Thursday, January 05, 2012

Rick Santorum's Top 10 Most Outrageous Campaign Statements

Rick Santorum's Top 10 Most Outrageous Campaign Statements
By Igor Volsky
Jan 4, 2012

Rick Santorum’s surprising second-place finish in Iowa comes after months of dogged campaigning throughout the sate’s 99 counties and more than 350 town halls. ThinkProgress tracked the former Pennsylvania senator throughout this period and has compiled a list of his top 10 most outrageous claims:



1) ANNUL ALL SAME-SEX MARRIAGES: Arguing that gay relationships “destabilize” society, Santorum wouldn’t offer any legal protections to gay relationships and has pledged to annul all same-sex marriages if elected president. During his 99-country tour of Iowa, Santorum frequently compared same-sex relationships to inanimate objects like trees, basketballs, beer, and paper towels and even tried to blame the economic crisis on gay people. As Santorum explained back in August, religious people have a constitutional right to discriminate against gays: “We have a right the Constitution of religious liberty but now the courts have created a super-right that’s above a right that’s actually in the Constitution, and that’s of sexual liberty. And I think that’s a wrong, that’s a destructive element.”

2) ‘I’M FOR INCOME INEQUALITY’: “They talk about income inequality. I’m for income inequality,” Santorum said during an event in Pella, Iowa in December. “I think some people should make more than other people, because some people work harder and have better ideas and take more risk, and they should be rewarded for it. I have no problem with income inequality.”

3) CONTRACEPTION IS ‘A LICENSE TO DO THINGS’: Santorum has pledged to repeal all federal funding for contraception and allow the states to outlaw birth control, insisting that “it’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”

4) GAY SOLDIERS ‘CAUSE PROBLEMS FOR PEOPLE LIVING IN CLOSE QUARTERS’: During an appearance on Fox News Sunday in October, Santorum defended his support for Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell by arguing that gay soldiers would disrupt the military because “they’re in close quarters, they live with people, they obviously shower with people.” He also suggested that “there are people who were gay and lived the gay lifestyle and aren’t anymore.”

5) OBAMA SHOULD OPPOSE ABORTION BECAUSE HE’S BLACK: During an appearance on Christian television in January, Santorum said he was surprised that President Obama didn’t know when life began — given his skin color. “I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say ‘now we are going to decide who are people and who are not people,” he explained.

6) WE DON’T NEED FOOD STAMPS BECAUSE OBESITY RATES ARE SO HIGH: Speaking in Le Mars, Iowa in December, Santorum promised to significantly reduce federal funding for food stamps, arguing that the nation’s increasing obesity rates render the program unnecessary.

7) ABORTION EXCEPTIONS TO PROTECT WOMEN’S HEALTH ARE ‘PHONY’: While discussing his track record as a champion of the partial birth abortion ban in June, Santorum dismissed exceptions other senators wanted to carve out to protect the life and health of mothers, calling such exceptions “phony.” “They wanted a health exception, which of course is a phony exception which would make the ban ineffective,” he said.

8) HEALTH REFORM WILL KILL MY CHILD: Santorum, who claims that Obamacare motivated him to run for president, told reporters in April that his daughter Bella — who was born with a genetic abnormality — wouldn’t survive in a country with “socialized medicine.” “Children like Bella are not given the treatment that other children are given.”

9) UNINSURED AMERICANS SHOULD SPEND LESS ON CELL-PHONE BILLS: During a meeting with the editorial board of the Des Moines Register in August, Santorum said that people who can’t afford health care should stop whining about the high costs of medical treatments and medications and spend less on non essentials. Answering a question about the uninsured, Santorum explained that health care, like a car, is a luxury resource that is rationed by society and recalled the story of a woman who said she was spending $200 a month on life-saving prescriptions. Santorum told her to stop complaining and instead lower her cable and cell phone bills.

10) INSURERS SHOULD DISCRIMINATE AGAINST PEOPLE WITH PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS: Santorum sounded like a representative from the health insurance industry when he addressed a small group of high school students in Merrimack, New Hampshire in December. The former Pennsylvania senator not only defended insurers for denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, he also argued that individuals who are sick should pay higher premiums because they cost more money to insure. Think Progress



This cartoon falls into the 'Pennies From Heaven' category, because it was only yesterday that I had this to say:

....Which I haven't bothered reading about by the way, the Iowa caucuses having as much to do with reality as Genesis has to do with the creation.

Cartoon: Mike Thompson: Iowa caucus

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

"I have gay friends and they support my dad because they agree with him about family issues" - Elizabeth Santorum

When Do We Get to Meet Elizabeth Santorum's Imaginary Gay Friends?

http://bit.ly/tYMuz2

Himself said...

And black ones too no doubt.

Busy old day Maren, just in.

Anonymous said...

An open letter to Karen Santorum
http://bit.ly/ySxOON

Himself said...

Photo looks familiar, lol.

Anonymous said...

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast
.com/2012/02/mad-men.html

Anonymous said...

Rick Santorum loves the Netherlands
http://bit.ly/AAdtjV

Anonymous said...

"America's Next Top Moron"
r29316

"it's all true, they give these bracelets out at birth and if you lose it well, you're fucked"
fort0r

Himself said...

Rick Santorum loves the Netherlands

That's the trouble when you don't have a critical audience, you can come out with any old shite you like.

I'll wager 99% of his audience don't even know where the Netherlands are.

What was it Amy Goodman said, geographically unaware?

I'm back online proper now, so I shall be back to blogging as usual, no more creeping around the Net worrying about my usage.

Bracelets; at least he didn't call them wristbands!

Himself said...

Yes, I have been keeping my eye on this one. The Patriarchal society again.

and we have really returned to the 1950s, as TPM has pointed out. But that's who they are now backing: Santorum, the man who wants gays back in the closet and women in their 1950s reproductive place: beneath men without a condom, and denied an abortion thereafter.

Anonymous said...

Santorum and unemployment rate
bit.ly/GzxclJ

Himself said...

Got to head out again, it's a busy old life.

Later
H

Himself said...

I'll pass on the video if you don't mind, Ricky is starting to become McCannesque, I can't bear to listen to the lying wee shite.

Ricky don't do jobs.

Theocracies seldom do.

He brings a whole new meaning to Only in America don't he, Rick Santorum a serious contender for the Republican nomination!

What a piss ant little man he is.

By the by, have you read the two latest articles by Martin Roberts over at the McCannfiles? excellent stuff. I think I may drop him a line sometime today, I owe him a reply anyway.

Himself said...

http://www.truthwinsout.org/blog/2012/02/22558/

'Frothy' Santorum LOL.

You need to Google Santorum to get to the bottom of that one.

Pardon the pun.