Santorum Counts The Cost - And Keeps The Change

My, my, you write a book that not only defends traditional family values but tweaks another book written by a colleague that frontally assaults them, and look at the firestorm that ensues.

T'was only this past Thursday that we took a look at Senator Rick Santorum's passing hallway exchange with Hillary Clinton over his book, It Takes A Family, and one of hers, It Takes A Village, and Teddy Kennedy's retaliation on her behalf by digging up and ripping a column Santorum wrote three years ago for a Catholic publication linking cultural decay and Boston's symbolizing of it with the church pedofilia scandals that were then known only to reside in that same city.

Well, I guess the explosive decompression of Nadagate has left a scandal vacuum that this equally as ridiculous Santorum scuffle is trying to fill.

What Teddy couldn't jam into his floor screed, his Bay (Gay?) State colleagues poured into a tiresomely phony, self-righteous letter:

The Massachusetts congressional delegation Friday sent a letter to a Pennsylvania senator demanding an apology for what they called his "outrageous, erroneous and insensitive" comments in a column linking Boston's liberalism to the clergy sex abuse scandal.

"We are deeply disturbed that you would offend Massachusetts by using an abuse scandal, one that has been mirrored in your state and in others, to score cheap political points with far right political groups," said the 10 lawmakers in a letter to Senator Rick Santorum, R-PA.

Given the usual Republican spinelessness, and Santorum being so far down in the polls against his likely Dem challenger, you might think that he would meekly keep quiet or actively temporize. Heck, I did expect that.

Boy, was I wrong.

A spokesman for Santorum said Friday that the senator stands by his comments.

Spokesman Robert Traynham said it was very sad that Senator Edward M. Kennedy, D-MA, and other Democratic liberals "have decided to politicize comments that were three years old."

And that was just for starters.

"I don't think Ted Kennedy lecturing me on the teachings of the church and how the church should handle these problems is something I'm going to take particularly seriously," Santorum said during a conference call with Catholic media.

According to Pennsylvania's Patriot News, Santorum also questioned Kennedy's following of church doctrine and said he is unaware of Kennedy or Senator John Kerry getting involved to address the church's problem.

Outstanding! That is the perfect retort to throw back in the face of a pompous ass hypocrite and his feeble attempt at demogogic pseudomoralizing, to say nothing of trying to change the subject himself from the dead-on points in both Santorum's 2002 article and his just-released book. And it is particularly heartening coming on the heels of Majority Leader Frist's shot across the Donk bow Friday threatening to revoke the security clearances of Senators Reid and Durbin in retaliation for their attempt to so strip Karl Rove. Those trunks, they are a-stiffening, and just in time for the Battle of Olympus, when they will be sorely needed.

But, of course, the Left has other, viler avenues of attack, as one of Senator Santorum's staffers unpleasantly discovered:

The Philly Inquirer, among others, are reporting today that one of Rick Santorum's top aides is gay. The staffer was "outed" by a gay website. It's a reprehensible thing to do - invade a staffer's personal life like that. And of what relevance is it, say, to any reader of the Philly Inquirer? Santorum has issued a statement praising the staffer, clearly furious that one of his people has been targetted in such a rotten way. Is that the "news" too? Maybe people are shocked Rick Santorum doesn't actually hate gays? Of course, maybe we really are that bad off. Unfortunately we're also so bad off that a man who happens to be gay isn't "allowed" to work for a senator he wants to work for without his personal life being made "news" by some webguy who decides the staffer is a "hypocrite" or shouldn't be able to choose who he wants to work for.

This is Ted Kennedy writ large (if such a thing is possible without disturbing the Earth's orbit around the Sun). The hypocrisy of left-wing sodomites trying to ruin the lives of other sodomites who also happen to be right-wing is its own subset of homophobia, it seems to me. Not unlike the racism of left-wing minorities who denounce their right-wing brethren for not toeing the ideological line, as though there was no distinction between political philosophy and ethnic/racial cultural heritage.

I wouldn't second Mark Noonan's suggestion that, "Whoever outed this aide is, well, someone deserving of a rather severe beating," only because that "whoever" might also be into BDSM and might, therefore, derive enjoyment from the experience.

But in the bigger political picture, this is an attack aimed at Senator Santorum in the growing pagan jihad against his temeritous tome and, ultimately, picking off his senate seat in 2006. Judging by the fiestiness he's displayed so far, it looks like the courageous keystoner is up to the challenge.

Meanwhile, the Massachusetts Manatee is off to Gitmo to do what he was born to do: probe women's underwear.

Maybe Senator Santorum will send him a postcard wishing him a happy 36th anniversary.