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Shannon Stapleton / Reuters
A supporter of Republican presidential candidate and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum attends a campaign stop at Rockingham County Nursing Home in Brentwood, New Hampshire Jan. 4, 2012.
“I’ll be very upfront about this: I am not a libertarian,” Republican presidential contender Rick Santorum told those who showed up to hear him at a two-hour town hall meeting in Brentwood, New Hampshire on Wednesday night. “I am a conservative. I am a Reagan conservative; I am not a libertarian. And the people who call me a big government guy are libertarians.”
If you couldn’t be there to hear Santorum, or if you missed the live broadcast of his town hall event on C-SPAN, the former Pennsylvania senator detailed his views at great length in his 2005 book “It Takes A Family,” which is, in part, a rebuttal to Hillary Clinton’s more famous “It Takes A Village.”
Send in your questions for Sunday's NBC News-Facebook debate on Meet the Press
Santorum’s book doesn’t deal with foreign policy but does set out his approach to domestic policy: an active use of federal power and of the tax code to promote traditional behaviors and to preserve man-woman marriages.
Unlike Tea Party activists, Santorum doesn’t shrink away from the federal government; he wants to use it to nudge people toward more virtuous behavior, which he thinks will be best taught in traditional heterosexual families.
“Every statistic I am aware of ... indicates that marriage is better for children, and usually by a very wide margin,” he says in the book.
“There really should be no family ‘debate,’ no marriage ‘debate.’ The social science, four thousand years of human history and common sense have long settled the question. In a decent society, every child should have the best shot of growing up to be a healthy and successful adult. That opportunity is found in healthy, married, mom-and-dad families.”
Santorum spends much time in the book denouncing and rebutting what he see as the misguided live-and-let-live attitude of liberals.
He says, “Liberals believe that the traditional family is neither natural nor vital, that it’s an antiquated social convention which has not only outlived its usefulness, but is now inherently discriminatory and repressive toward legitimate alternative ‘families.’”
He rails against the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court which in its 2003 Goodrich decision legalized same-sex marriages and ruled that Massachusetts marriage law discriminated against gay people for no rational reason. “No amount of tinkering with language will eradicate that stain,” the court said, to which Santorum replies, “So, traditional marriage is a stain on the fabric of America that needs to be ‘Shouted out.’ How have we come to this?”
He contends that smaller social units than the federal government – the family, the neighborhood, churches, schools and civic associations – are best suited to build up America’s “social capital” – its legacy of traditional values.
“When government steps in and imposes a bureaucratic solution based on individualistic presuppositions, it removes expectations and responsibilities from smaller social units – especially the family,” he says, citing the pre-1996 welfare system as the prime example of a top-down federal solution that led to disaster in his view.
He does say there have been times in American history when the federal government had to act “in the face of gross failure at the smaller levels of the state or community,” citing the creation of the Social Security system and the enactment of the 1964 Civil Rights Act as examples. But he adds, “Usually it is best if the government is the silent partner, not the managing partner.”
A look at the Pennsylvania politician — his career on Capitol Hill and his White House aspirations.
But Santorum does support “aggressive enforcement” by the Federal Communications Commission of standards that ban obscenity on television. And he praises the Federal Trade Commission for monitoring marketing to teenagers and children. He calls for greater federal scrutiny of violence in the movies and in video games. “Government has a role to play here, just as in food safety and drug certification,” he says.
He does not argue for creating a federal Department of Marriage, or Department of Parenting, but he does call for grants to local governments and to non-profit agencies to bolster traditional marriages and educate people about the benefits of marriage. “Other eligible projects might include premarital counseling, couples counseling, conflict resolution and parenting classes,” he writes in the book.
Along with former Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh, a Democrat, Santorum called for $50 million a year in federal outlays for “community- and faith-based programs that promote and foster healthy fatherhood.” He says, “There is simply no substitute for the natural family, no substitute for a real dad, however flawed.”
Arguing that parents need to spend more time with their children, Santorum calls for federal outlays and tax credits to encourage telecommuting, so that mothers and fathers could work at home. He also gets in some sardonic asides at “radical feminism’s misogynistic crusade to make working outside the home the only marker of social value and self-respect.”
If families could keep more of what they earned, he says, they could better care for their children: “The more government taxes someone, the less they are able to take care of themselves and their families ... .”
So “we need a tax policy that stops discriminating against families and starts favoring them,” he says, calling for an increase in the $1,000 tax credit for each child under age 17 and for revamping the Alternative Minimum Tax so it does not impose a penalty on families with lots of children.
