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Wednesday, July 06, 2005
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RICK SANTORUM IS AN IDIOT
I've had a special relationship with Senator Rick Santorum for years now. Every time I see himon TV, I zone everything else in the world out. For all I care, the Senator and I could be the only two people on the planet. Just seeing his face tells me that good times are ahead.
Why am I so enamoured with Santorum? Glad you asked. You see, I love it when politicians say stupid things. In fact, I live for it. Well, Rick Santorum seemingly get through a given day without saying something stupid. And he doesn't just say something offensive, he says something cosmically offensive. And he does it repeatedly. He's like Nancy Pelosi with a significantly smaller penis.
If you're anything like me and use politics as a means of expressing your contempt for everyone who isn't you, then you can't help but fall in love with Rick Santorum. Sure, in a pinch Sean Hannity will do, too. But Santorum is a master of the form.
My fun with Rick started in the wake of the Supreme Court's ruling in LAWRENCE V. TEXAS (2003), which basically said that you can engage in consensual butt-sex without fear of going to prison where you would be subject to non-consensual butt-sex. Given that it is often the right that worries that the government will break into their homes and rip off all of their guns, you would think that they would applaud anything that keeps the government out of their homes. And presumably away from their cocks and assholes.
Of course, you would be silly for thinking such a thing. Santorum gave an interview where he explained why keeping my peanut butter out of your chocolate is a compelling state interest.
"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [gay] sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything." Homosexuality was, he added, "antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family."
Actually, I would argue that Santorum is right. You DO have the right to all of those things. Bigamy and polygamy, if engaged in by knowing, consensual adults, is harmless. It might be stupid, but it won't destroy civilization. Same with incest. Okay, incest does lead to two headed babies, but where do you think the Fox anchors of the future a going to come from? At some point he threw in bestiality too, but I think that we can all agree that that's nasty. And dangerous. Animals are famous for having teeth and claws and stuff.
I also love the statement about homosexuality being "antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family." Unless you're taking the family to gay bars instead of grandma's on the weekend, I fail to see how. It also implies that hating homosexuals is conducive to the "healthy, stable, traditional family." Seriously, I think that my family is pretty average in really not thinking about rampant faggery every minute that we have together. Or maybe we're not all that average after all.
Santorum felt that his remarks needed clarifying, so he went on. And on.
AP: I mean, should we outlaw homosexuality?
SANTORUM: I have no problem with homosexuality. I have a problem with homosexual acts. As I would with acts of other, what I would consider to be acts outside of traditional heterosexual relationships.
AP: OK, without being too gory or graphic, so if somebody is homosexual, you would argue that they should not have sex?
SANTORUM: In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That's not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be.
Seriously, how could that be considered picking on homosexuality? And I've always loved the whole "hate the sin, love the sinner" party line too. Really? How far do you take that philosophy? What about the Nazis? Would Santorum come out and say, "Despite the horrors of the Holocaust, I still love Adolph Hitler. I have too. C'mon, I'm a Christian after all."
This neatly brings us to the matter of Nazi references. Santorum disapproves of them. Y' know, sometimes. This past winter, West Virginia senator (and former Klansman) Robert Byrd compared the Republican effort to abolish the filibuster on judicial nominees to Nazi crimes. Senator Santorum was the first to rise and condemn Byrd’s remarks.
Then, ten weeks later, Santorum compared Democratic complaints about the filibuster debate to........the bombing of Nazi occupied France. Smooth move, douchebag.
One of the larger truths of the human experience is that television is a very limited medium in which to properly express one's stupidity. That's why Al Franken got out of it. If you're really stupid, you want that stupidity in a physical form, one you can touch and leave out on the coffee table so you can show it off to your friends. You need to write a book. If you're Bill O'Reilly, you need to write three, including one for children while you're facing a sexual harassment lawsuit.
So it only follows that Senator Rick Santorum has written a book.
Actually, you also write a book if you're running for president. I'm not sure why, and I think they snuck it into the Constitution when I wasn't looking. Santorum is decidedly running for president. Furthermore, he's running for president against Senator Hillary Clinton. You can tell this by the title of his book, "It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good,"
Christ, it would be funny if Hillary decided not to run at all.
For years now I've asked everyone who insists on telling me that Hillary will be president to name me five states that she can win. I'm the only one who's been able to. I couldn't be stronger in my belief that almost every Republican currently considering a run would crus Hillary like a beer can. The only two who I think she could beat are Bill Frist - who can't run the Senate, let alone a presidential campaign - and Santorum. Just from the Washington Post's article about the book, it seems like Santorum wants to make it easy for her.
In writing the book, Santorum looked for a way to alienate both women and Blacks. Mission accomplished!
In the book, Santorum makes the case that abortion puts the liberty rights of the mother before those of her child just as the liberty rights of slave owners were put before those of the slave.
"This was tried once before in America ... But unlike abortion today, in most states even the slaveholder did not have the unlimited right to kill his slave," Santorum said.
There's nothing Black people like more than to hear white conservatives compare things that annoy them to slavery. They won't even concede that white conservatives know what they're talking about, having popularized slavery, if not having actually invented it.
And Santorum has a point that it was illegal to kill slaves in most states. What he fails to point out is that the states never enforced those laws. This is because white men enjoyed killing slaves even more than women enjoy having abortions.
