"I will stand up for what I believe in—unless it gets me in trouble. Then I'll just blame my wife."
(Sarah Conard/Reuters)
Gee, that Rick Santorum sure is a gentleman, isn't he?
On Sunday, he appeared on This Week with George Stephanopoulos to defend the rancid misogyny that is the central plank of his presidential campaign platform. It did not go well.
STEPHANOPOULOS: You've raised a lot of eyebrows with some of your comments about women, those comments the other day about women in combat, where you suggested that shouldn't happen because of the types of emotions involved. I know you were talking about the emotions of men who are -- who are alongside the women, but also in your book, "It Takes a Family," where you seem to suggest that a lot of women feel pressure to work outside the home because of radical feminism.
And what do you say to those who worry -- believe that those kind of comments are going to alienate women, make you an easier candidate to beat in a general election?
SANTORUM: Well, that section of the book was co-written, if you want to be honest about it, by my wife, who is a nurse and a lawyer.
Ohhhhhhh. So the part of your book where you blame "radical feminism" for forcing women to work against their will was written by your
wife, eh, Rick? You shouldn't be held accountable for the words in your book because your
wife wrote the nasty parts?
That's funny because, as many, including the New York Times, have noted:
[O]nly his name is on the cover and he does not list her, in his acknowledgements, among those "who assisted me in the writing of this book."
Now that Rick's catching the tiniest bit of heat for his archaic views of, well, everything, he's trying to defend himself and make his Christian sharia views more palatable to the general public. Thus, he tossed in this disingenuous platitude:
But I think it's important that women both outside the home and inside the home are affirmed for their choices they make, that they are, in fact, choices, and society, you know, treats them in a sense equally for whatever decision they make that's best for them.
Yeah, that sounds nice and 21st century, doesn't it? Very modern and egalitarian of him, isn't it?
STEPHANOPOULOS: You say that now, but you also wrote in the book that radical feminists have been making the pitch that justice demands that men and women be given an equal opportunity to make it to the top in the workplace. Isn't that something that everyone should value?
SANTORUM: Yeah, I have no problem -- I don't know -- that's a new quote for me. I don't know what context that was given.
Um, Rick? That quote? It was in
your book. So, not only did you apparently
not write the book yourself; you didn't even
read it?
You have to love that Rick Santorum standing up for his bold convictions and his wife. Santorum, who dreams of a simpler time when women died in back alley abortions, and an even simpler time when Christian crusaders slaughtered non-believers, sure thinks things were better for everyone back in the good ol' days when men were men and women knew their place. And he's such a chivalrous gentleman that when backed into a corner, he'll gladly blame his wife for it.
What a stand-up guy.