What ABOUT Three Men, Mr. Santorum?

By Maria Padhila

Republican candidate Rick Santorum gave us all a lesson the other day in New Hampshire.

Here are some excerpts from his wisdom, reported by Roger Simon for Politico:

“The right to life is a controversy these days,” Santorum said, adding in a mocking tone: “‘What are you doing in my bedroom?’ Well, the right to life has nothing to do with the bedroom!”

[I’ll just let you meditate on that for a bit.]

“Happiness is not enjoyment or pleasure,” Santorum said. “Happiness means to do the right thing — to do not what we want to do, but what we ought to do.”

[Um, OK. This has to do with national policy… how?]

“A young woman — she looked about 18 or so — stood and said she wanted to ask about gay marriage.

“I am surprised I got a gay marriage question in a college crowd,” Santorum said sarcastically.

She was undeterred. “How about the idea that all men are created equal and [have] the right to happiness and liberty?” she asked.

“Are you saying that everyone should have the right to marry anyone?” Santorum replied with a smirk. He knew where this was going. He had done this before.

“Yes,” the student said.

“So anyone can marry several people?” Santorum said gleefully. Aha! He had sprung his trap.

“No,” the young woman said, shaking her head.

“What about three men?” Santorum asked.

The crowd began booing.

“That’s irrelevant,” someone shouted.

This was met with “whoots” of approval from the crowd.

“But what if someone can only be happy if he or she was married to five people?” Santorum asked the young woman.

“Boo!” went the crowd.

“That’s not the point,” the young woman said. “That’s not what I’m talking about. But in my opinion, yeah, go for it.” …

“Then marriage really means whatever you want it to be,” Santorum said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

Whoot! Whoot! Whoot.

Then Santorum fired what he thought was going to be his silencer, his unarguable point of logic.

“A man and a woman is the best relationship to raise children,” he said, underlining “children” with his voice. “When we deny children that birthright, then we are harming children and harming society!”

The young woman made no reply, just shook her head.

Santorum looked triumphant and a few minutes left the room with a smile on his face.

Rick Santorum — who has a B.A., M.A. and a J.D., has served two terms in the House and two terms in the Senate — knows how to beat up a teenager in a debate.

Hear his roar.”

I know that’s a very long excerpt, but I want you to get the sense of being there. The ick factor. The ‘won’t somebody think of the children!’ blather. The smug self-promotion. See, what people who weren’t in Washington don’t know is that even people from his own party didn’t like him much here. He had a rep for being a pushy pain in the ass. He thought he was hot snot and above paying any dues. But despite this, he was one of several who got the grooming treatment.

What Republicans do is stow the ones they think they can use, sort of stable them, or maybe put them in what’s like cryogenics, sort of suspended animation, for a couple years. They stow them in lobbying firms, on boards, in think tanks, and they flow some money to them through the organizations where they’re housed, to keep their pets fed and glossy while they wait. It’s an investment in the future. All they have to do is stay out of trouble and stay on message. They can pick up millions while they’re chilling out. Then when the powers that be need someone in a certain position, they thaw them out and pat them on the haunch and send them out into the race.

This quote, given to the website CaffeinatedThoughts.com in October and reiterated in January on ThinkProgress.org, is another indication of this kind of arrogance:

“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. … 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.”

I would almost find this resonant, with its reference to the “sexual realm,” and its almost inarticulate fall back on “how things are supposed to be.” The “contraception is dangerous to women” meme is one he often trots out, though he is not a medical doctor, nor does he cite any medical evidence. But now, look at his argument against abortion, stated at a GOP primary debate in South Carolina, in May 2011:

“The reason Social Security is in big trouble is we don’t have enough workers to support the retirees. Well, a third of all the young people in America are not in America today because of abortion, because one in three pregnancies end in abortion.”


