Security is completely solvent for at least the next 25 years?

And Mr. Discrimination is out in full voice. From Timothy Kincaid:

Santorum answered that he doesn’t believe marriage or serving in the military are inalienable rights, but “privileges,” adding, “It’s not discrimination not to grant privileges.”

Strangely enough, the Supreme Court has found, in eighteen decisions going back over 120 years, that marriage is, in fact, a fundamental right. And when I was growing up, military service was one of one's duties as a citizen. It would take someone like Santorum to declare that going to a foreign country and killing strangers is a "privilege."

Charles Johnson also has a whack at Santorum's whacko rhetoric. From the news story quoted by Wilson:

For the second time in as many days, Rick Santorum on Friday drew attention away from his efforts to craft a blue-collar economic message by wading into the issue of gay marriage. He suggested it was so important for children to have a father and mother that an imprisoned father was preferable to a same-sex parent.

Citing the work of one anti-poverty expert, Santorum said, “he found that even fathers in jail who had abandoned their kids, were still better than no father at all to have in their childrens’ lives.”

By Santorum's logic, two fathers should be best of all.

Timothy Kincaid nailed it:

Allowing gays to marry and raise children, Santorum said, amounts to “robbing children of something they need, they deserve, they have a right to. You may rationalize that that isn’t true, but in your own life and in your own heart, you know it’s true.”

Oddly, my heart doesn’t tell me that depriving children of same sex parents the legal and social protections they need will somehow cause imprisoned heterosexuals to be involved in the lives of their children.

He's meeting some resistance in New Hampshire, where Republicans are more traditional -- in the traditional sense.

He really came a cropper on health-care:

The woman asked the question in response to remarks Santorum made in Merrimeck, New Hampshire, where he defended insurers for denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions and argued that individuals who are sick should pay higher premiums. “I’m okay with that,” Santorum said.

At today’s event, Santorum claimed that the pre-existing conditions clause in the Affordable Care Act — which will prevent insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions or charging them more for coverage — would increase health care costs because people would wait until they’re sick to purchase coverage and refuse to heed the mandate.

The man obviously has no idea what risk-pooling is about.

Probably his most widely noted gaffe -- which, if nothing else, indicates that he might have at least a rudimentary ability to self edit (if you believe his version of the story) -- is his creation of a whole new class of Americans: the Blah People. Here's the video:



And here's the duck-and-run:



We report -- you decide.

And on the bare beginnings of economic recovery, I can't do better than this:

David Badash has a nice summary at The New Civil Rights Movement in this post about Santorum on the Occupy movement.

“This dividing of America, this ’99/1.’ You know it’s not 99/1. It’s anybody who makes money and pays taxes and everybody who doesn’t. That’s the 99/1. It’s anybody that goes out and succeeds in America, and those who should have that wealth redistributed. That’s the argument of this president. It’s about divide. It’s always about divide. And that’s why Americans are feeling frustrated, because we have a president who doesn’t understand us. Who doesn’t understand most Americans, most Americans are not envious of neighbors who have more money. They aspire to be successful like they are someday.”

As a footnote, here's an article from 2003 by Jeffrey St. Clair that gives you a good take on Santorum-then. Nothing seems to have changed much.

And just to give you a good idea of the former Senator's moral foundation, check this out:

“Sen. Santorum’s ethics issues stem from the manner in which he funded his children’s education and his misuse of legislative position in exchange for contributions to his political action committee and his re-election campaign,” CREW notes, on page 207 of their exhaustive report (PDF), which delves into deep detail across eleven extensively-footnoted pages.

In February of 2006, CREW had filed an ethics complaint with the Senate Ethics Committee against Senator Santorum, “alleging that Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) violated the Senate Gift Rule by accepting a mortgage from The Philadelphia Trust Company, a bank that serves affluent clients.”

I'm not making this up.