Rick Santorum Is Coming For Your Birth Control
Here is an actual Rick Santorum quote: “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.” And also, “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.”
These comments were not dug up from some bygone moment of ideological purity, before dreams of a presidential campaign. He said them in October, to a blogger at CaffeinatedThoughts.com (they met at Des Moines’ Baby Boomers Cafe).
It’s pretty basic: Rick Santorum is coming for your contraception. Any and all of it. And while he may not be alone in his opposition to non-procreative sex, he is certainly the most honest about it — as he himself acknowledged in the interview.
This is important, because while reproductive rights are always cast in terms of pro or against a woman’s right to an abortion and in what circumstances, even liberals are surprised to find out what social conservatives really want to do about contraception. Liberals are even willing to cast the proposed defunding of Planned Parenthood and all Title X programs (a position that has become mainstream in Republican circles) as an abortion issue, when it is actually about contraception. (The Hyde Amendment already bans almost all federal abortion funding.) So is this about “babies” or is this about sex? Rick Santorum isn’t even pretending it’s (only) about childbearing.
Speaking to ABC News’ Jake Tapper, Santorum recently reaffirmed his opposition to Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 Supreme Court decision that struck down a ban on discussing or providing contraception to married couples, and established a right to privacy that would later be integral to Roe v. Wade and Lawrence v. Texas. (It is generally better-known how Santorum feels about gay people.) That would be the case where the majority asked, “Would we allow the police to search the sacred precincts of marital bedrooms for telltale signs of the use of contraceptives? The very idea is repulsive to the notions of privacy surrounding the marriage relationship.” Rick Santorum disagrees. He thinks, using the currently popular states’ rights parlance, that “the state has a right to do that, I have never questioned that the state has a right to do that. It is not a constitutional right, the state has the right to pass whatever statues they have.” This is a view Santorum has held at least since 2003.
The trouble with this is that not only have more than 99 percent of sexually active women used at least one form of birth control, helping people get access to birth control is actually a popular issue. According to a June survey by the Public Religion Research Institute, 82 percent of Americans actually want to expand access to birth control for women who cannot afford it, while only 16 percent were opposed.
Santorum isn’t alone. Five of the current or former Republican presidential candidates signed the Personhood Pledge (though unlike Santorum, Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul added some caveats to their support). Mitt Romney told Mike Huckabee he’d support an amendment saying life begins at conception — which Personhood folks interpret as the fertilization of an egg, meaning that contraceptives like the IUD and sometimes even the pill are murderous. (Good luck figuring out what Romney actually thinks on that one.)
Santorum just happens to be happiest putting it at the top of the agenda. In the Caffeinated Thoughts video, he promises that “all those issues are going to be front and center with me,” and says, ”I know most presidents don’t talk about these things and maybe people don’t want us to talk about these things. But I think it’s important that you are who you are… these are important public policy issues.” Among those important public policy issues: Sex for fun. In the same video, Santorum bemoans sex becoming “deconstructed to the point where it’s simply pleasure.”
Many people don’t want them to talk about these things because it shows the true colors of what social conservatives wish for this country, which is very different from what Americans wish for themselves. Maybe the near-win in Iowa yesterday is the end of the road for Santorum, and maybe no one will ever succeed by openly suggesting a contraception ban that would send the condom police into America’s bedrooms. But that’s clearly the world Santorum wants, and it’s one that is entirely consistent with the antiabortion movement’s goals. That would be the same movement that over the past year decided it had a mandate in states across the country, the same one that demanded endless obeisance from the Republican candidates in Iowa this year — and mostly got it.
By: Irin Carmon, Salon, January 4, 2012
Did Santorum Win Iowa?: Caucus Vote Counter Says Typo Gave Mitt Romney 20 Extra Votes
An Iowa GOP caucus voter who helped count the votes at his small caucus meeting in Moulton, Iowa claims that former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) accidentally received 20 extra votes than he earned — a claim which, if true, would change the winner of the unusually close caucus to former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA):
Edward True, 28, of Moulton, said he helped count the votes and jotted the results down on a piece of paper to post to his Facebook page. He said when he checked to make sure the Republican Party of Iowa got the count right, he said he was shocked to find they hadn’t.
“When Mitt Romney won Iowa by eight votes and I’ve got a 20-vote discrepancy here, that right there says Rick Santorum won Iowa,” True said. “Not Mitt Romney.”
True said at his 53-person caucus at the Garrett Memorial Library, Romney received two votes. According to the Iowa Republican Party’s website, True’s precinct cast 22 votes for Romney.
Des Moines TV station KCCI 8 captured an image of Moulton’s handwritten vote count:
Minor counting errors such as this one are extremely common on election day, so it is perfectly plausible that Moulton is correct and Romney did receive 20 unearned votes. It is equally plausible, however, that these lost votes could be canceled out by a similar error at another caucus site. The tentative results, which showed Romney with the barest 8 vote lead, have not yet been certified.
Nevertheless, the Iowa GOP does not seem happy that True is questioning the early result. According to KCCI, a spokesperson for the Iowa GOP said that “True is not a precinct captain and he’s not a county chairperson so he has no business talking about election results.”
