President Man-on-Dog Santorum? (His eyes have seen the Glory.)

Many progressives believe that the only thing worse than a Sarah Palin presidency would be a Rick Santorum presidency.  Both politicians appeal to the most extreme elements in the Republican Party, both are championed by social conservatives who would love nothing more than to turn the United States into a full-fledged theocracy.  Both would wreck havoc on foreign policy, the environment, and the economy.  Both would roll back advances in civil rights.  Neither would hesitate to start a nuclear war if they thought God told them to do so, or if they believed Armageddon was imminent, or if they suddenly felt like punishing a "rogue nation."

Could it happen?  Rick Santorum's close friend and political adviser, Deal Hudson, says that the former senator will likely declare his intention to run next year, which would shake up an already crowded field of potential conservative candidates.  Two liberal pundits think that Santorum might actually have a chance.  And that, puppers, should scare the hell out of us.

Mark McKinnon succinctly lays out Little Ricky's fundamentalist bonafides:  Santorum is a strong neoconservative who represented Pennsylvania in the House of Representatives and the Senate over a 16-year period and rose to the No. 3 leadership position among Republicans.  Santorum once grouped gay sex with incest, polygamy, and bestiality, and he believes consenting adults have no constitutional right to privacy when it comes to sexual behavior.  He is a strong supporter of teaching intelligent design.  He is anti-gay, anti-immigrant - supporting the most extreme anti-immigrant legislative proposals though he is the son of an Italian immigrant father - anti-abortion, and anti-anything that smacks of progressive thinking, centrism, bipartisanship, or moderation in the Republican Party.

Max Blumenthal takes the leash:  In 2001, Santorum attempted and failed to slip an amendment into the No Child Left Behind bill that would have required public schools to teach "intelligent design" and familiarize students with criticism of the theory of evolution.  Four years later, he became the only senator to travel to Florida and position himself by the bedside of the clinically brain-dead Terri Schiavo.  In vowing to block efforts to remove Schiavo’s feeding tube, he compared her to “someone with the condition of cerebral palsy."  Santorum complemented his activism with an almost unremitting stream of extreme statements.  In an interview with the AP, for example, he compared homosexuality to “man-on-dog” sex, prompting the female reporter to plead, “I’m freaking out here!”  In 2005, as he geared up for his reelection campaign, Santorum blamed the Catholic church’s sexual-abuse scandal on the “academic, political, and cultural liberalism” of Boston.  Comments like these, along with the denunciations of feminism and single motherhood that riddle the pages of his book-length culture-war manifesto, It Takes a Family, may call into question Santorum’s viability in a general election.  Yet in Republican primaries dominated by the Christian right and tea party activists, his strident streak could prove beneficial to him.

Back to McKinnon:  Despite his actions and extreme ideology, and the fact that he was defeated in his bid for re-election by the widest margin of any incumbent senator since 1980, Rick Santorum should be taken seriously.  He is articulate, focused, and a tenacious campaigner.  And ideological conservatives love him.  His base will be narrow but passionate.  They will mobilize and they will vote.

You think Bush Jr. was bad?  Santorum would be sooo much worse.  Where Dubya was intellectually lazy, stubborn, and inept, Santorum would be driven.  He would be driven to impose his religious beliefs on every man, woman, and child in this country.  He would be driven to enact social policies that enshrine discrimination.  He would be driven to quash diversity in the name of "Christian principles."  He would be driven to appoint federal judges who hold the Ten Commandments dearer than the U.S. Constitution.  Where Obama stands on the sidelines when it comes to social issues, allowing congressional cogs to churn sluggishly, Santorum would railroad lawmakers into passing legislation that erodes civil liberties and LGBT rights.  And he would do all this in order to tear down the flimsy wall that (just barely) separates Church from State.  

As President of the United States, Rick Santorum would drive us all into a pit of theocratic quicksand from which there would be no escape.  Freedom as we know it would be swallowed whole.  His Bible would become your new master.  It's enough to make an atheist pray for divine intervention.

"John Calvin founded a little theocracy, modeled after the Old Testament, and succeeded in erecting the most detestable government that ever existed, except the one from which it was copied."  -  Robert Green Ingersoll

Comments

[Trent]

Jeez, is he still around? I was hoping Santorum had crawled into the woodwork.

[Carol]

Actually, it would be a good thing if Santorum snagged the nomination. That goes for Palin, too. Neither one of them would win, but it would prove to Americans how extreme the GOP has become.