On Thursday, we saw both the Rick Santorum who has a serious shot to challenge Mitt Romney for the party's nomination and the Rick Santorum who can be marginalized and thrown off message. Msnbc's Chuck Todd reports.
In rhetoric that might appeals to some in the Occupy Wall Street movement, Santorum says, “When the top 20 percent of our population commands 83 percent of the wealth, we have a wealth gap that is unhealthy. It leads to class envy and hopelessness, in addition to political hyperbole. The opportunity to build wealth, and the understanding of how to do that, needs to be democratized.”
How to do that? Santorum calls for federal, state and private grants to faith-based organizations to help their low-income clients set up tax-free Individual Development Accounts, which would be used to build assets to buy a house, pay for education or start a small business.
"It Takes A Family" supplies ample proof that, as Santorum said Wednesday night “I’m not a libertarian” and that his critics’ charge that he is “a big government guy” is not so off the mark.
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Hmmm... I think I resent D truth's comment. I am not gay, I am not black, I am not fat, I am not poor, I am not from New England... I am not a lot of things. If you want to believe a particular religion's tenets, go right ahead. If you want to live by the words from some 2000 year old book. GREAT! If it makes you able to get through the day, more power to you. But don't force your belief structure on me. Don't force me to follow your interpretation of "the word of God". Like the guy said earlier: If you don't like gay marriage, DON'T MARRY A GAY PERSON! And similarly: If you don't approve of abortion, DON'T HAVE AN ABORTION!
The problem is not what Santorum and his supporters believe, it is that he wants to impose his belief structure on everyone else and force them to live by his rules.
That was incredibly well said, DrJ. Very well said indeed.
This guy is nuts.
He will be at home in Hitler's Germany or Franco Spain or Salzars Portugal.
Looking at him Mormonism of Romeny looks like a nice whit echocolate cake.
I will have a cake.
Dear Raj: posted like a typical lefty. Are you all cut from the same ideological cookie-cutter? You all must be because every last one of you thinks name-calling settles arguments. Can you lefties ever demonstrate some real intellectual firepower and come up with a truly cogent (look it up, raj baby) argument in favor of your policies and agenda items? Ever? Give it a try...
In reality a significant number of children come from or are living in single parent households or take turns between separated/divorced parents. There are plenty of families where the parents are never home and the children have to raise themselves. He's promoting the heterosexual lifestyle while implying condemnation of gays and lesbians as incapable or unfit to raise children or to be of equal status solely based on same sex gender of the parents. He's running as a Republican. He says he's a conservative. They have done more to ruin family values by moving jobs overseas, outlawing/undermining organized labor, promoting fascist ideals in the name of capitalism then socializing the losses, stagnating wages requiring more parents to work more jobs and more hours to pay for TARP, $4/gal. gas, monsterous increases in health care and prescription drugs while increasing retirement ages, reducing retirement benefits/pensions all in the name of corporate profits that will result in trickle down that never trickles that far. Santorum has absolutely no concept of life in the real world, involving real people. Some will buy into his rhetoric but he's nothing more than your typical conservative bigot that doesn't want to allow people the freedom to live their own lives without imposing his choices on them!
Years ago, we had a sanctimonious City Council member who used every opportunity to rail against evil in general and homosexuality in particular. Then one night two city cops responded to a report of indecent behaviour going on in the local Greyhound Bus depot men's room. You'll never guess who was arrested that night for sodomy with a sixteen year old boy.
The guy left town and has not been heard from since.
Always be aware that the people who are the loudest zealots are often doing little more than creating a shield for themselves and their own personal activities.
hey Bruce,
Nice smear (NOT).
Doesn't it bother you to insinuate things about others and hope they become fuel for the fire??
I guess you Liberals/ Democrats are so used to voting for perverts ( i.e. Anthony Weiner, Bill Clinton & co.) , you have started to believe there are NO decent people left in the world of politics.
One does wonder why Santorum talks about hot gay sex so much.
Normal people are concerned with their own sex lives, not the sex lives of other people.
Poor little Leona would prefer we all forget the gentleman from Idaho thumpin' away in the bathroom stall...Or sweet little Mr Foley frolicking with young male interns...not to metion a certain mega-church man buying crank from his male prostitute...
Methinks poor Leona is bitter because if she wants a man that shares her political beliefs, she'll have to drop 20 years and have a sex change.
LEONA - Actually Bruce is correct.
History is repleat with bigoted bullies who self-righteously endeavored to force their religious and social views on society, while secretly indulging in the very things they revile. This is nothing new.