By: Ian Millhiser, Think Progress, January 5, 2011
The Champion Of The Already Powerful: Mitt Romney’s Brand Of Extremism
Mitt Romney’s close call at the Iowa caucuses Tuesday will doubtless contribute to speculation that he is too “moderate” to appeal to Republican primary voters. While Romney has a complicated relationship with his new party-line stances on social issues, I’d argue that his new positions and his Olympian flip flops that he had to make to get there are only part of his problem. Romney isn’t too moderate for Republican voters — at this time in our country he’s simply the wrong kind of extreme.
The 2012 election will ultimately be a referendum on the kind of economic policies Americans want — ones that work for working people or ones that are designed by and for a privileged few. The Bush-instigated recession has compounded the unprecedented disparity between the richest few Americans and the millions who are struggling just to get by. President Obama’s efforts to put Americans back to work have been met at every turn by a Republican Congress unwilling to stimulate the nation’s economy and stabilize the nation’s finances, inexplicably eager to give a tax hike to working families but unwilling to let Bush’s damaging tax cuts for the wealthy expire. All the Republican frontrunners are offering similar reprises of Bush’s disastrous economic policies. But only one comes across immediately and undeniably as an extreme corporatist.
Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee hit Romney’s extremism problem on the head when he said the candidate “looks like the guy who fired you.” Most didn’t get to see his face at the time, but Mitt Romney has plenty of experience firing people from a distance, sending thousands of jobs overseas while raking in fat paychecks at Bain Capital that continue today years after his retirement. No wonder he hasn’t been able to shake the image of himself as a corporate fat-cat: he doesn’t just want to give corporations and the wealthy major tax cuts, he openly states that he thinks “corporations are people.”
And Romney’s out-of-touch image and pro-corporate extremism aren’t just turn-offs to progressives. A poll by The Hill this fall found that “55 percent of conservatives and 81 percent of centrists” see income inequality in America as a problem. A Bloomberg–Washington Post poll found that a majority of Republicans think the wealthiest Americans should pay more in taxes to help bring down the budget deficit. Corporate extremism at odds with the priorities of the base is the norm among the GOP presidential candidates — but only Romney embodies it.
Unfortunately, Romney’s near-miss with Santorum will help him frame himself a mainstream, electable candidate just conservative enough to make it through the Republican primary gauntlet. Santorum is the perfect foil: a right-wing ideologue so extreme he thinks states should be able to outlaw contraception, that homosexuality is akin to bestiality, that high obesity rates are an argument against food stamps, and that all married same-sex couples should have their unions annulled. But when it comes to policy, Romney’s positions on social issues are nearly indistinguishable from those of his crusading opponent. Romney has endorsed radical anti-choice “personhood amendments.” He rejects marriage equality and says he wouldn’t support a federal-level Employment Non-Discrimination Act. He opposes the DREAM Act. He’s even getting his legal policy advice from Robert Bork, a right-wing crusader so extreme the Senate wouldn’t confirm him to the Supreme Court.
Romney and Santorum would each be disastrous to America on both social and economic issues. But their near-tie in Iowa exposes a fault line that will be visible through the general election. So what’s the difference? While there is still a solid evangelical base that embraces the kind of social extremism offered by Santorum, American voters across the political spectrum are wary of the government-by-the-few embraced by the GOP and embodied by Romney.
Santorum is no less of an economic extremist than Romney, just as Romney is hardly less of a social extremist than Santorum. Every Republican candidate has called for trillions of dollars of tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy, for ending Medicare as we know it, and for a return to George W. Bush’s disastrous economic policies. But Romney — through his biography, demeanor and tin ear — has, with good reason, become personally associated with these policies that cater to the wealthy and privileged and ignore the middle class.
The 2012 election will come down to a very basic choice. Do we want a champion of the middle class in the White House or the champion of those who are already powerful? Do you want to hire the guy who fired you? Iowa Republicans this week started answering that question.
By: Michael B. Keegan, The Huffington Post, January 5, 2012
I Love A Parade: The March Of The Non-Mitts
“This is the New Hampshire primary! This is a big deal! I can’t even believe I’m standing here!” cried Jon Huntsman, who yearns to be the Rick Santorum of New Hampshire. That’s what it’s come to. Do you think this is what Huntsman told himself when he quit his distinguished post as ambassador to China? (“Diplomacy is all well and good, but I believe I was meant for greater things. Like being the Rick Santorum of New Hampshire.”)
Santorum, of course, was the man of the hour when he sort-of-almost-nearly came in first in the Iowa caucuses on Tuesday. Actually, Mitt Romney won. (Eight Republicans can’t be wrong!) But Santorum has the momentum. His strategy of spending his entire life going from one Iowa Pizza Ranch to another paid off.
After campaigning only in New Hampshire, with 150 events in the bag, Huntsman hopes for a similar triumph. It’s the famous one-state strategy that worked so well in 2008 for Rudy Giuliani.
