Now that he has a target on his back, some of the comments made by Rick Santorum earlier in the campaign, when he was trying to portray himself as a social conservative to the right of Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann, are coming back to scare some voters.
The latest Santorum headache goes back to an October interview with an evangelical Christian blog, in which he said he would fight “the dangers of contraception” if he became president.
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| (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren) |
“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,” Santorum told the blog Caffeinated Thoughts. “Many in the Christian faith have said, ‘Well, that’s okay. Contraception’s OK.’ It’s not okay because it’s a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”
That’s straight out of the 1950s Catholic teachings – sex is for procreation first, pleasure second.
With surveys showing that about 99 percent of women use or have used contraception during their child-bearing years, the Santorum point of view is about as far to the fringe as a candidate can get. Time magazine has latched onto the Santorum comments, which is sure to make the issue go viral.
Santorum more recently has said that banning contraception is about religious freedom but a recent Pew poll found that 85 percent of the country believes that contraception is either “not a moral issue” or “morally acceptable.” Just 8 percent view contraception as “morally wrong.”
According to the transcript of the videotaped blog interview, Santorum further commented:
“(Sexual acts) are supposed to be within marriage, they are supposed to be for purposes that are, yes, conjugal, but also [inaudible], but also procreative. That’s the perfect way that a sexual union should happen. We take any part of that out, we diminish the act. And if you can take one part out that’s not for purposes of procreation, that’s not one of the reasons, then you diminish this very special bond between men and women, so why can’t you take other parts of that out?
“And all of a sudden, it becomes deconstructed to the point where it’s simply pleasure. And that’s certainly a part of it — and it’s an important part of it, don’t get me wrong –but there’s a lot of things we do for pleasure, and this is special, and it needs to be seen as special.
“Again, I know most Presidents don’t talk about those things, and maybe people don’t want us to talk about those things, but I think it’s important that you are who you are. I’m not running for preacher. I’m not running for pastor, but these are important public policy issues. These how profound impact on the health of our society.”
The idea that Santorum is running for pastor in chief has also irritated some tea party activists.
At blogs such as the Tea Party Tribune and The Minority Report, commentators have expressed downright disgust with a Santorum interview granted to Townhall.com last year in which he criticized those Republicans with libertarian views of an America built on rugged individualism.
The Tribune last month had this to say: “The Tea Party folks aren’t trying to refashion conservatism, Rick, you angry whiner, Tea Partiers want to get back to governing from our founding documents not someone’s interpretation of same.”
The Tribune last month had this to say: “The Tea Party folks aren’t trying to refashion conservatism, Rick, you angry whiner, Tea Partiers want to get back to governing from our founding documents not someone’s interpretation of same.”
At The Minority Report, blogger Alex Knepper said this:
“Rick Santorum directly repudiates the individualist legacy of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, decrying the ‘libertarianish right’ that promotes ‘this whole idea of personal autonomy.’ Santorum defines liberty not as the right to decide for ourselves, but as ‘the freedom to attend to your duties’ to God and family. In other words: Santorum doesn’t want to make government small — he wants to use it to spread his Catholic values.
“Santorum similarly states that the family, not the individual, is the fundamental unit of society. In the Goldwater-Reagan tradition, strong families are good because they foster self-reliant, independent individuals. In the Santorum vision, individuals are only legitimate in their aims insofar as they serve the needs of the family and ‘the common good.’”