The Pharisees and Scribes in the Bible were just those kinds of people. They were the religious leaders of the day, making the loudest noises about their spiritual superiority, and Jesus unmasked them for the complete hippocrites and fraudsters that they were.
A more contemporary example would be the self-righteous Rush Limbaugh railing against criminals and druggies - when in fact that is exactly what he was.
Bruce did not accuse anyone by name, but his admonition to be naturally distrustful of religious demogogues in the political sphere is very wise advise. Those who cannot separate their religious views from governing make terrible leaders. And they would seek to erode the freedoms of those they disagree with.
What Santorum is arguing for is for all US law to be subject to his interpretation of "God's laws", which is no different than Muslims seeking to establish Shariah law. The only difference is which religion holds sway.
Our founding fathers established this nation with a wall of separation of church and state, and those who would seek to use the power of the state to enforce their religious views should be kept out of office.
Actually, Jerry, its leftist bloviators and gasbags like you who are the problem. So listen up: you're now in a mini-class on political philosophy. The only reason (repeat the ONLY reason) why a segment of American society wants to separate religion from state is to separate morality from politics. (Now a question: do you actually prefer politicians with no virtues?) Whether you and your leftie buddies like it on not, religion helps most of the people most of the time learn and practice the virtues we need to live in a civilized society. And the need for virtue is most evident in the area of sexuality, because being the most powerful human drive, it needs the most control. So here's the real deal on marriage and why your side is going to lose the culture war:
Whether one believes in God or not, it is an undeniable fact that tens of millions of years of evolution have devised sexuality for the purposes of pro-creation. Nature is a very harsh mistress, as those who make their livelihoods by studying can readily attest. Therefore, we can, with all honesty, call a homosexual devolutionary; an individual whom nature, for reasons that may always remain obscure to us, did not intend to reproduce. Under normal circumstances, that is, in a sound and happy marriage, there is no more natural affection as that shown between a husband and wife, and between parent and child. In response to what we can call the naturalness of marriage, it is incumbent upon both citizen and public official to continue to recognize the centrality of marriage and to maintain that centrality in law, and to reject all attempts to abolish it or legalize so-called alternatives. Traditional marriage was created to safeguard the welfare of, and to establish responsibility for, any offspring ensuing from heterosexual sex activities, and not for legalization of unrestrained sexual activity.
Let the members of the demimonde live out their lives and conduct their private business privately, far from the public eye and with no control over public institutions.
Dear Bruce: Stories like that are merely exceptions, and you know it. And because they are, all they really indicate is, contrary to the wishful thinking of you lefties, the need for an even greater emphasis on moral virtue and especially as it applies to human sexuality. Nice try, though!
No, actually that reason would be the 1st Amendment.
Just an FYI - the largest group fighting to keep church and state separate, Americans United, is comprised primarily of people of faith. They don't want your sharia laws controlling their lives anymore than I do.
Hey LEONA --- when it comes to perverts, your Republicans have more than enough.
http://www.alternet.org/sex/140933/rating_the_greatest_gop_sex_scandals_of_the_past_20_years/
http://www.badmouth.net/top-five-republican-gay-sex-scandals/
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2011_02/027924.php
http://reason.com/blog/2011/05/24/gee-pops-do-republicans-ever-h
http://exitstage-left.blogspot.com/2007/07/republican-sexual-deviants.html
http://hackenbush.org/hackenblog/blogives/00002689.htm
So Santorum is against government interference in raising kids unless he wants something done his way then the government can be used to impose his christian homophobic view on everyone else...the religious right should just butt out of our lives, homes, bedroom and marriages and ask themselves how christian can they be with their languiage, words and meanness.
The sad thing is that the man is Roman Catholic.
So if you are so damned to give birth to one of them homoseckshul devil-boys, I'm positive "Sanctum-Santorum" would highly recommend a visit to Father McFeeley...
ah, we now hear from shocked and rick 546 whatever, an undynamic duo of leftie bloviators. I'll take rick first: the term "homophobic" has no (repeat NO) meaning; it and its cousins (sexism, lookism, feminism, species-ism, ad nauseam) are mere propaganda buzzwords used by the political left to advance its agenda. As for "shocked," your anti-Catholicism is acting up again ... it's time to take your meds ... there, attaboy!
So Santorum is against government interference in raising kids unless he wants something done his way
You got it. Like most Republicans he talks about smaller government but that only applies to corporations. Like most Republicans he wants government snooping around in the lives of the individual and whats to tell people what to do, how to act, what they can read, what they can watch who they can marry, etc.
