Bottoms Up
by digby
Adele Stan has a terrific post up about the presidential hopeful CPAC speeches yesterday. The whole thing is great, but I just love this:
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.
Visually, Santorum asserted his fecundity offensive, delivering his speech while surrounded by his wife, Karen, and six of their seven children. Yet instead 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.” AlterNet’s Sarah Jaffe has more on Santorum’s use of race anxiety here.)
But back to the idiot piece, someone on Santorum’s staff might want to tell the anti-gay crusader, who once famously said that gay marriage could lead to the sanctioning of “man on dog” sex, that he might want to stop referring to conservatism as a “bottom-up” movement. Just sayin’.
He’s officially the front-runner for the moment. Mitt hasn’t brought in the heavy artillery on him yet, so who knows how long this will last. (And maybe Mitt’s artillery isn’t as powerful against a true social conservative, who knows?)
Anyway, Santorum is truly the lowest of the low. It would be a beautiful thing if they did manage to nominate him. When they lose, there’s no way on earth they could say it was because he wasn’t conservative enough. (Needless to say, the “blahs” of ACORN are going to steal the election anyway, but still.)
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