The Iowa caucuses demonstrated that Rick Santorum is capable of winning Americans' nomination for the Republican candidate for president of the United States this November 6. And why not? He's a man who's adopted the moral high ground all his life and, especially now, when the office of the president is up for grabs.
Rick Santorum trained as a lawyer and a politician. He's been very successful at both vocations. Privately, he's been described as a social conservative and a devout Catholic. He is a staunch pro-life advocate and an opponent of gay marriage and any kind of sex that's different from heterosexual sex between a man and a woman in a loving marriage. Those are old fashioned American values, wholesome ones to many, and, yes, they appeal to a lot of honest folks. And they are no doubt a big reason why this man garnered so much support among his party members in Iowa.
But along with those 'wholesome' values there are some troubling indicators in Rick Santorum's DNA.
For starters, Rick Santorum likes money. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, he took over $200,000 from a Washington DC conservative advocacy group, $150,000 from Consol Energy, the nation's second biggest coal company, and nearly $400,000 in director fees and stock options from Universal Health Services, one of the largest private healthcare companies in the U.S., in 2010 and 2011. Perhaps more telling, Santorum's drive for higher earnings extended to his sponsorship of legislation, while he was in office, that would profit companies in his district and state, companies like weather forecaster, Accuweather, even as he was attacking the U.S. National Weather Service and its government funding.
Talking about the weather, Santorum's views on science are also pretty cut-and-dried. Global warming (or, at least, rapid climate change caused by man-made emissions of CO2, etc.) is false; evolution is an imperfect theory, and intelligent design is what really happened.
On global threats, Santorum believes religious fundamentalism (i.e. radical Islam) is the single biggest threat which needs to be extinguished with brute force. For him that means occupying Iraq and Afghanistan indefinitely. And it means bombing Iran if it doesn't stop its development of nukes. Perhaps someone ought to tell Santorum that, ironically, those same fundamentalists share his views on sex.
Most disturbing of all, though, is the way he and his wife handled the tragic death of one of their children, born twenty weeks premature, when Santorum's wife contracted a severe infection during pregnancy. The necessary delivery of the child culminated in the baby's death, unfortunately, two hours after delivery. But then, after sleeping with the dead fetus in their hospital room overnight, the Santorums somehow were allowed to take the child's body home so that they could show it to their children. Now, perhaps we, who are fortunate enough to have never suffered the death of a newborn cannot comprehend how the Santorums felt but, I ask, doesn't it seem a bit strange to bring a dead fetus home to let young siblings coddle it in their arms? Wouldn't bringing the children to the hospital to grieve the death of the newborn child have been a more normal way to go about it?
And I guess that's what's most disturbing about Rick Santorum. Not only are his opinions a bit too far out in right field, he's ready to live some of them and take the heat if they go against the grain. While that may be okay in his private life, it's not okay in the office of the president of the United States -- as in bombing Iran, for instance. I'm afraid Rick Santorum is capable of actually starting another war.
Radical Islam? That's nothing compared to a radical president (abetted by other radicals in government) armed to the teeth, as America is.
Rick Santorum trained as a lawyer and a politician. He's been very successful at both vocations. Privately, he's been described as a social conservative and a devout Catholic. He is a staunch pro-life advocate and an opponent of gay marriage and any kind of sex that's different from heterosexual sex between a man and a woman in a loving marriage. Those are old fashioned American values, wholesome ones to many, and, yes, they appeal to a lot of honest folks. And they are no doubt a big reason why this man garnered so much support among his party members in Iowa.
But along with those 'wholesome' values there are some troubling indicators in Rick Santorum's DNA.
For starters, Rick Santorum likes money. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, he took over $200,000 from a Washington DC conservative advocacy group, $150,000 from Consol Energy, the nation's second biggest coal company, and nearly $400,000 in director fees and stock options from Universal Health Services, one of the largest private healthcare companies in the U.S., in 2010 and 2011. Perhaps more telling, Santorum's drive for higher earnings extended to his sponsorship of legislation, while he was in office, that would profit companies in his district and state, companies like weather forecaster, Accuweather, even as he was attacking the U.S. National Weather Service and its government funding.
On global threats, Santorum believes religious fundamentalism (i.e. radical Islam) is the single biggest threat which needs to be extinguished with brute force. For him that means occupying Iraq and Afghanistan indefinitely. And it means bombing Iran if it doesn't stop its development of nukes. Perhaps someone ought to tell Santorum that, ironically, those same fundamentalists share his views on sex.
Most disturbing of all, though, is the way he and his wife handled the tragic death of one of their children, born twenty weeks premature, when Santorum's wife contracted a severe infection during pregnancy. The necessary delivery of the child culminated in the baby's death, unfortunately, two hours after delivery. But then, after sleeping with the dead fetus in their hospital room overnight, the Santorums somehow were allowed to take the child's body home so that they could show it to their children. Now, perhaps we, who are fortunate enough to have never suffered the death of a newborn cannot comprehend how the Santorums felt but, I ask, doesn't it seem a bit strange to bring a dead fetus home to let young siblings coddle it in their arms? Wouldn't bringing the children to the hospital to grieve the death of the newborn child have been a more normal way to go about it?
And I guess that's what's most disturbing about Rick Santorum. Not only are his opinions a bit too far out in right field, he's ready to live some of them and take the heat if they go against the grain. While that may be okay in his private life, it's not okay in the office of the president of the United States -- as in bombing Iran, for instance. I'm afraid Rick Santorum is capable of actually starting another war.
Radical Islam? That's nothing compared to a radical president (abetted by other radicals in government) armed to the teeth, as America is.