Let me get this straight - he wants small government and low taxes with extra tax credit for breeders, but he wants the government to have enough money to jump into another war in the mideast and to be able to give out bucketloads of cash to churches to encourage their members to have more kids? Maybe that Jesus guy who gives him all these ideas should start kicking money in to the treasury rather than pulling it out for "faith based initiatives."
Would this money also go for Islamic Faith based programs that promote and foster healthy fatherhood? Probably not, and in that case you have a government that shows a preference towards one particular religion. We would be on our way to Christian Taliban where one religion rules and the others are persecuted.
Say NO to Rick Santorum
Any mention in Santorums book WHY in 2003 his Scranton office at 527 Linden Street was located a door away from " The Silhoutte Lounge" a Gay leather bar ......
How many times did the closeted Rick visit that gay bar?????
LOL.....here's a link:
http://nationalmemo.com/article/strange-true-rick-santorum-rented-next-gay-bar
Me: Because the gay bar was a better neighbor than the paper company in the first building his office considered. Random guy: That's what she said.
Just kidding. I love The Office and had to make that joke when I saw the phrase "Scranton office".
I've followed Rick Santorum's career for several years because this man frightens me. What he is proposing is a theocracy. Those who support him should take a close look at the Middle East. This man has more in common with the Taliban than any true follower of Christ.
In his own words, he makes it clear that he is about as ignorant as a man can be.
Santorum's not going to last long past Iowa. He's just the latest flying target at the Republican Turkey Shoot. However, what's scary to contemplate are the potential tactics that this scruple-free organization may use to force Last Turkey Standing into the Oval Office.
I have no particular affection for the Democrats, but they're marginally less sleazy, and seem to place a somewhat higher value on book-learnin' over book-burnin.' Santorum and his pals are a potent reminder that Christianity, Islam, and Judaism all have their roots in the Middle Eastern desert, a notably hostile environment.
Part of what makes NO sense to me is that these idiots who are SOOO pro-life, they want to ban ALL abortions -- even if the life of the mother is in danger! ? Last yr, my daughter had a octopic pregnancy. It HAD to be removed. She even went so far as to ASK the Dr if it could somehow be *moved* to where it was supposed to be. But there wasn't any.
But to get back to NO abortions. They -- the GOP/ bible-thumping /holier-then-thou crowd -- don't CARE WHAT happens to the child once its out of the womb! They want to remove or severely restrict ALL social safety nets for the mother -- or family -- to actually CARE for the new-born/infant/toddler/child. And to make their hyprocrisy even more telling, they don't really care about ANY life after its born. Health care? Can't afford it? Too bad? I think they all need an Ebenezzer Scrooge moment. "If they are to die, better to do it and decrease the surplus population"
Lastly, there is this: HOW are these same idiots going to answer to God on the day of their reckoning -- when he asks them WHY they treated their fellow man the way they did? I also think God will tell them that his son, Jesus has some questions to ask as well.
Oh yeah, and by the way, if you REALLY read and believe in the bible? Jesus was a progressive !!!
What I don't get is why these people are so interested in every one else marriage... take care of your own vows and leave other people alone...
I can not see how some one down the street marrying having any affect on my personal life... what two consenting adults wish to do is their business and not the business of any governmental dept... If my neighbor leaves his wife for another woman, I just don't see what that has to do with me or anyone else... Same thing if he leaves to marry another man... Their business, not mine...
The majority of "families" in the U.S. are not like Santorum's. And the number gets smaller every year. Raising his family his way is fine with me. Telling the rest of us how to raise ours is NOT! Keep YOUR values out of MY life!!
Thank goodness Dictorum's home is not like most others- bringing his aborted fetus home and making the children talk to it is something the vast majority of parents know is just batsh-it nuts.
What Rick is really saying that the higher the GOP raises the price on things through speculation means that you will have to have more children in which you can use public assistance to get the money you need to raise them while at the same time the GOP can then dictate to you how you should live your life based upon them using your family as a means of extorting you to vote for them and their belief or your lose your job and you and your family are out in the cold until you vote Conservative and GOP every time at the ballot box.
But seven kids are too many. I tell you santorum does not believe in global warming or the effects of production co2 & fossil fuel usage. Because the population already increases at 350% in 80 years. 2B-1930, 7B-today. The santorum family increased by 350% in 20 years.
I cannot help point out he is a true believer of his faith!! More kids to be more true believers. Keep your kids at home and teach only what you believe to be true. Live in the bubble. Welcome the extreme Christian side like the extreme Muslim view of the world and family.
How family minded of him, especially the stuff about giving gays genital shock treatment.
Did he say miners should work till they are 72?
