…Rick Santorum! Now I know that perhaps picking on Santorum is shooting fish in a barrel to a certain extent, and that you don’t have to be the wittiest (or most politically aware) writer to call him out on pretty much everything. So why take on such an easy target? I’ll tell you…
1. Now that he’s dropped out of the presidential race, this could be my last opportunity to use him as a teachable moment to the American voter. 2. All of the assholes selected thus far have been selected for their variety of rich assholishness. January’s was Mitt CaymanIslandsBankAccount Romney, the presidential candidate-slash-vulture capitalist who wants to lead but not by example. February’s was Chris Brown, a man who refuses at every turn to act as though he’s got a shred of class despite being worth millions of dollars. And March’s were the billionaire sugar daddy’s perverting our election process by using super-PACs to donate more funds than thousands of people could ever hope to. Now April (the cruelest month), brings Santorum, the faux-working class crusader who convinces people to vote against their own interests.
Santorum is a multi-millionaire. Santorum is richer than anyone who put his name on a ballot could ever dream of being. He was a senator and now he’s a lobbyist, NOT a preacher or any other holy job his followers might imagine. His interests are permanently, definitively separate and at odds with all of the blue collar people who thought he was their “voice” in this election. But why did they think that?
Was it because Santorum wouldn’t shut up about denying gay people basic rights? Yes, among other things. He took a handful of cultural issues, used it to label himself as the holiest of holy rollers, and then no one bothered to check if any of his positions were actually helping the majority of Christians at all.
Santorum (who claims to be Catholic but is more snake-handling evangelical in his actual style) routinely lost to the other candidates among Catholic voters, doesn’t believe in universal healthcare (unlike the Pope), and didn’t believe in any charity to the poor, going so far as to say he’s “helping them” by cutting all their entitlement programs. [It was a minor scandal that Santorum—-for all his proselytizing—-hasn’t actually donated anything to charity over the years.]
When someone claims to be a Christian but doesn’t believe in helping the planet (Santorum has an atrocious record on environmental issues), the sick (he would deny others the healthcare that saved his own daughter’s life), or the poor, what kind of Christian is that at all? Someone who focuses almost exclusively on denying gay rights (mentioned vaguely in two paragraphs in The Bible, far from a major theme) and denying women’s rights (NOWHERE in The Bible), at the expense of every major theme in it, isn’t really much of a Christian.
In fact, you might be tempted to call him (in Santorum language) “the Devil.” And of course the Devil famously sweet talked a third of heaven’s angels with him into hell, much like Santorum has tricked a third of the electorate into voting against their own interests. If that’s not deserving of a spot on the asshole list, I don’t know what is.
Thank GOD he dropped out. If you are a woman and you even thought about voting for him YOU should go see a therapist.