Is this man electable?
Political Waves
"I'm saying that local communities and parents should be the ones in control over public education, certainly not the federal government, and I think the state governments have not done a particularly good job in public education, either," Santorum said.
We already know what he thinks about our right to choose and our sexuality in general. The first article below gives a heads-up on just HOW FAR gone he is ...
pfffft!
Jude
Santorum: Mainline
Protestant Churches Are in the Grip of Satan
Steve M., No More
Mister Nice Blog via Alternet
February 17, 2012
http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/794589/santorum%3A_mainline_protestant_churches_are_in_the_grip_of_satan/#paragraph3
I know all the focus in the past couple of days has been on the Foster
Friess aspirin joke and on Rick Santorum's past statements about sexual matters,
but this strikes me as having the potential to do real harm to Santorum right
now as well as in the future:
Kyle Mantyla of People for the American
Way's indispensable Right Wing Watch has come up with an audiotape of a Rick
Santorumaddress to the students of the conservative Catholic Ave Maria
University in Florida, delivered in 2008. It's an altogether remarkable speech
depicting Rick as a leader in a "spiritual war" against Satan for control of
America. Much of its involves the usual right-wing stuff about the conquest of
academia (outside bastions like Ave Maria) by the forces of moral relativism,
but then there is this Santorum assessment of mainline
Protestantism:
[O]nce the colleges fell and those who were being educated in our
institutions, the next was the church. Now you'd say, 'wait, the Catholic
Church'? No. 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.
If I were Mitt
Romney, I would give up on trying to be the wingnut de tutti wingnutti and just
get that quote in front of every mainline Protestant he possibly can. I'd use it
in public appearances. I'd put it in mailers. I'd work it into ads:
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.
I'd tell
voters: "He has literally said that your church is under the influence of Satan.
He thinks you're no longer Christian." I'd say this to upmarket suburbanites and
to salt-of-the-earth types who bring tuna-and-noodle casseroles to church
suppers.
The whole speech is nutty, but it's nutty in a way that barely
penetrates anymore: the culture is sexually depraved, academia is under evil
influence, etc., etc. This is the kind of thing that would lose Santorum all
kinds of votes in the general election, but not now, and the people it alienates
probably are probably already lost to him.
But there are still enough
mainline Protestants in the GOP that Romney could hurt Santorum now with this.
Maybe Santorum isn't getting many votes from people who belong to mainline
Protestant churches -- but he can't afford to be seen as bigoted against what is
still a Republican voter bloc.
Romney won't raise this -- probably
because he's afraid to talk about religion for fear of reminding Republicans of
his religion -- but he should.
(Watch Santorum's speech and read the
transcript at the link embedded in the quote above.)
++
Santorum challenges policy on prenatal
testing
Tom Cohen, CNN
Sun February 19, 2012
http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/19/politics/santorum-prenatal-testing/
Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum says prenatal testing
results in increased
Obama's campaign calls Santorum's comments
"misinformed and dangerous"
Former senator says prenatal testing such as
amniocentesis increases abortions
The government should not mandate
health care coverage of such tests, Santorum says
Republican's comments
continue a series of harsh attacks on president
Washington (CNN) -- The
government shouldn't make health care providers fully cover prenatal tests like
amniocentesis, which can determine the possibility of Down syndrome or other
fetal problems, Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum said
Sunday.
Santorum, an outspoken opponent of abortion rights, told the CBS
News program "Face the Nation" on Sunday that amniocentesis "more often than
not" results in abortion.
"People have the right to do it, but to have
the government force people to provide it free, to me, is a bit loaded," he
said.
The former Pennsylvania senator was arguing against what he called
a mandate in the health care legislation passed by President Barack Obama and
Democrats in 2010. He said Saturday at an appearance in Ohio that the law was
intended to increase abortions and reduce overall health care costs.
"One
of the mandates is they require free prenatal testing in every insurance policy
in America," Santorum, a conservative Roman Catholic, told a Christian Alliance
luncheon in Columbus. "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."
He
added that the requirement was "another hidden message as to what President
Obama thinks of those who are less able."
The White House referred CNN to
Obama's re-election campaign for comment, and campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith
called Santorum's remarks "the latest in a long string of unfortunate comments
in the race to the bottom that the Republican presidential primary has
become."