But I think we all know that conservative politicians are completely full of shit when it comes to abortion. Anyone with half a brain HAS to know that. The abortion argument is a ploy to play to rural folks and squeeze the traditionally Democratic Catholic vote. And it's working too. Rural counties and Catholics voted overwhelmingly Democratic just forty years ago, now Republicans win states like Missouri by doing very well in rural counties as they get their asses kicked in places like St. Louis and Kansas City. Why do you think that is? Because the people who benefited most from things like the TVA and WPA and agricultural subsidies are suddenly against big government? The Republicans are now drawing about half of the Catholic vote.
You can tell that Republicans are full of shit by the two most repeated cases they make about ROE V. WADE (1973)
The first argument that they make is that a reversal of Roe would merely return the issue to the states. What they don't tell you is that once it got there....nothing would happen. You see, abortion as defined by Roe enjoys popular support in the neighbourhood of 70%. Even President Bush acknowledges this.
It would take a ballsy politician indeed to buck those numbers. In fact, such an action could very well send the Republicans the way of the Whigs.
The second, and most precious, argument is that women would never be prosecuted in the event that abortion was criminalized. Well, unless that woman happened to be a doctor. Here's how it works; abortion is murder and murderers need to be jailed. Ordering and paying for said murder seems to be another matter entirely. Guys who would like to hire an Italian gentleman to "take care" of their wives should take note and just wait a few years. Hiring a hit man will be considerably less frowned upon than it is now.
I'm sure that everyone would like to know why the Republicans are lying to you about abortion, right? It’s a matter of basic politics. Abortion is the perfect wedge issue. It is also one that has successfully been used to push Democrats into increasingly ridiculous positions. For example, Democrats have to argue that parental notification would be "the end of a woman's right to choose." Now every fourteen year old girl will tell you that she needs a note from a parent to get her nipple pierced or her ass tattooed, so letting her go for a uterus scraping of her own volition strikes most people as silly. Even the AMA was against "partial birth abortion", yet the Democrats were all for it.
Using a dumb position to force your opponent to take an even dumber position is what is known in politics as "a good thing." Any politician who abandons a position that so embarasses his opponents is what is known as "a fool." If the Republicans got rid of abortion tomorrow, what domestic issue would they have to draw votes, fiscal responsibility?
Rick Santorum knows this as well as I do. That's why he came to the "Choose Life" party late. Well, that or he was afraid if dressed up like Andrew Ridgley that George Michael would grab his ass.
Santorum said early in his career he was reluctant to take part in the anti-abortion cause, but an impassioned speech by then-Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H., helped change his mind.
For those of you who don't remember him, Bob Smith was a special combination of stupid and nuts.
In the Ninties, Smith was on a special Senate committee studying the POW/MIA issue from the Vietnam War. All through the hearings, Smith waved about this photo of what were supposed to be three American POWs take the previous Thursday or something. Small problem; the photo was a forgery. Did that chill Bobby out? No, no it didn't.
In 2000, Smith decided that he should be president despite the fact that his only qualification was that he's a lunatic and looked like a high school principal and he was polling at only three points higher in his native New Hampshire than I was. When it became clear that he was going to be destroyed by George Bush in the primary, he quit the Republican Party altogether and ran as an independent. And he still got crushed. Once crushed, Smith realized that he would get butchered like a hog as an independent during his 2002 re-election campaign. So he begged the party to take him back, which they did. Then Smith got butchered like a hog by John Sununu in the Republican primary. I think he makes a living selling sex tours to South-east Asia these days.
If Santorum is following Smith's example on anything other than how to end your career, then he's even dumber than I thought.
But what does Big Rick think of the really important issues?
ON ABSTINENCE: "When I have attempted to increase abstinence funding ... I have been scolded for 'trying to impose religious values on children.' As if telling children to go ahead and have sex all they want as long as they use a condom is not a value statement."
Aren't conservative Republicans the folks who constantly point out that that public schools aren't particularly good at teaching relatively simple things like math? Why are they insisting on ANY sex education?
ON STAY-AT-HOME MOMS: "Respect for stay-at-home mothers has been poisoned by a toxic combination of the village elders' war on the traditional family and radical feminism's misogynistic crusade to make working outside the home the only marker of social value and self-respect."
And that's how you make friends with working women, that is to say, two-thirds of ALL women.
ON WELFARE REFORM: "The notion that college education is a cost-effective way to help poor, low-skill unmarried mothers with high school diplomas or GED's move up the economic ladder is just wrong."
Yeah, working part-time for minimum wage at Wal-Mart is a much better idea. After all, in about 226 years they might get to be a manager and star in one of those dopey commercials that are always so annoyingly set in West Sodomy, Kansas.
Look, I'm not a huge fan of sending welfare mothers to college for free, but it beats the shit out them spending three hours getting to a place where they can provide under-paid (and still government-subsidized) no-skill work for Tyson Foods as the government babysits their kids. And as I remember it, conservatives are supposed to be against subsidizing both private labour and daycare.
Rick doesn't seem to have thought his shit out all that well and liberals are going to have a blast with this book.
On the other hand, maybe Santorum remembers what fun it was to hate a President Clinton and would like to do it again. Who knows, but you sure as shit don't win a general election with this drivel.
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