Former
Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum is steadily climbing the GOP polls (even
though his standing versus President Obama is dismal). He may even win in Michigan, one of the several
home states of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. (Whatever happened to
"Willard?" But that's another
story). At any rate, having done "Ask"
columns on Newt and the other Rick (Perry, remember him?) I believe that the Senator has risen far enough
in the polls that he deserves one for himself.
So here goes.
1. You frequently talk about your grandfather,
a coal miner. I'm wondering why you
never talk about the union he most likely belonged to, the United Mine Workers. Its President when it was at the height of
its powers in the 1930s and 40s, when your grandfather was presumably working,
was John L. Lewis, one of the most militant non-Communist labor leaders in US
history. Or is the possible reason that
you don't talk about your grandfather's union is that he belonged to the
Communist-led Progressive Mine Workers?
2. Speaking of Communists, are you aware
that members of your family still living in the north of Italy are ardent
members the Communist Refoundation Party, the successor to the former Communist
Party of Italy?
3. Speaking of ancestors, while you talk
frequently about your grandfather, you never seem to mention your parents. Could that be because both your father, a
clinical psychologist, and your mother, a nurse, worked for the largest
socialized medicine service in the U.S., otherwise known as the Veterans
Administration Hospital system. Could
that be because you have vowed to repeal even the modest changes to the world's
most expensive health care system contained in the Affordable Care Act? You have gone so far as to call the latter
"socialized medicine," or worse, when all it does is make some relatively
modest changes to the health insurance
system. It would bring another 30 or so
million people under its umbrella eventually, a far cry from the coverage and services provided by the
government-owned and operated system both your parents worked for. But you don't talk about them.
4. You have referred to the science behind
our understanding of global warming and the threats to humanity and indeed many
of the Earth's species that it presents as "punk science." You feel that we should continue to rely on
fossil fuels and indeed would vastly expand the extraction of same regardless
of the pollution of the air, water and ground that such extraction causes. You are also against any government-supported
development of alternative fuels and energy sources. But suppose you are wrong, and global warming
is real (as virtually all scientists who have worked on the problem agree that
it is). What then? But even if the
science is wrong, we are going to run out of fossil fuels eventually. Why not work on the development of alternative
energy, just as every other major power in the world, including China which has
literally tons of coal, is, anyway? If
you're right, we would still derive the benefits of cheaper energy in the long
run. So why not go for it?
5. You seem to be bothered by homosexuals and
homosexuality to a rather extraordinary degree.
You have compared homosexual intercourse to "bestiality," for example,
and would outlaw it. (One wonders how
such a law would be enforced, but that is another matter.) You have a lot of sweater vests in your
closet. Whole bunches of right-wing
Republicans come out or are exposed as gay on a regular basis, the latest being
Sheriff Paul Babeau of Pinal County, AZ.
Is there anything else your closet we should know about?
6. Speaking of sex, you have said that the
only reason for humans to have it is to engage in procreation. Your youngest child is four and you are
53. Does that mean that you and your
wife have not had sex in over four years?
7. On the abortion thing, based on your
religious belief about when life begins you are against it and want it to be
criminalized, in the process criminalizing the religious/secular belief of
those of us who hold that life begins at the time of viability (which
criminalization would violate the First Amendment, but that is another matter). Would you be for sending just the abortion providers
to prison, or would you include those women who have them too? And if the latter were sent to prison for
violating the law, who would care for their children? Of course, since you
think that abortion is murder, would you be going for the death sentence, for
the providers, for the recipients? How
would you go about paying for the massive increase in the size and scope of the
criminal justice system that the criminalization of abortion in the way you
contemplate it would entail?
8. Further on abortion, you are against it
in all cases, including those resulting from rape and incest. In such cases, would the father be
responsible for child support?
9. You want to keep US troops in Afghanistan
until "victory" is achieved. How do you define
"victory," and how do you propose to keep paying for that war?
10. You have said that you would be in favor of
bombing Iran over their supposed nuclear weapons program. Several questions. A) Do you remember the "WMD threat" from Iraq
that turned out to be bogus? B) Have you
given any thought to the massive loss of civilian life that would be incurred
in any US/Israeli bombing raid massive enough to eliminate the Iranian nuclear
program, whatever its true objectives?
C) How would you explain to our nation the incredible rise in the cost
of gasoline that would result from the closing of the Strait of Hormuz which
would certainly occur should such raid take place and the resulting
anti-American acts of violence that would invariably take place around the
world? D) how would you pay from the
vast expansion of war at home and abroad that would follow upon such raids?
11. Finally, you have been bombarded with the
"contraceptive question," so I won't raise it here. Except to note that if you and your wife do
still engage in sexual intercourse and she has not been pregnant for a while,
either she is past menopause or you two are incredibly lucky at Vatican Roulette,
and taking the literal meaning of the term, isn't that a form of contraception?
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