"Prenatal screenings are essential to promote the health of both
the mother and baby and to ensure safe deliveries," Smith said. "These
misinformed and dangerous comments reinforce why women cannot trust any of the
Republican candidates for president."
On Sunday, Santorum mentioned his
own experience with this 3-year-old daughter Isabella, who has Trisomy 18, a
chromosome disorder that often results in stillbirths or early childhood death.
He said prenatal testing showed the problem, and doctors recommend abortion in
virtually all cases.
Such a recommendation is common when any problem is
detected through amniocentesis, said Santorum, who added that in such cases "we
know that 90% of Down syndrome children are aborted."
Some studies since
the late 1990s do suggest a high percentage of women terminate their pregnancies
after receiving a Down syndrome diagnosis, with one British study putting the
figure as high as 92 percent. A 2005 study of nearly 1,100 pregnant women found
76% would consider an abortion if tests indicated their child would be born with
Down syndrome.
Now considered the main conservative challenger to the
more moderate Mitt Romney, Santorum has shed a more understated demeanor to
challenge both Romney and Obama as the Republican campaign heads toward a series
of key primaries in coming weeks, including Super Tuesday on March 6.
He
continued throwing out the cultural red meat for primary voters Sunday night,
telling a rally at a Georgia church that Obama was intent on starting a cultural
war. As the audience roared with applause, he called on the country to build a
foundation that will "defend the church, defend the family, defend the nonprofit
community, defend them from a government that wants to weaken them."
His
attack on insurance coverage for prenatal testing was the latest in a series of
controversial comments he has made since surging to the top tier of polls in the
Republican presidential race. He also found himself defending other Saturday
comments regarding Obama's religion, appearing to question the president's
adherence to Bible-based Christian theology.
Santorum said Saturday the
president was not motivated by concerns for ordinary Americans but by "some
phony ideal, some phony theology.
"Oh, not a theology based on the Bible,
a different theology. But no less a theology," he said.
Asked about those
remarks on CBS, Santorum said he was referring to Obama's energy policies, which
he said favored what he called radical environmentalism. Asked specifically if
he was questioning Obama's Christian beliefs, Santorum said: "I wasn't
suggesting the president is not a Christian. I accept the fact the president is
a Christian."
Instead, he said he was taking on what he called "an
attempt to centralize power in the government."
"I'm talking about the
belief that man should be in charge of the Earth," Santorum said, and then in
specific reference to Obama: "I am talking about his worldview and the way he
approaches problems in this country."
But former White House spokesman
Robert Gibbs said Sunday that Santorum's comments continued the kind of
character attacks he said were typical of the GOP presidential race.
"I think
that if you make comments like that, you make comments that are well over the
line," Gibbs told ABC's "This Week."
"I think this GOP primary, in many
cases .... has been a race to the bottom. We have seen nastiness, divisiveness,
ugliness, distortions of opponents' records, of the president's records," he
said. The negative tone of the campaign was hurting the Republican candidates
and causing low turnout numbers in some of the primaries so far, Gibbs
added.
"It's just time to get rid of this mindset in our politics that,
if we disagree, we have to question character and faith," Gibbs said. "Those
days have long passed in our politics. Our problems and our challenges are far
too great."
The issues raised by Santorum follow another religious-themed
controversy over the Obama administration's decision to require
church-affiliated hospitals and other institutions to provide employees with
health care coverage for contraception.
Catholic bishops vehemently
opposed the move, and the administration changed its rule to require health care
insurers to provide free coverage for contraception rather than the churches or
other religious-based institutions.
Santorum's comments may appeal to
some Republican voters who have questioned Obama's faith before, or others who
saw the administration's recent contraception mandate as an overreach. Last
month, Santorum was criticized by some for not correcting a voter who called the
president a Muslim when she stood up to ask a question at one of his campaign
town halls.
On Sunday, Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels, who flirted with a
presidential bid last year, told the CNN program "State of the Union" that the
contraception issue could benefit Republicans if properly
approached.
"These are the questions that I think Republicans can unite
on," Daniels said. "They do have to be framed, as they really are, as the
defense of individual freedom against the right now limitless power of the
state." ++
“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”
~ The Reverand Martin Luther King
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