Rick Santorum has not one but two new jobs. In the first, he’ll make in an hour or two what the average family of four makes in an entire year. In the second, he’ll give away millions. Both will come with complimentary lies, admonishments about sex, and plenty of videotape.
Santorum just announced he is forming a Super PAC, and going on the lecture circuit. Because why stop at finding one way to get people to be hateful bigots when you can do it twice and get paid big bucks to do it. But no one should breathe a sigh of relief. 2016 is around the corner and Santorum still has White House dreams.
“Organized as a non-profit 501(c)4 organization — meaning that it can raise and dispense political money, as well as lobby,” Real Clear Politics reports that “the new organization … is being funded by Santorum’s biggest donors, including Foster Friess, a wealthy conservative contributor who backed Santorum in 2012 — and who is slated to introduce him Friday morning at the Conservative Political Action Conference.”
What Patriot Voices will do, exactly, isn’t clear, but two sources close to Santorum said it will focus on the themes the former Pennsylvania senator stressed in his campaign: support for traditional families and the right-to-life movement; preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons; and restoring the nation’s manufacturing base.
The Huffington Posts notes that Santorum’s goal is to push Republican candidates to be more conservative:
“A lot of people have some basic anxiety about where America is going, and I tried to talk about those [issues] in the campaign,” Santorum said on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends.” “The adherence to the Constitution, and the importance of understanding where our rights come from and who we are as a people, and the culture and how that is being changed by this administration, whether it’s liberty or life or marriage.”
He said his new 501(c)(4), “Patriot Voices,” would advocate for those issues and encourage other Republicans to do the same. The goal of the organization is to attract one million members, according to a press release, and it will be able to accept unlimited contributions.
Meanwhile, Santorum may have been a one-track pony on the campaign trail, but now he’s got another trick: speaking.
Yes, for a mere $40,000 to $50,000 you too can hire Rick Santorum to tell your particular group the same lies he has been spinning for years, about gay people, homosexuality, same-sex marriage, the bible, Norwegian forced euthanization, and, well the list of lies goes on and on.
“That fee puts him in the range of MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, a cut below former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, but if Santorum makes speaking a full-time job, it’s the most lucrative, and least compromising, way for a politician to make substantial money,” Buzzfeed reports:
His topics include national security, the economy, and the social issues he’s long been identified with. “He will chronicle his battles for the dignity of all human life, his effort to protect traditional marriage, and his struggle to reverse Hollywood’s and the main stream media’s onslaught against virtue,” the agency promises.
That speech bears the perhaps unfortunate — though obviously unintended — title, “The Dawn of an American Renaissance,” sharing its name with a conservative publication widely viewed as racist.
No word yet on if that $50,000 comes with a sweater vest.