Kevin and I both read Paco’s stuff from time to time, although Kevin is the true devotee. This particular story kind of bothered me, though. The author of the post Paco quotes equates Santorum’s morality to morality in the 1950s, and laughs it off as weird. It isn’t weird. It’s idiotic. He’s one of the hyper-evangelical Christians who says, in a nutshell, “I believe in a world of fantasy, where evolution doesn’t exist and birth control should be a medieval chastity belt, but because I believe in Jeebus, that’s okay.” No. It isn’t okay.
I consider myself pro-life. Abortion is okay if and only if the mother is in danger or the woman was raped. It is not okay as a form of birth control. That’s what the pill and condoms are for. If people are going to have sex — and I’m pretty sure they are — you have to have a way to deal with the consequences. Banning birth control does not solve that, it unnecessarily restricts options. I know that banning birth control was past-Santorum. Fine. Now he just wants to make it prohibitively expensive. Isn’t that the same thing?
For the record, I’m also not terribly pleased with his response to privacy. Yes, the right to privacy isn’t in the Constitution. Neither is the right to not be murdered. If I can start murdering people just because it isn’t in the Constitution, let me know. I’ve got a long list.
I know why Santorum has become so popular of late: he’s appealing to an important part of the Republican base, and I am not part of this base. I’m okay with that. I had no problem with George W. Bush, who appealed to much the same crowd. George W. Bush inherited a good economy. Obama’s successor will not. Let’s make economic conservatism the core of the party, in this period, not social conservatism.
