It's comforting to see that it's not just gays who loath Rick Santorm. Maureen Dowd has a great take down of Santorum in the New York Times and Margery Eagan goes after his false piety in a column in the Boston Herald, Boston's conservative newspaper when compared to its rival the Boston Globe. Both writers find Santorum's desire to inflict a pernicious form of Catholicism on everyone offensive (not to mention it flouts the U. S. Constitution) and also bring up examples of his lies and willingness to fleece taxpayers. First these highlights from the New York Times column:.
Egan's column in the Boston Herald isn't any kinder and also brings in Santorum attempt to blame the Catholic Church sexual abuse scandal which first exploded in Boston on that city's "cultural liberalism." Santorum conveniently ignores the fact that the sexual abuse in the Church happened EVERYWHERE all around the world, including backward conservative nations in Africa. But why would Frothy Mix want to worry about inconvenient facts. Here are some highlights from Egan's column:
Ladies, very well said. Like so many of the Christianists and members of the Catholic Church hierarchy, Santorum makes a mockery of Christ's Gospel message of love and compassion. For a great run down on how Santorum goes against true Catholic and Christian teaching, check out a great piece at Huffington Post that rips Santorum a new one in terms of his hypocrisy. Here's the lead in to the list:
The man who fondly recalls nuns rapping his knuckles with rulers did some verbal knuckle-rapping of his own on Thursday with students at a forum in Concord hosted by New England College.
Not satisfied with mentioning homosexuality in the same breath as bestiality and pedophilia, as he did in 2003, Santorum tried to win over the kids by equating homosexuality with polygamy. Even for Santorum, it was a masterpiece of antediluvian abrasiveness — slapping gays and Mormons at the same time. . . . The grating Santorum was their worst nightmare of a bad teacher. He merely got booed; he’s lucky the kids didn’t TP his car or soap the windows.
In a campaign where W. is an unmentionable, Santorum is an unexpected revival of Bushian uncompassionate conservatism.
He got more scattered boos on Friday at a library in Keene and a private high school in Dublin. In Keene, he was asked if he would protect gay rights, since gays are “children of God” too. “Serving in the military is not an unalienable right, it’s a privilege, you’re selected,” replied the candidate, who wants to restore “don’t ask, don’t tell.” He also called marriage “a privilege, not a right,” for the purpose is procreation.
Rick Perry baits gays because it’s good politics; Santorum sincerely means it. His political philosophy is infused with his über-Catholicism but lacks humanity.
New Hampshire’s feisty voters don’t seem as enraptured with Santorum’s rigid conservatism and sweater vests as evangelical voters in Iowa were. . . . . He bashes President Obama as a European-style socialist and preaches fiscal conservatism. Yet in the Senate, he made sure dollars from the socialistic Medicare program went to Puerto Rico on behalf of a hometown firm — United Health Services — that later gave him nearly $400,000 in director’s fees and stock options.
While Karen Santorum was home-schooling their seven children in Virginia, Santorum soaked the Pennsylvania taxpayers to the tune of $100,000 by enrolling the children in a Pennsylvania cyber charter school.
Santorum’s hot politics of aggrievement have competed with Mitt Romney’s cold politics of convenience. But soon Santorum will be gone and Mittens will reign as the calculating consultant type, unpersuasive in premium denim mom jeans, his hair slicked and gray, a lead in a ’50s B movie.
Santorum thinks he’s a bold color and Romney’s a pastel. But the whole Republican field seems ensconced in a black-and-white ’50s diorama. It’s like they’re running for president of Leave It to Beaverland.
Egan's column in the Boston Herald isn't any kinder and also brings in Santorum attempt to blame the Catholic Church sexual abuse scandal which first exploded in Boston on that city's "cultural liberalism." Santorum conveniently ignores the fact that the sexual abuse in the Church happened EVERYWHERE all around the world, including backward conservative nations in Africa. But why would Frothy Mix want to worry about inconvenient facts. Here are some highlights from Egan's column:
Yesterday morning, while Rick “Faith, Family, and Freedom” Santorum was preparing for another I’m-holier-than-you-are day in New Hampshire, I was sitting in a Cambridge Street Holiday Inn conference room. It was packed with survivors and advocates celebrating the 10th anniversary of the uncovering of Boston’s horrific Catholic Church sex abuse crisis. Two times in a half hour the name Rick Santorum, the self-proclaimed uber Catholic, was mentioned. Two times he was politely and genteelly booed. I loved it.
This was a mostly Catholic gathering. There were nuns, ex-nuns, ex-altar boys, and middle-aged and elderly people. And many in the crowd couldn’t stomach Santorum for one big reason. Just as the depths of this sex abuse deprivation were revealed, Rick Santorum, in 2002, went on the record to blame the rape of children in and around Boston on “cultural liberalism.” He’s never said he was wrong.
Think about that obnoxiousness before you vote, New Hampshire. Let me add. The website BishopAccountability.org lists bishops and priests credibly accused of abuse, which means priests with multiple accusers or with cases settled by the church. More than 60 such priests were accused by hundreds and hundreds in New Hampshire.
Perhaps Rick Santorum blames New Hampshire’s “cultural liberalism” for those assaults, too, though liberal is hardly a word I’d use to describe the Granite State. It is not clear what he blames for priestly attacks on teenagers and children in Ireland, throughout Europe, parts of Africa, South America and most recently Haiti.
Unfortunately for Santorum, however, the corrupt church hierarchy that knew of and then covered up these many crimes was not made up of cultural liberals but cultural conservatives. Like Santorum, the pope, most bishops, Bernard Cardinal Law and John B. McCormack (Law’s accessory and until September the bishop of Manchester, N.H.) oppose premarital sex, sex between married couples using birth control, any kind of gay sex, of course, and abortion.
Santorum, despite his uber Catholic posturing, is a cafeteria Catholic in reverse. Or maybe I should call him an “all about sex” Catholic because he only agrees with the church’s doctrines on matters sexual.
Look at his record. He’s for the death penalty and a foreign policy macho hawk (both against Catholic teaching). He’s opposed to illegal immigration and social justice for the poor (both big time against Catholic teaching from the Vatican and the American church).
Yet what really got me this weekend, hearing retold the brutal stories of small Catholic children molested, is how Rick Santorum both belittled and politicized their suffering. I wished they booed him louder at the Holiday Inn yesterday. I hope New Hampshire sends this creepy guy packing.
Ladies, very well said. Like so many of the Christianists and members of the Catholic Church hierarchy, Santorum makes a mockery of Christ's Gospel message of love and compassion. For a great run down on how Santorum goes against true Catholic and Christian teaching, check out a great piece at Huffington Post that rips Santorum a new one in terms of his hypocrisy. Here's the lead in to the list:
[I]t's a political delusion to think Rick Santorum is a standard-bearer of authentic Catholic values in politics. In fact, on several issues central to Catholic social teaching -- torture, war, immigration, climate change, the widening gap between rich and poor and workers' rights - Santorum is radically out of step with his faith's teachings as articulated by Catholic bishops and several popes over the centuries.
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