Ricky is a fraud. He KNOWS he's a fraud and is sitting back laughing all the way to the bank at all the suckers he has fooled with his act. If you don't believe that, just look at how he robbed a small Pennsylvania school district of $73000 to send his litter to "cyberschools" (hahahaha!) while living in a $600,000 house IN VIRGINIA. What a scumbag he is. Even the fools in PA caught on to his scam eventually and tossed him out of the senate by an 18 pt margin in the last election.
The anti-abortion law Sanitorium tried to pass would have sentenced his own wife to death. As she needed to abort her dead fetus, that would have been against the law as per her husband,
I just can't believe any these Republican candidates trying to run for President of the US. Rick Santorum is just an idiot. I think his mouth starts to run and he does not think before he talks. If he is elected President, this country is in very serious trouble. He and the rest of the candidates- Gingrich, Ron Paul, all have very racist and homophobic views, when they don't realize that we all live in a very diverse country now. If you add all immigrants and non-white ethic backgrounds individuals out number the whites in this country today. These Republican candidates talk as though this is the 1800s and prior, when whites out number all other races. The USA was built on immigration and whites were the first immigrants before they took it over from the Native American Indians. I'm a Democrat and I'd rather have Ronald Reagan and the Bush's be President before we should allow any of these non-intelligent idiots run this country. At least we have video on record to show that our young college students are alot more intelligent than Santorum and the rest of these dummies. If anyone supports these any of these candidates they must be just dumb as these Teabags. President Obama looks like a genius compared to all these idiots running for 2012.
A little recap on Rick Santorum:
After two terms in the Senate, voters sent him packing with an eighteen (18) point defeat when Santorum ran for a third term. Why? Perhaps it was some of his controversial remarks on social issues, such as when he criticized the judge who barred a school district from mandating the teaching of 'intelligent design' as a counterweight to evolution, even though residents overwhelmingly agreed with the judge. Or when he blamed the sexual abuse scandal in Boston's Catholic Church on that city's "liberal culture". How nice, blaming liberals for the reprehensible and criminal behavior of those priests who sexually molested altar boys and other minors. Do we want this jerk as our president?
Why doesn't Santorum come clean about his wife's abortion??? Hypocrit!!!!
Got to admit Santorum and Bachmanns husband look like a match made in heaven.Sorry guess that would be man on dog or dog on dog
well....given Mr Bachmann's lack of emotional maturity, I think we would have a strong argument for pedophilia...you'd have to throw in Bachmann herself to make any claims of bestiality.
ghilde:
LOL!!!
I do object to you comparing latents Sicktorum and Mr. Michelle Bachmann to "dog on dog"- that's insulting to dogs.
A more accurate term would be: evil hypocrite on evil hypocrite.
I was fortunate enough to have loving parents who raised me to have morals and a sense of right and wrong. And I was fortunate enough to find and marry a wonderful, responsible man who is a great dado our two kids.
But I know quite a few people who have had crappy family lives, had parents who were irresponsible, or whose spouse turned out to be other than who they thought they were...another friend who was the child of rape....we cannot simply pull all social and legal support from children and abused or abandoned spouses. The reality is that our social programs were put into place because there was a need for them.
Obama has created a very stable family life, seems to have a good marriage, is a devoted dad, and has a great relationship with his mother-in-law. But he knows that not everyone can be so fortunate. even with the best of intentions. Santorum and people like him live in a fantasy world. We need politicians who can deal with the reality of life in this country as it is, not as they would like it to be.
Haven't had time to read the other comments, just want to make my own quick note here. He has a point that the traditional family has been around for thousands of years, and there is no reason to mess with that. If they gays think we're being discriminatory, then let me ask them a question. How about we legalize polygamy? It's "alternative", isn't it? Or how about group marriage? Why should the gays get all the press when there are loving, viable polygamist families that just want to live their lives in peace? (And no, I'm not talking about Warren Jeffs and his group, they're just plain nuts!).
I think the biggest problem I have with Santorum is that he goes a little too far in blurring the line between church and state. I'm very religious, but when you tangle the two, you end up with a theocracy along the lines of the Islamic states, and that is worse than dangerous. His view of "life begins at conception" does a serious disservice to a lot of women for whom pregnancy could be dangerous, such as young teenagers. Even the mormon church, which a lot of libs blast for their anti-abortion stance, has openly said that abortion should be an option in cases of rape, incest, or danger to the mother. That is just common sense!
Hmm, wow, am I trying to apply that term to a politician? I think I just found the whole problem right there! No WONDER none of these guys can get anything right!
Just an FYI.....traditionally it's been marriage between straights which has led to polygamy.