“I’d thought we’d never get here, but here we are!” he told an audience in the Peterborough town hall. Actually, getting to the Peterborough town hall is not all that remarkable. I have personally been there several times, but, of course, that is because I have a glamorous career in journalism, which allows me to have elite access to events like the one headlined: “Tom Ridge Introduces Jon Huntsman.” You may remember Ridge from his stint as chief of the Department of Homeland Security. He was the one with the yellow-orange-red terror colors. Huntsman is incredibly buoyant, to the point of appearing to be just a little bit goofy. (“Last night in Dover I was met by a goat! The same goat that bit my kneecap when I was there three months ago!”) He has a large, attractive family, but large attractive families are a dime a dozen this year. Michele Bachmann had 23 foster children, and she’s already out of the race.
Jon Huntsman is the Republican that the White House most feared, possibly because the White House is full of Democrats. He is way behind in the New Hampshire polls, and he lacks the loony streak that primary voters seem to find so attractive this time around. Really, he is toast unless he does something remarkable over the next week. Not remarkable in the sense of making a good point in the next debate. Remarkable as in saving a baby from being run over by stopping a speeding car with one hand.
There are still plenty of other Republican options. After his fifth-place finish in Iowa, Rick Perry suspended his campaign but then tweeted, “Here we come, South Carolina.” This appeared to surprise some of his staff, who seemed to feel as if their long political nightmare had ended in Des Moines. But it turned out that Perry had jogged his way back into the race.
“I was out on the trail when it kind of came to me,” he said.
Quite a lot comes to the governor of Texas when he’s jogging. You will remember the coyote he killed with his laser-sighted Ruger. No word on whether a pistol was involved in this latest revelation.
Ron Paul is still in competition, as is Newt Gingrich, who appears to be running mainly on rancor, the candidate of the I Want to Eat Mitt’s Liver Party. And Rick Santorum, who continued the excitement of Iowa by flying into New Hampshire for a rally at a nursing home.
Mitt Romney himself was greeted in Manchester by a group of people cordoned off into half a high school auditorium. This helped disguise the crowd’s small size but not the fact that it appeared to be made up mainly of Ron Paul supporters, dragooned teenagers and refugees from Occupy Wall Street. The highlight of the event was supposed to be an endorsement from John McCain, whose innermost thoughts we would love to be privy to. Or maybe not.
McCain’s old loathing of Romney has now been totally overshadowed by his hatred of President Obama. “You can’t hide from your record of making this country bankrupt, from destroying our national security and making this nation one that we have to restore with Mitt Romney as president of the United States of America!” McCain snarled into the mic. It was an endorsement, but not the feel-good moment we were sort of looking for. Fortunately, they did play the new Kid Rock theme song that implicitly compares Romney to a wild stallion.
Can’t wait to see what the Republicans do next. You have to admit they’re desperate. Rick Santorum. Geesh.
Did I ever mention that Romney once drove to Canada with the family Irish setter strapped to the roof of the car? The dog’s name was Seamus. New Hampshire Republicans, if you can’t think of anybody to vote for on Tuesday, consider writing in the name Seamus when you go to the polls. Maybe we can start a boomlet.
Makes as much sense as the Newt Gingrich moment.
By: Gail Collins, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, January 4, 2012
Union-Basher Rick Santorum Has A History Of Voting To Protect Unions
GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s unexpected finish in Iowa has thrust his record into the spotlight. Naturally, his anti-choice, homophobic, and patently outrageous positions only help shore up his right-wing credentials. As he said in Sioux City, “A track record is a pretty good indication of what you’re going to do in the future.”
However, some of his votes in the past will certainly put a dent in his conservative credentials. As Bloomberg News points out, Santorum spent a lot of his 16-year congressional career fighting alongside labor advocates to protect striking workers, increase the minimum wage, and ensure that the law requiring employers to pay the prevailing wage stayed on the books:
In 1993, Santorum was one of 17 House Republicans who sided with most Democrats in backing a Clinton administration bill to protect striking employees from being permanently replaced by their employers.
Santorum’s Senate service shows a clear track record of supporting the Davis-Bacon Act, the federal law that requires government contractors to pay workers the local prevailing wage (USMMMNCH) and a perennial target for elimination by the business community and anti-union Tea Party activists.
In 1996, Santorum voted in effect for an amendment by former Massachusetts Democratic Senator Edward M. Kennedy that said the 1931 law shouldn’t be repealed.
In 1999, the Senate accepted a Santorum amendment that said it should consider “reform” of Davis-Bacon rather than repeal. Later that year, Santorum was one of 15 Senate Republicans who sided with Democrats in rejecting an amendment that would have limited the application of Davis-Bacon in federal disaster areas.
Of course, Santorum’s fight for the middle class and low-income Americans may merely reflect that he first ran in “a democratic-leaning, working class congressional district” in Pennsylvania. But in seeking national office, Santorum is throwing those same people under the bus. Now, he compares programs that help America’s workers — the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid, or food stamps — to fascism, even going so far as to say, “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better” with taxpayer funds. He also advocated for the elimination of all public sector unions.
Santorum’s convenient rejection of his previous efforts may not be enough to maintain the right-wing veneer he is aggressively pursuing. After all, if he is to be believed, his track record is a good indication of what he’ll do in the future.
By: Tanya Somanader, Think Progress, January 4, 2012
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