Last updated on February 8th, 2013 at 06:14 pm
The Tampa hate fest is in full swing now as feverish conservatives gather to worship at the altar of big money for the rich and big government for all. It’s no wonder they’re feverish – you have to be delusional or taking drugs to believe the stuff they’re being told. To a sane outsider it’s like a warped and evil Woodstock without the good music and bared breasts.
But hey, cut them some slack; Republican women can’t even use their bared breasts to feed the babies they insist must be born. Go figure the whole thing is warped.
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Failed senator and failed presidential candidate Rick Santorum spoke last night at the Republican National Convention to a crowd of 20,000, and it was an odd speech in that it actually mentioned Mitt Romney by name only three times (as Ezra Klein noted, he mentioned “hands” 19 times). It also,more remarkably, barely mentioned God, let alone divine wrath.
Other than that, it sounded pretty much like the speeches Mr. Google gave during his own presidential run. We can call it “folksy patriarchy.”
But if selling Romney, who has yet to prove he cares about anything but his overseas tax shelters, isn’t easy,* Santorum still told the faithful what they wanted to hear, that Obama represents the evils of big government and that “a vote for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan will put our country back in the hands of leaders who understand what America can and, for the sake of our children, must be to keep the dream alive.”
This is not, of course, what he said about Romney while he was still a candidate but everyone understands this is part of the political process. You fight, make up (more or less) and move along. But Santorum seemed more interested in his culture war cred than in the man who beat him in the primaries.
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What is interesting is that Santorum managed to give his speech not only with barely a mention of the now official presidential nominee but without mentioning abortion by name – at all. Instead he talked about how the GOP “lifts up children,” meaning, apparently, forcing them to be born because the GOP has yet to prove it gives a rat’s ass about them once they’re out of their mama’s bellies at which point the little tykes are expected to lift themselves up by their own bootstraps:
“I thank God that America still has one party that reaches out their hands in love to lift up all of God’s children — born and unborn, and says that each of us has dignity and all of us have the right to live the American Dream.”
He talked about his daughter Bella and how “doctors later told us Bella was incompatible with life and to prepare to let go,” Santorum said. “They said, even if she did survive, her disabilities would be so severe that Bella would not have a life worth living.”
That’s fine. The problem is, it was a decision for Rick and his wife to make. It is not Rick and his wife’s place to make that decision for other couples. Rick rails against big government and how government shouldn’t be making decisions for you while at the same time insisting the government should be deciding whether or not a woman carries a fetus to term. And he wants you to let that child be born but damn if he wants you to have health insurance to keep the baby alive – or the mother if she has health complications.
I can speak with some knowledge on this subject, given a defective gene I possess that if matched by a defective gene from the mother creates a child with Type III Gaucher Disease, a disease with has sometimes severe neurological consequences that can lead to an early death. There is an even worse type, though: Type II, which kills children by the time they’re two.
Now Rick Santorum may think that even those two years are something the child deserves but that again is not HIS decision to make for YOU. And that’s a decision Rick and his cohorts insist they DO have a right to make and not just for you but for all Americans.
Like all Republicans, Rick Santorum isn’t against government or even big government. He’s just against government that doesn’t do what he wants it to do, which is to support a theocratic agenda.
He also got all hot and bothered about some imaginary “assault on marriage” which is hilarious when you consider that Evangelicals have a higher divorce rate than other American demographics. But facts never stopped any Republican and Santorum claimed,
“The fact is that marriage is disappearing in places where government dependency is highest. Most single mothers do heroic work and an amazing job raising their children, but if America is going to succeed, we must stop the assault on marriage and the family.”
So apparently the government is to be blamed if marriage rates fall. The government is killing marriage! Oh my God! What are we going to do!?
It must be liberating to be so detached from reality.
Republicans talk about religious freedom but they don’t really care about freedom at all. Republican government has become patriarchy writ large.
Yesterday, Santorum claimed that “in November we have a chance to vote for life and liberty, not dependency” but not only is that a false dilemma, it is a lie that a Republican vote is a vote for life and liberty. It is a vote against the “phony” live of mothers, the lives of the poor and needy and unemployed and uninsured, and a vote against liberty across the broad spectrum of the American experience as theocracy-friendly Biblical restrictions replace the freedoms guaranteed by the United States Constitution.
*Romney can’t get much less popular – or likable. A new Washington Post-ABC News poll puts him right at 40 percent while even 33 percent of Republicans find Obama more likable.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