No passionate intensity here, just casuistry, and I use that word in full awareness of the term’s roots, as a charge leveled against Jesuits — it became synonymous with a kind of argument technique meant to get rich guys off the hook in the Catholic confessional. Santorum is saying you girls have an obligation to breed because the lack of taxpaying bodies seriously inconveniences us old folks. Unfortunately, his remarks on contraception have now gotten a nation thinking that outlawing condoms is actually possible.

It’s interesting that people so divorced from their bodies — and who accuse people like me of being entirely preoccupied with bodies alone — can’t seem to see other humans as anything but bodies to be moved around, placed in war zones or in mines or in ‘man camps’ in the fracking zones or in breeding programs, according to convenience.

The venality goes on. Rachel Maddow reported this week that Santorum, while condemning Anthony Weiner for sexting photos, had himself sneakily helped out a fellow senator in a much nastier extramarital scrape, one that involved payoffs and staffers.

What actually troubles me much more is that soon after the college engagement reported above, he snapped at and walked away from a reporter who asked about his 2002 remarks blaming child rapes in the Catholic Church on Boston liberals. Here’s the quote he was asked to explain:

“Priests, like all of us, are affected by culture. When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected. While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm.”

In case anyone needs reminding, child sex abuse in the Catholic Church has been reported internationally, not only in Boston; and it has as well been reported in red states as well as in blue ones in the United States.

Santorum also, back in 2002, nominated Jerry Sandusky, formerly of Penn State, for a “Congressional Angels” award. Sandusky has been accused of raping boys. To be fair, the charges came as a surprise to many people close to the college sports figure. To be fair to the ones fully entitled to have fairness extended to them, it is usual for those surrounding a child abuse incident to be deep in denial.

I don’t want to say it, but Holy Mary, watching Santorum operate is like seeing some Pennsyl-tucky Hillbilly version of The Name of the Rose: secrecy, deals, snitching, labyrinthine self-justifications and rationalizations, priggish self-satisfaction, Father Superior power grabs, sadistic power wielding.

I can say it because I come from another kind of Catholicism — though I don’t practice it — the kind that strives for intelligence and justice and true humility in serving the poor with whom they are one, that old-school lefty strain. Think Stephen Colbert, speaking truth to power, testifying in Congress for the rights of farm workers.

Here’s what Santorum was up to during his grooming phase, as reported by Jason Cherkis, a reporter whose work appears in the Huffington Post: “[He] served on the board of directors of Universal Health Services Inc., a large hospital chain which racked up dozens of allegations of abuse during that time — including everything from rape to suicide attempts allowed by neglect to murder. Over the years, states have barred children from attending UHS facilities over safety concerns and the feds have put UHS on their radar. Department of Justice lawyers have filed two lawsuits accusing the chain of fraudulent activities. One lawsuit settled for $27.5 million. Another suit still pending in federal court in Virginia centers on a facility called Keystone Marion Youth Center.”

The racist incidents you can look up for yourself. I’ve had my fill.

So yeah, he apparently hates gays and hates people like me even more. (People like me meaning women, right? Hee hee.) And of course I’m bummed that we’re still in a place where people who stand up for gay marriage recoil in shock at the thought of polyamorist marriage, polygamy or polyandry. But there are lots and lots of reasons to stop this guy. If he can’t keep the company he’s on the board of from imploding, he shouldn’t be handling a country or a military.

And I’m glad people are recognizing the courage of that young woman who spoke up. Go for it I will indeed, dear. Thank you.

Oh, and in case you were thinking any of the other guys are any better? Ron Paul is a medical doctor and anti-abortion rights. Liberty apparently does not apply to women. I understand people who are supporting him because of the anti-war stance, though I don’t think he’ll be able to follow through with any of his plans. But you nice young people who are willing to sell out women because you want to smoke weed freely? Pfft.

I’ll leave you with Newt’s sex writing. 

“Suddenly the pouting sex kitten gave way to Diana the Huntress. She rolled onto him and somehow was sitting athwart his chest, her knees pinning his shoulders. ‘Tell me, or I will make you do terrible things,’ she hissed.”

Actually, I think all five of them — and all of us — would be better off if they’d just give up politics and become porn writers.