Adele Stan Watches Rick Santorum
Adele Stan:
At CPAC, Santorum Surgest: Listening to Santorum, it was sometimes difficult to discern whether he was running for president or village idiot. I'm not generally inclined to use those kinds of pejoratives, but what else can be said of a candidate who makes the kinds of claims made by Santorum from the CPAC podium?
Liberals, he said, had preyed on the well-meaning "sentimentality" of Americans who want "to pass a beautiful Earth onto their children" by promoting the "radical idea" of "man-made global warming." It was all a ruse, he said, to assert government control of choices that should be up to the individual -- choices like what kind of light bulb to buy and what kind of car to drive. But that wasn't even the idiotic part.
Correlating two phenomena as if one caused the other, Santorum pointed out that among the nations of the world, the highest standard of living was enjoyed by those nations that used the most of the world's energy resources. So, implied, if you want to keep your standard of living up, use more energy than you need. (Going on vacation? Be sure to turn on all the houselights before you leave and return America to greatness!)
He contended that Margaret Thatcher, former prime minister of the United Kingdom, failed "to accomplish what Reagan did" because of Britain's nationalized health-care system, which encouraged "dependency" among the people….
[I]nstead of mentioning his opposition to birth control of any kind (he has said he believes it to be "wrong"), Santorum argued against the administration's new rules -- which will require contraception coverage by employer-provided health insurance -- by calling contraceptives "things that only cost a few dollars." Actually, a month's supply of birth-control pills goes for about $50, a good chunk of change for, say, an orderly working in a Catholic (or any other kind of) hospital.
Of course, like his fellow candidates -- and nearly every other speaker who graced CPAC podium -- Santorum characterized the Obama administration's requirement that workers in Catholic hospitals and universities be granted access to contraception coverage as a violation of religious freedom, a claim that is less idiotic than it is demagogic.
(UPDATE: And speaking of demagogues, Right Wing Watch reported that before the day was through, white nationalist leader Robert Vandervoort, who enjoyed major exposure at CPAC this year, would tweet that he had dinner with Santorum. You'll recall that Santorum told a group of white Iowans last month at a campaign stop, "I don't want to make black people's lives better by giving them somebody else's money"…
At the moment Intrade has Santorum a 25% chance for the Republican nomination and a 7.9% chance for the presidency--that means a 32% chance of winning the presidency if he gets nominated. I think that is probably twice what it should be: 15% rather than 32%...
