Rick Santorum is creeping me out, along with hordes of women, some of them Republican, who can’t bear the thought of the government spying on our bedrooms and peeking like perverts into the bathroom.
The Republican presidential contender has drawn amusement for having proclaimed four years ago that “Satan has his sights on the United States of America,” a bit of alarmism from which he won’t back down. Why should he?
Santorum, 53, a devout Catholic, has distinguished himself from the pack of GOP hopefuls in ways that are even more extreme than evoking God, the devil, “pride, vanity and sensuality,” as he weirdly put it, as the root of all ills. (Where’s unemployment?)
He one-upped his conservative cohorts in matters beyond gay marriage and abortion — any old Republican can oppose those things. The former senator from Pennsylvania expresses disdain for birth control and prenatal testing, not to mention wanton sex that’s unnecessary for the production of babies. Saturday night at Chez Santorum must be a real hoot.
Santorum corrals his own life story to prove he knows about the perils of reproductive freedom. In 1996, his wife, Karen, gave birth to a boy, Gabriel Michael, at 20 weeks gestation. Sadly, the baby died after two hours.
It gets strange.
Rather than giving the child a quick and dignified burial, the Santorums brought tiny Gabriel home, where they and his three siblings cuddled and sang to him. Santorum even kept a framed photograph of Gabriel on the desk in his Senate office.
This unusual, to say the least, episode led Santorum to the conclusion that prenatal testing, such as potentially lifesaving amniocentesis, was a ploy by the medical community to identify and abort babies with Down syndrome and other afflictions.
“Ninety percent of these kids or more are aborted, because the medical community thinks that these folks just have lives that aren’t worth living,” he said in Tucson, offering no evidence. He demonized testing as an aide to abortion this month on the stump and on TV.
In an extremely uncomfortable exchange on “Face the Nation,” Bob Schieffer erroneously suggested that Santorum’s wife had a “stillborn” son. The candidate grew furious.
“No, he was not stillborn. Hold on, Bob. Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Santorum railed. When Schieffer later apologized, Santorum’s face bore a look of sheer triumph. He knew he’d wrested the upper hand.
For Santorum alone knew what it was like to lose a child. But he seemed to suggest that if we, as Americans, faced the same crisis, how dare we expect the right to choose a different outcome.
As a friend said about the unseemly display, “This demonstrates Santorum’s deep-seated narcissism.”
Santorum outdoes his rivals by opposing abortion even in cases of rape or incest, or to save a pregnant woman’s life.
“No one is questioning his strong, personal family values,” said Kellie Ferguson, executive director of Republican Majority for Choice. “The problem is when a politician takes his position and makes it public policy.
“We’re spending so much time discussing personal issues instead of reaching out to mainstream and moderate Republicans.’’
Andrea Miller, president of New York’s National Abortion Rights Action League — which has endorsed many Republicans — said she’d never presume to question Santorum’s personal family decisions. (Among his seven children is a daughter with a rare genetic disorder.)
“What’s troubling is that questions about some of [his wife’s] pregnancies have become political fodder,” said Miller. “Are we going to let our policies be dictated by religious and personal questions?”
You don’t have to support abortion rights (as I do) to know that some decisions are best left to professionals, a woman and God. Not Santorum.
Prenatal tests, such as amniocentesis, have other uses than determining which children to abort. Amnio can help parents prepare for a baby with chronic illnesses. But it also can be used to detect fetal anemia and other maladies that can be treated in utero. The test also can determine when a baby’s lungs are developed, should the child need to be delivered early to save his life.
Then there’s birth control.
Santorum told a conservative blog in October, “Many of the Christian faith have said, ‘Well, that’s OK; contraception is OK.’ It’s not OK. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”
In Santorum’s World, sex is for making children and abortion is murder. No exceptions.
This cartoon version of the world won’t fly in 2012 America.
Readin’, writin’, robbin’
Alarming new data show that an average of five city students were hauled from school in handcuffs each day last fall for crimes such as assault, larceny and robbery. Nine more were issued summonses for offenses such as marijuana possession, disorderly conduct and motor-vehicle violations.
The good news: School felonies are down. The bad: Cops are too busy coping with smaller stuff.
Time to put crime-scene tape around classrooms and shut the lights.
Cop your Z’s elsewhere, please
Coffee and doughnuts didn’t cut it. Sleepy Police Officer Matthew Sobota was photographed snoozing on the F train. At 3 p.m. With his unattended gun in plain sight.
Sobota was off duty and en route to moonlighting as a security guard when a straphanger saw something and said something. It’s time to consider a super-size Thermos. And a new career.
God’s gift to women this creep sure ain’t
When a man looks and behaves like Dominique Strauss-Kahn, how can he delude himself into thinking women are willing to sleep with him for free?
The former IMF chief and attempted-rape suspect last week was grilled by French authorities for 30 hours, with nothing more than a hole in the floor as a toilet. Quelle horreur!
Officials are trying to determine if the freaky frog, 62, took part in orgies where ladies were allegedly paid with money embezzled from a French construction firm. Strauss-Kahn has boasted that he was flagrantly unfaithful to his doormat wife, Anne Sinclair, but denies he knew his conquests might be whores.
Sinclair bankrolled her horny hubby’s defense against sex-assault charges, now dismissed, brought by Nafissatou Diallo in New York, who is suing him in civil court. When will Sinclair grow a backbone and kick the perv to the curb?
With a political friend like this . . .
Client No. 9 wants to move and shake again. Watching him do it is as painful as novocaine-free root canal.
Former Love Gov Eliot Spitzer resigned in disgrace from the state’s highest office following revelations he dallied with hookers in black knee socks. Then he crashed and burned in his canceled CNN talk show. What to do when no one unpaid loves you? Easy!
Spitzer is to hold a kingmaking fund-raiser in his posh Fifth Avenue pad next week for Washington state Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Jay Inslee, who needs help climbing the national stage. Top ticket: $3,600.
Hanging with political kryptonite, Inslee, I must conclude, secretly wants to lose. Or, Spitzer is turning Republican, and wants to torpedo a liberal.