Santorum Makes It Official: He’s Running For President On God’s Platform

Rick Santorum, who owns the record for the largest defeat of an incumbent U.S. Senator, announced Monday morning that he is running for president. Santorum, who has said, “America belongs to God,” attacked Barack Obama’s foreign policy, calling the very popular president a “paper tiger,” but left out why he is really running: God. Yes, God has told Rick Santorum to run for president. Just ask his wife, who said last month, “We believe with all our hearts that this is what God wants.”

Santorum, who told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos today that the Paul Ryan Medicare destruction plan should apply to seniors who already paid into the plan, says “we’re in it to win,” and actually won a few straw polls, which generally means he’ll lose by a wide margin. Santorum blames his record 2006 loss on America’s lackluster support of Republicans.

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Last month, Santorum announced, “I always said when I first was elected that I had a constituency of one. And if you are serving God in your daily work, what you know is right and you are being transparent about what you are doing and why you are doing it, then it is up for the people then to decide whether what you believe, and what you think is in the best interest of the country, is what they think.”

And they did, in Pennsylvania, by a 59%-41% margin.

 

Saying, “If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery,” Santorum believes in banning anything “antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family.”

 

Santorum, who is running on moral values, billed his Pennsylvania school district $73,000 in tuition for online classes for his children who were living in Virginia. He is virulently anti-gay, and once gave a speech about the 9/​11 attacks being part of a centuries-​old plot by “radical Islamists,” which led to him “launching a tour called “The Gathering Storm,” comparing himself to the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who alerted his nation and the world to the Nazi menace in the 1930s, and then fought with America, Russia and others to defeat the Germans, Italians and Japan in World War II in the 1940s.”

Rick Santorum, speaking against Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal, actually said of America’s military leaders who support repeal, “I’m not too sure that [the Generals] can actually see straight to make the right decisions.” In a time of war, that is about as close to treason as you can get if you are an elected politician. Fortunately for Santorum, the people of Pennsylvania fired him before he uttered that despicable slam on our nation’s military.

Santorum earned 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.

Santorum, who wants to ban not only same-sex marriage but same-sex sex. Yes, Rick Santorum wants a legal ban on homosexual sex. Saying, “If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery,” Santorum believes in banning anything “antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family.”

Santorum repeatedly has said he is not a homophobe. But this statement will forever be attached to his name:

“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.”

Responding to those who say Santorum is a homophobe, the former Senator had this to say:

“I guess because you stand for traditional marriage and you believe that, you know, that people should, we should have a society that affirms one man and one woman as marriage, that makes you someone who’s a hater, someone that doesn’t, doesn’t like people. I disagree with people, by the way, who are gay and straight who believe in changing the marriage laws. But it’s a public policy discussion, and this is the, this is really the problem that we see on the left which is the personalization of politics. I mean, we have a policy disagreement, and, and which I am very passionate about. I admit that. Because I do believe the family, integrity of the family is important for the future of our country. But that does not mean that, that I don’t like people or I hate people or that there’s something wrong. The only thing that’s wrong is their opinion.”

Here’s Santorum’s statement on same-sex marriage: “But what I can say is that the state is not doing a service to the child and to society by not putting that child in a home where there is a mother and a father. This is common sense. This is nature. And what we’re trying to do is defy nature because a certain group of people want to be affirmed by society. And I just don’t think that’s to the benefit of society or to the child.”

Where do we even begin with this? OK. “the state is not doing a service to the child and to society by not putting that child in a home where there is a mother and a father.” Thanks in large part to Santorum and his ilk, women’s reproductive rights are becoming even more difficult to access, which means even more unwanted children, which means even more children are going to be put up for adoption. Not to mention all the countries around the world, and recent disasters that have killed hundreds of thousands of parents. My point is, speaking of “common sense,” there are far more children needing good homes than there are heterosexual married couples wanting to adopt them.

So, unless the former Senator is willing to adopt millions of children, he needs to do better than proselytize here. He’s plain wrong. Remember this: Two long-​term studies recently published found just the opposite. In fact, one of them, a twenty-​five year-​long and vigorously peer-​reviewed study published in the journal Pediatrics, found that adopted children raised by lesbian parents are better–adjusted and do better in school than their opposite-​parented peers. Add to this the fact that we now have, “a study of gay dads that finds they are more likely than straight ones to focus on parenting over career, at least when their children are young.” Any questions, minister Senator?