Did Rick Santorum just go crazy this weekend? Or did the frontrunner get a little too comfortable and let his guard down a little too far? I don’t know — I’m not a psychiatrist — but I do believe Rick and America would all be better off if he scheduled a few sessions with one. (In fact, that should be a requirement prior to running for President. Surely top military commanders have to receive an A-OK from a mental health professional; why not the President?)
On Sunday, Santorum said a lot of crazy things. Here’s a sampling:
Rick Santorum, at a campaign stop in Ohio, criticized liberal environmentalists that put the “Earth above man.”
“Unlike the Earth, we’re intelligent, and we can actually manage things,” Santorum said. In reference to liberals, Santorum said, “When it comes to management of the Earth, they are the anti-science ones.” (via TPM)
And this:
Santorum said the Obama administration had failed to prevent gas prices rising and was using “political science†in the debate about climate change.
Obama’s agenda is “not about you. It’s not about your quality of life. It’s not about your jobs. It’s about some phony ideal. Some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible. A different theology,†Santorum told supporters of the conservative Tea Party movement at a Columbus hotel.
…
“He is imposing his values on the Christian church. He can categorize those values anyway he wants. I’m not going to,†Santorum told reporters.
A social conservative, Santorum is increasingly seen as a champion for evangelical Christians in fights with Democrats over contraception and gay marriage.“ (via The Raw Story)
And this:
Santorum said, he believed that the president held the view of “radical environmentalists” who wanted to shape policy around “things that frankly are just not scientifically proven” – like global warming.
“When you have a world view that elevates the earth above man and says we can’t take those resources because we’re going to harm the earth by things that frankly are just not scientifically proven, like for example the politicization of the whole global warming debate – this is all an attempt to centralize power aphid [sic] give more power to the government,” Santorum said on CBS Sunday. “This is not questioning the president’s beliefs in Christianity, I’m talking about the belief that man should be in charge of the earth.”
Santorum said that “radical environmentalists” like the president prioritized the environment over bettering mankind.
“We’re not here to serve the earth, the earth is not the objective. man is the objective. I think a lot of radical environmentalists have it upside down,” Santorum said.
But despite his comments on the campaign trail Saturday – and earlier suggestions that Obama joined his church in Chicago because “faith is an avenue for power” and that ‘the American left… hates Christendom” – Santorum insisted he did not intend to insinuate that the president was not Christian.
“I wasn’t suggesting the president was not a Christian. I accept the fact that the president’s a Christian,” Santorum said. (via The Hill)
And this:
Santorum went on to attack Obama on prenatal screening, arguing that the president’s mandate that insurance companies provide amniocentesis testing free of charge was included in the healthcare reform package because health insurers would save money in the long term by encouraging the parents of children who would be born with a disability to abort.
“The bottom line is a lot of prenatal tests are done to identify deformities in uteri and the customary procedure is to encourage abortion,” Santorum said.
“We’re talking about specifically prenatal testing and specifically amniocentesis which is a procedure that actually creates a risk of having a miscarriage when you have it and is done for the purpose of identifying maladies of a child in the womb,” the senator added.
Santorum later clarified that while he believed women should have access to the test, he thought the government mandating insurers provide it for free “is a bit loaded.”
Still, asked by host Bob Schieffer if Santorum was “saying that because of this the president looks down on disabled people,” the senator did not disagree.
“Well, the president supported partial birth abortion and partial birth abortion is a procedure used almost exclusively to kill children late in pregnancy when they’ve been found out to be disabled,” Santorum said. (via The Hill)
And this:
Since Santorum told a crowd at the Ohio Christian Alliance on Saturday that President Obama’s agenda was a “phony ideology†not “based on the Bible,†he has come up with two different explanations of what he meant. After the event, Santorum explained to reporters that his comments were a reference to secular ideas being imposed on the Church. While he didn’t mention contraception, he did bring up the issue of religious freedom, which Republicans insist the new contraception rule violates and has become the latest conservative rallying cry over the past few weeks.
“The president has reached a new low in this country’s history of oppressing religious freedom that we have never seen before,†Santorum said. “If he doesn’t want to call his imposition of his values a theology that’s fine, but it is an imposition of his values over a church who has very clear theological reasons for opposing what the Obama administration is forcing on them.â€
On Sunday, however, Santorum shifted his response when CBS’s Bob Schieffer asked him what his comments meant. This time, Santorum made it about “radical environmentalists’: “this idea that man is here to serve the Earth, as opposed to husband its resources and be good stewards of the Earth. And I think that is a phony ideal… I think a lot of radical environmentalists have it upside-down.†By extension, he implied, so does Obama. (via TPM)
And this: