Santorum: A martyr to the cause?

Rick Santorum does not want to be president. That’s obvious.

Without extensive polling about what voters care about, he has taken position after position that would guarantee defeat in the general election.

So what’s Santorum doing? He is establishing himself as the “conservative” candidate, and the embodiment of the most extreme tenets of the Catholic faith. In Wednesday night’s debate, when asked to define himself in one word, Santorum chose “courage.”

Well put. It takes courage to stand up and say things that will doom your election. Unless of course, you are looking for a higher recognition than being president.

He wants to be a Christian martyr.

Let’s look at the evidence.

The majority of voters in this country are women. So what’s Santorum’s position on women’s issues?

He disapproves of contraception. Never mind that 99% of sexually-active women have used contraception. It’s “not okay,” he said this fall. “It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.” Though he does not want to ban contraception, he believes states should have the right to ban various forms. Nevermind that contraception leads to fewer abortions. Foster Friess, the biggest donor to the super PAC supporting Santorum, joked last week that the best form of contraception was for a woman to put “an aspirin between her knees.” The candidate may have said the line was a “bad joke,” but it’s in line with his thinking.

He is strongly anti-abortion, even in the case of rape or incest or risk to the life of the mother. (You have to give him credit there. Murder is murder if that’s what you think abortion is, regardless of how the woman got pregnant or the risks to her health. ) He’s against fetal testing because, he says, it leads to abortion. Nevermind that it also saves lives of mothers and babies and determines whether or not there is a fetal abnormality. Santorum and his wife have a special needs child. He knows how difficult that is. He’s lucky. He has money and a stable family situation. There are so many families who cannot handle a special-needs child. I know. I had one. (He’s a healthy, happily married nearly 30-year-old now.) I can’t imagine how I would have coped without financial means. More families with special needs children end in divorce than families of children without.

Santorum is against sex unless it is to propagate. Is he dismissing anyone, male or female, who is infertile, any woman who is pregnant or menstruating, or in fact, is not in her short fertile period each month? No sex for anyone who is entering or past menopause? I’m curious to know if Santorum’s wife takes her temperature every month to determine when she can conceive.

He’s not totally sold on women working outside the home, writing in his 2005 book, It Takes a Family that “The radical feminists succeeded in undermining the traditional family and convincing women that professional accomplishments are the key to happiness.” Nevermind that in today’s economy most women have no choice but to work.

There goes the women’s vote.

He is offering himself up to be burned at the stake. He believes that his God’s laws take precedence. “Where do you think this concept of equality comes from?” He asks. “It doesn’t come from Islam. It doesn’t come from the East and Eastern religions. It comes from the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” He talks in terms of “war” against “radical Islam” and that “we must educate, engage, evangelize and eradicate.” Of course he is against sharia law, “the creeping influence of Muslim law.” So much for the Islamic vote, the Buddhist vote, the Sikh vote and the Hindu vote.

He is self-flagellating. Santorum believes that “our civil law has to comport with a higher law: God’s law.” And that our decisions must be based on “biblical truths”. There goes the atheist, agnostic and humanist votes.

He is branded on the forehead. After calling Obama’s religion a “phony theology,” that is not found in the Bible, whatever that means. (Certainly a majority of his supporters have no idea what he’s talking about.) He calls it a “different kind of Christianity.” There goes the black vote.

He is offering himself up to be drawn and quartered. Santorum alludes, in a not-so-subtle way, to Obama’s similarity to Adolf Hitler. In a speech last week, he mentioned that this year’s election was similar to the early 1940s when Americans thought that Hitler was “a nice guy” and not “near as bad as what we think,” and he goes on to say that, “It’s going to be harder for this generation to figure this out.” Nothing is more offensive to Jewish voters than trivializing the Holocaust. There goes the Jewish vote.

He is putting on his hair shirt. Like many Republican candidates, Santorum is against gay marriage. But he goes much further. He has compared laws against gay sex as being in line with those against bestiality, incest, child molestation, adultery and polygamy. Sodomy laws, he says, properly exist to prevent acts “which undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family.” There goes the gay vote.

He goes to the rack. He has said that in the minds of “some Christians” Mormonism is a “dangerous cult.” There goes the Mormon vote.

He’s prepared to be mocked. Santorum suggests that certain religions put the Earth above man, debunking the climate change argument. “Christians,” he says, “have dominion over the Earth.” There goes the environmental vote.

His neck is in a vise. Let’s not forget Satan. “Satan has his sights on the United States of America,” Santorum says. “Satan is attacking the great institutions of America, using those great vices of pride, vanity and sensuality as the root to attack all of the strong plants that has so deeply rooted in the American tradition.” There goes the Eastern liberal elite vote.

He’s getting his eyes gouged out. So who’s left? The evangelicals and the right-wing conservatives. After all, he’s a man who has the “courage” to stand up for his principles, no matter what the cost. But wait! Didn’t Santorum say Wednesday night that he didn’t believe in the No Child Left Behind law but voted for it anyway just to take one for the team? ”It was against the principles I believed in,” he said. Well, there’s goes the evangelical and the far-right conservative vote.

Is that Rick Santorum I see, carrying a cross?

Sally Quinn  | Feb 24, 2012 6:12 PM