DownWithTyranny!: Norman, Is That You?-- Santorum And The Fetus-In-The-Jar Thing

by Juan

Let me get this straight. Monkeyboy's mom, Barbara "Do I look like the Quaker Oats guy?" Bush brings him 'round to the hospital to see his miscarried and quite dead sibling in a jar and dang if that didn't cure Dubya of any pro-choice flirtations. And now we get a twisted Norman Bates-ian remix: Rooster tries to have his "right to life" cred bolstered by dragging home a corpse for his children to play with. And Fox is being called insensitive?!

I know strange things happen when children die, but really? The Santorums have another child who so far is defying death. Will they get on with just burying her, should she pass? I understand that these personal tragedies should not be campaign issues, but it's funny how quickly right wing politicians make campaign talking points of other people's childbirth dilemmas and issues.

I do have to question just what kind of hospital let this family cart an infant corpse off the premises. Did his health care package not include shipping and handling? This is truly disturbing behavior and has me wondering the true circumstances of this infant's death. First, was Hen's life threatened by this pregnancy? And would Rooster have let her die to save Chick's life? Was Chick really premature, or was that a Freudian slip?

I don't want to sound insensitive like a Fox, but I feel compelled to match old Rooster's level of compassion. After all, he did say he doesn't want to take life from dead babies so white people can live. No, wait... that was "Cash for Coloreds," or was that stopping votes from Mexicans so Democrats can't win? Killing marriage for homos so they can adopt? I can't keep up with all the Santorum disrespect, but gee... Rooster won't even respect his own child's right to death!

UPDATE: Santorum Gets A Closer Look

No one paid the struggling Santorum much attention before each of the Not-Romneys was eliminated, one by one, as just too implausible for prime time. And then no one was left but the guy who made his children fondle a fetus in a jar... and who lost his Senate seat by an astonishing 18 points. But he went from being dead meat to being 8 votes from beating the GOP Establishment's choice for the 2012 presidential battle against Obama. So now he's getting a closer look-- and it's pretty ugly.

Only in recent days have questions emerged about his stand on abortion, his votes in Congress, and his endorsements of Romney over John McCain in 2008, and Senator Arlen Specter over Pat Toomey in 2004.

If rival candidates decide to go negative on Santorum-- as they have on Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul-- they have plenty of material with which to work.

Santorum is beloved among "values voters" for his stand on abortion, gay marriage and other social issues. But his record is rich in polarizing policy positions and questionable associations that support the charge of "Washington insider."

For example, his million-dollar-plus 2010 income included payments from a lobbying firm, an energy company engaged in controversial "hydrofracking" and a hospital conglomerate that was sued for allegedly defrauding the federal government.

"The spotlight is blinding, and if you squint or stumble even slightly, it gets even more intense," said Dan Schnur, a former Republican campaign consultant who now heads the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at University of Southern California. "Santorum hasn't faced it yet, but it's about to hit him in a huge way."

Santorum says he's ready. "This isn't my first rodeo. I've been in tough races," Santorum said Monday in Iowa. "I've had the national media crawling up anywhere they could crawl. ... It's not going to be fun."

Texas Governor Rick Perry fired an opening salvo last weekend, charging that Santorum, 53, was a big spender in Congress who voted to raise the debt ceiling and approved such pork-barrel projects as Alaska's Bridge to Nowhere, a tea pot museum in North Carolina and an indoor rain forest in Iowa.

...As a senator, Santorum went further, playing a key role in an effort by Republicans in Congress to dictate the hiring practices, and hence the political loyalties, of Washington's deep-pocketed lobbying firms and trade associations, which had previously been bipartisan.

Dubbed "the K Street Project" for the Washington street that houses most of these groups, the initiative was launched in 1989 by lobbyist Grover Norquist, whose sole aim, he said, was to encourage lobbying firms to "hire people who agree with your worldview, not hire for access."
But the rubric "K Street Project" came to encompass the entire climate of cozy cooperation between Republicans and lobbyists.

When Republicans won control of the House in 1994, House Majority Leader Tom Delay and others organized regular meetings with lobbyists that reviewed K Street job openings with an eye toward filling them with party loyalists, who would in turn steer support and donations to the members.

By 2001, Sen. Santorum was also holding one-hour breakfast meetings with lobbyists on alternating Tuesday mornings at 8:30 a.m.

In 2004 he denied being involved with Norquist's effort to staff K Street. But Santorum convened Senate Republicans to discuss the appointment of Democrat Dan Glickman as head the Motion Picture Association, according to Roll Call, a newspaper covering Capitol Hill.

"Yeah, we had a meeting, and yeah, we talked about making sure that we have fair representation on K Street. I admit that I pay attention to who is hiring, and I think it's important for leadership to pay attention," he told the paper at the time.

In 2006, as the influence-peddling scandal that sent lobbyist Jack Abramoff to jail unfolded, Santorum said he was ending the breakfasts in his conference room. However, his staff confirmed to Washington newspapers that they resumed almost immediately, on the same day and at the same time, at a location off the Capitol grounds.

