Oh my God.
If this isn’t the height of arrogance and treachery. Remember when Bush was president? Heaven help you if you dared question the judgment of a sitting president during war time. Republicans labeled Democrats who dared to question the president as “traitors.” And for decades, everyone has deferred to the military’s judgment during wartime.
Except now.
Now that five of our seven past and present Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have come out for repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” now that military commanders at every level are expressing the fact that they are comfortable with gays serving openly in the military, now it’s OK for Republicans to question the judgment of a sitting president in wartime, and to actually say, “I’m not too sure that [the Generals] can actually see straight to make the right decisions.”
Let me repeat that.
Former Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) just said to a public audience today, at CPAC, that he doesn’t trust the decision-making ability of America’s Generals during the middle of two wars. And Santorum says we’re at war. Via The National Journal today:
“We will be safer when we are honest with the American public, that we are not at war with terrorists, as George W. Bush would say, or, what is it, man-made disasters, as this administration would put it,” Santorum said. “We are at war with Islamists.”
For the record, Santorum is about as anti-gay as you can get. He gets a 25% score from the ACLU on civil rights in general. He wants a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. He voted no to adding sexual orientation to definition of hate crimes and voted no to expanding hate crimes to include sexual orientation.
Thank goodness he lost his last re-election bid, 59% to 41% — the largest upset in more than a quarter-century.
We need to ensure Santorum never holds public office again. He is rumored to be considering a 2012 presidential run.
Before you hear Santorum’s comments, remember what he said about same-sex marriage and homosexuals in 2003:
“Every society in the history of man has upheld the institution of marriage as a bond between a man and a woman. Why? Because society is based on one thing: that society is based on the future of the society. And that’s what? Children. Monogamous relationships. In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing. And when you destroy that you have a dramatic impact on the quality”
http://cloudfront.mediamatters.org/static/flash/player.swf
Again, thanks so much to the folks at Media Matters!