Santorum, Preparing 2016 Run, Announces Opposition To UN Disabilities Treaty

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Failed Republican former presidential candidate Rick Santorum once again announced strong interest in a 2016 presidential run today, and, while holding his three-year old daughter who has a serious genetic disorder, announced his opposition to a United Nations (UN) treaty, called the “UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities,” apparently due to his fear of the UN, and abortion.

READ: GOP Identity Crisis Solved — Santorum Preparing 2016 Presidential Run

This is the second time in ten days Santorum has talked about a 2016 run, today telling the UK’s Weekly Standard of his interest in running for the White House, “I’m open to it, yeah.”

“I think there’s a fight right now as to what the soul of the Republican party’s going to be and the conservative movement, and we have something to say about that. I think from our battle, we’re not going to leave the field.”

The Standard reports Santorum said Mitt Romney “did not focus on what he considered the ‘main issue’ of the race: The role of government in the lives of Americans.”

“We didn’t make that argument in this race. Our candidate didn’t make that argument, as some of us said during the campaign, because he was not capable of making that argument,” Santorum said. “In my opinion, what could have been and what should have been a referendum election on what it means to be an American, what it means for us as a country to head down the road toward European socialism, we just simply didn’t make the argument at a time when I think America was ripe to hear the argument.”

Meanwhile, at a Capitol Hill press conference, Santorum appeared, flanked by his wife, Karen, and their eighth child, three-year old Isabella who has Edwards syndrome — also known as Trisomy 18 — which is known to be a serious genetic disorder, giving those born with it a ten percent likelihood of survival if they make it to age one.

Santorum told reporters he will “do everything” he can “to block” ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Santourm appeared with Republican U.S. Senator Mike Lee of Utah, who said the UN treaty posed he had “grave concerns for the sovereignty” of the United States, according to The Washington Post, which notes Santorum “focused on a provision that says the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration for children with disabilities.”

The Post adds:

Home schooling groups and others have said this could lead to the state, and not the parents, making decisions on what is in the best interest of a child, including whether home schooling is appropriate. That provision, he said, is “a direct assault on us and our family.”

Opponents have also objected to language saying that people with disabilities should have access to the same sexual and reproductive health programs as others, arguing that could be linked to abortions.

Supporters of the treaty, led by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., says its main purpose is to encourage other countries to implement the same rights for the disabled already ensured in the United States. He says the treaty requires no changes in U.S. law and that the U.N. committee created by the treaty only has the power to recommend, and cannot force individual nations to change their laws.

What the treaty does, Kerry said at the July committee vote, “is provide a critical tool as we work to ensure that American citizens, including our men and women in uniform and our disabled veterans, are free to travel, work and live abroad.”

The treaty was signed by the George W. Bush administration in 2006 and was signed by President Barack Obama in 2009. Kerry’s committee approved it in July on a 13-6 vote but in August Republicans blocked a Democratic attempt to have the treaty ratified on a voice vote.