Abramoff never attended Santorum's breakfasts. "I was focused on the House," he told Reuters. Yet the mushrooming scandal about Abramoff's activities cast a harsh light on all aspects of the lobbyist huddles on Capitol Hill.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal government watchdog group, named Santorum among three "most corrupt" senators in 2005 and 2006, accusing him of "using his position as a member of Congress to financially benefit those who have made contributions to his campaign committee and political action committee."

The blowback from the K Street Project contributed to Sen. Santorum's crushing 18-percentage-point defeat in his 2006 reelection bid. His image as a conservative firebrand who made polarizing comments about abortion, gays and single mothers played a role as well, as did Santorum's full-throated support of the war in Iraq.

A few weeks after he left Congress, although his law license had expired, Santorum landed a job in the Washington office of Pittsburgh-based law firm Eckert Seamans. Lawyers at the firm had given Santorum 45 political contributions totaling $24,400 while he was in Congress, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

As senator, Santorum "was a friend of the firm," said Timothy Ryan, Eckert Seamans' chief executive officer. Santorum helped make introductions and did other "relationship work," including providing Eckert Seamans' clients with business and strategy counseling, Ryan said.

Since then, thanks to his political contacts, Santorum has cobbled together a comfortable living as a political pundit, policy advocate and corporate consultant. His 2010 financial disclosure form shows that the self-described "grandson of a coal miner" earned at least $900,000 that year.

* Fox News paid him $239,153 to appear as an occasional contributor;

* Radio Salem paid him $83,999 to serve as a guest host on Bill Bennett's Morning in America radio show;

* The Philadelphia Inquirer paid him $23,000 as a freelance columnist.

* The Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative advocacy group, paid him $217,385 as a senior fellow.

Santorum also collected a total of $332,500 in consulting fees from three corporations:

* $65,000 from the American Continental Group lobbying firm

* $142,500 from Consol Energy

* $125,000 from the Clapham Group, a Virginia-based corporation started by longtime Santorum staffer Mark Rodgers. On its website, Clapham says its mission is to "influence culture upstream of the political arena."

"Rick's been around Washington for quite some time," American Continental president David Urban said. "When he looks at the tea leaves he may see things differently than others. We'd chat about which way different pieces of legislation might be heading. He is a very bright guy so I paid for his insight, and he's a friend, someone whose advice I could trust."

American Continental represents Microsoft, the American Gaming Association, Monsanto and the Association of Mortgage Investors among others.

A spokesperson for Consol Energy said that they "engaged Senator Santorum to provide strategic counsel on a variety of public policy-related issues."

The most high-profile issue for the company recently has been the gas mining technique called hydrofracking, which critics allege has in some places polluted ground water.

Santorum sang the technique's praises at a campaign stop in Iowa, saying that in Pennsylvania "we are drilling, baby, drilling."

In addition, Santorum served on the board of a for-profit hospital chain, Universal Health Services (UHS), where he received $341,000 in compensation from 2007 to 2010.

During Santorum's four years on the board, UHS's McAllen, Texas, hospital group was sued for defrauding Medicare through "illegal compensation to doctors in order to induce them to refer patients to hospitals within the group," according to a Justice Department press release in 2009. The McAllen group agreed to settle the lawsuit by paying $27.5 million.

The next year, the Justice Department sued a Virginia UHS facility that caters to boys ages 11 to 17 alleging that the facility "billed Medicaid for inpatient psychiatric care that was not provided, in violation of federal and state Medicaid requirements, and falsified records to cover up their serious violations."

...A devout Catholic with seven children, Santorum has taken positions on many social issues that may not play well with moderate voters and others that may trouble the conservative base.

He has vowed to reinstate the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy on gays in the military and annul all gay marriages, which are legal in New Hampshire, the site of the next Republican primary.

He opposes legal abortion, yet he supported a bill that allows it in the case of rape or incest or danger to the mother, telling David Gregory on Meet the Press last week that this was a calculated compromise to move toward the greater goal of ending abortion.

Similarly, he endorsed fellow Pennsylvanian, Sen. Arlen Specter, who is pro-choice, over anti-abortion primary challenger Pat Toomey in 2004. That move became even more offensive to conservatives when a victorious Specter went on to switch parties and cast a crucial vote for President Obama's health care plan.

Santorum has said his was a "political decision" based on his calculations of how to best influence upcoming Supreme Court appointments.

Santorum presents family values as the cornerstone of his political convictions. But here, too, his behavior might alienate as many voters as it attracts.

In 1996, after his wife, Karen, gave birth to a child who lived just two hours, the Santorums brought the dead baby Gabriel home to meet the other children, which Karen subsequently described in a book.

The Santorums are also proud homeschoolers. They moved to a Virginia suburb of Washington DC as soon as he was elected to the Senate in 1995, but still cost their Pennsylvania school district more than $100,000 because their children were enrolled in an online charter school based there from 2001-2005.

The district was required to pay the tuition of students who attended this type of school via the Internet. The state of Pennsylvania eventually covered some of these education costs. Santorum's defense was that he still owned a house in the district and paid property taxes. But this issue, too, became a factor in his ill-fated 2006 reelection campaign.