The Darkness of Rick Santorum

It’s quiet and peaceful on this Saturday morning in Minnesota. The weather for the last several days has been balmy and delightful. The next several days will be the same; yet I am thinking dark thoughts!

by Charlie Leck

My Word of the Day today, from Dictionary.Com, is Cimmerian. I thought for a little while this morning about playing the snobby scholar role and using the word in a blog about Republican Fundamental-Evangelical-Christian presidential candidates. As I read about the word this morning, I kept thinking: How perfect!

It’s a word out of classical mythology: “Of, pertaining to, or suggestive of a western people believed to dwell in perpetual darkness.”

I was warming up to something like this: “The Cimmerian candidates, like Bachmann and Santorum, are living in another level of civilization – namely that cauldron depth where it is so dark, dank and cold that there are no creative epiphanies or innovative possibilities.”

Oh, my! The coffee is hot and delicious this morning. It is incredibly quiet in the house and I my major responsibility is to read the national newspapers in-depth and make the important decisions about our nation’s economic conditions and its relations with China and Iran. My wife will rise later and make the mundane assessments about categorizing this month’s bills and what we shall do about one of the ovens in the kitchen that isn’t working quite properly.

In the Washington Post, I find a barn-burner title on Eugene Robinson’s latest column about Rick Santorum (oh, Mr. Robinson can write!): “He shouldn’t be allowed near the Oval Office!”

“Before there was the Tea Party to define the phrase ‘far-right fringe,’ there was Rick Santorum…”

“…those welcoming the Santorum surge for Machiavellian reasons should be careful what they wish for.”

“The problem is that his views are genuinely extreme and, in some instances, patently offensive. He is a cultural warrior who has equated same-sex marriage with polygamy, pedophilia and bestiality – and who has argued that gay men and lesbians should not serve openly in the military because ‘they’re in close quarters, they live with people, they obviously shower with people.”

“…Santorum says he doesn’t have a problem with homosexuality, just with ‘homosexual acts.’”

“Contraception, he said in October is ‘not okay’ because it gives people ‘a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.’ Thankfully, no one asked the obvious follow-up question.”

See exactly what I mean by the Cimmerian level. And all of this only begins to describe Santorum. This is a man you must get to know. Don’t be fooled by his nice guy appearance and his very talented vocal chords. He is opposed to taking away insurance companies’ rights to deny people coverage because of pre-existing conditions. He gets fuzzy when asked: Who then is going to pay for this health care if not highly profitable insurance companies?

Here’s exactly how Santorum put it:

“I had insurance under my employer. And when I decided to run for president, I left my job, I lost my insurance, I had to go out and buy insurance on the open market. We have a child who has a pre-existing condition and we went out and we said, we like this plan…we have to pay more because she has a pre-existing condition. Well, we should pay more. She’s going to be very expensive to the insurance company and, you know, that cost is passed along to us…I’m okay with that.”

Fine for you, Mr. Santorum, but go tell that to a single mother with two children (one of whom has juvenile diabetes), who works in a corner grocery store and has a very difficult time getting health insurance. You’re “okay” with the costs for your child’s health care being “passed along” to you, but this poor mother is hopelessly unable to pay such bills, you dingy!

But, let me put the ice cream on the pie! Rick Santorum is frighteningly hawkish. I frankly have had enough war for the rest of my life and my grandchildren’s lives* and I would like a president who is a seeker of peace. Yet, Santorum looks with eager excitement at the imminent possibility of thunderous strikes against Iran. (That’s all we need!)

Again, here’s Eugene Robinson on the subject of Santorum’s hawkishness:

“I do not say this lightly. With the exception of Ron Paul, the Republican candidates have competed to see who can be most hawkish on Iran’s nuclear program. Santorum wins, hands down. (emphasis mine) He has said flatly that, unless Iran agrees to open its nuclear facilities to inspection and begins to dismantle them, as president he would order military strikes (emphasis not mine). In fact, Iran is already under nuclear inspection, but Santorum seems not to care. He has said he believes an attack by Israel or the United States is probably inevitable.”

Cimmerian?
The man is Cimmerian down to his tippy-toes!

Santorum lost his bid in 2006 to be reelected to the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania and he lost it in an absolute landslide. Nevertheless, don’t underestimate him because this dark side he has will appeal to a great many other Cimmerian types.

*World War II, a 4 decades cold war with the Soviet Union, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Laotian Civil War (or the Secret War), the invasion of Panama, the liberation of Kuwait (or Desert Storm), the Somali Civil War, the Bosnian War, the War in Iraq, the Afghanistan War, the Incursions into Libya (and dozens of other little military dalliances like Ronald Reagan’s silly invasion of Grenada, the Kosovo War under Bill Clinton and, of course, the War on Terror). As a grandfather of mine would have said: “Enough already mit dem wars!”

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