Is Rick Santorum's Religious Extremism a Deal Breaker for Voters?

[ThomasT]

I'm not certain that is correct.

Apparently it isn't, at least as far as you're concerned. Anyway, your points are taken.

 

[WhoWee]

I don't that the other issues are equally considered. That is, I don't think they're as important to Santorum's base, or those outside his base, as his religiosity.

You don't think the economy, deficits, and foreign affairs (for instance) are as important to Santorum's base as his "religiosity"?

 

[ThomasT]

You don't think the economy, deficits, and foreign affairs (for instance) are as important to Santorum's base as his "religiosity"?

No. That's my current opinion.

 

[WhoWee]

Ok, that might well be the case. Do you happen to have a link for that handy. If not, I'll Google it.

Sure.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...am-sport-126/2012/02/23/gIQArff4VR_video.html

"Santorum: 'Politics is a team sport' (1:26)
Feb. 23, 2012 - When discussing his support of the No Child Left Behind policy at the Republican debate on Wednesday night, Rick Santorum said he took 'one for the team' to support a policy that was a priority to President George W. Bush. (Feb. 23) (/Courtesy of CNN) "

He was booed. Even Rush Limbaugh commented:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0212/73223.html

"Rush Limbaugh said he “cringed” when Rick Santorum blurted out during Wednesday night’s Republican debate that “politics is a team sport” to explain his voting record – a line that his opponents have quickly seized on to paint the GOP candidate as a clear-cut Washington insider.

“Santorum is getting creamed. I cringed when I heard him say this. Santorum is getting creamed for the team player comment,” Limbaugh said on his radio show Thursday. “I heard it, I looked at [my wife] Kathryn, and I said, ‘There’s going to be hell to pay for that one,’ because I knew that Santorum opponents, both from the left and right, were going to harp on it.”"

 

[ThomasT]

Sure.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...am-sport-126/2012/02/23/gIQArff4VR_video.html

"Santorum: 'Politics is a team sport' (1:26)
Feb. 23, 2012 - When discussing his support of the No Child Left Behind policy at the Republican debate on Wednesday night, Rick Santorum said he took 'one for the team' to support a policy that was a priority to President George W. Bush. (Feb. 23) (/Courtesy of CNN) "

He was booed. Even Rush Limbaugh commented:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0212/73223.html

"Rush Limbaugh said he “cringed” when Rick Santorum blurted out during Wednesday night’s Republican debate that “politics is a team sport” to explain his voting record – a line that his opponents have quickly seized on to paint the GOP candidate as a clear-cut Washington insider.

“Santorum is getting creamed. I cringed when I heard him say this. Santorum is getting creamed for the team player comment,” Limbaugh said on his radio show Thursday. “I heard it, I looked at [my wife] Kathryn, and I said, ‘There’s going to be hell to pay for that one,’ because I knew that Santorum opponents, both from the left and right, were going to harp on it.”"

Yeah, he came off as a bit weak on that one in the sense that he did something against his principles. I'm not sure what principle he violated. Surely not testing. Spending?

 

[lisab]

Yeah, he came off as a bit weak on that one in the sense that he did something against his principles. I'm not sure what principle he violated. Surely not testing. Spending?

He told the truth...?

 

[Pythagorean]

I'm not certain that is correct.

I agree with ThomasT. Sometimes we have to bring up the other candidates because that's the pertinent factor: how this candidate compares to other candidates. If there was only one candidate, candidacy wouldn't be an issue.

 

[jreelawg]

You don't think the economy, deficits, and foreign affairs (for instance) are as important to Santorum's base as his "religiosity"?

It's not that simple. A good deal of his stances on what should be non-religious issues, are based on his biblical interpretations, and his beliefs of what is and isn't the work of Satan.

For example, he thinks that academia has fallen to Satan, and strongly believes that government should have nothing to do with education. He thinks all schools should be private schools. This in my opinion is a big issue. How will America stay competitive without an education system?

Also, his foreign policy stance is based on the bible. He seams to think we are in a spiritual war. Sure good and evil, but good and evil as he defines it, which includes having the wrong religion, using condoms, raising taxes, environmentalism etc. If you take his Satan speech literally, he thinks the entire world except the US is evil, and Ruled by Satan. I think this view he seams to hold coincides with his very aggressive views on the use of America Military force abroad.

His business side, as I have seen it, is his support of ending environmental regulations, and lowering taxes for the rich. Of this, his reasoning for ending environmental regulations, is that they are inconsistent with his interpretation of the bible.

If war, environmental regulation, and education are not important issues, then I don't know what are.

 

[WhoWee]

I agree with ThomasT. Sometimes we have to bring up the other candidates because that's the pertinent factor: how this candidate compares to other candidates. If there was only one candidate, candidacy wouldn't be an issue.

Your belief doesn't seem consistent with my experience in this thread - I've found it's best not to attempt a direct contrast between candidates as it may de-rail/move the debate off-topic - it's best to stay focused strictly on the subject candidate.

 

[WhoWee]

It's not that simple. A good deal of his stances on what should be non-religious issues, are based on his biblical interpretations, and his beliefs of what is and isn't the work of Satan.

For example, he thinks that academia has fallen to Satan, and strongly believes that government should have nothing to do with education. He thinks all schools should be private schools. This in my opinion is a big issue. How will America stay competitive without an education system?

Let's start with this - do you have specific quotes to support your comment - then we can analyze.

 

[jreelawg]

Let's start with this - do you have specific quotes to support your comment - then we can analyze.

I didn't post them because they have already been posted in this forum. In his, "Satan has his sights on America", speech, he states that academia was the first to fall to Satan in America. In the quote by evo a few posts back he calls college an indoctrination mill.

“Never before and never again after their years of mass education will any person live and work in such a radically narrow, age-segregated environment,” Santorum wrote. “It’s amazing that so many kids turn out to be fairly normal, considering the weird socialization they get in public schools.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/...ocialization-in-public-schools_n_1294390.html

"We didn't have government-run schools for a long time in this country, for the majority of the time in this country," he said. "We had private education. We had local education. Parents actually controlled the education of their children. What a great idea that is."

"Just call them what they are," he said. "Public schools? That's a nice way of putting it. These are government-run schools."
...
Santorum called "mass education" an "aberration."

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57378842-503544/rick-santorum-suggests-opposition-to-public-schooling/

 

[WhoWee]

I didn't post them because they have already been posted in this forum. In his, "Satan has his sights on America", speech, he states that academia was the first to fall to Satan in America. In the quote by evo a few posts back he calls college an indoctrination mill.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/...ocialization-in-public-schools_n_1294390.html

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57378842-503544/rick-santorum-suggests-opposition-to-public-schooling/

Those quotes don't support your post specifically though - do they?

You posted:
"For example, he thinks that academia has fallen to Satan, and strongly believes that government should have nothing to do with education. He thinks all schools should be private schools."

It seems to me you've over-stated his position a bit - perhaps I'm wrong?

 

[jreelawg]

Those quotes don't support your post specifically though - do they?

You posted:
"For example, he thinks that academia has fallen to Satan, and strongly believes that government should have nothing to do with education. He thinks all schools should be private schools."

It seems to me you've over-stated his position a bit - perhaps I'm wrong?

Well for the first part, he explicitly states that he thinks academia is controlled by Satan, so that is entirely unambiguous.

Now for the second part, as to wether he strongly thinks government should have nothing to do with education; He explicitly stated that he thinks the idea of schools being only local, or private is a great idea. That is somewhat ambiguous. But then he goes on to say that public schools are an aberration. This is also ambiguous. He could be using the definition, "departure from truth or morality", or "abnormal", I don't know for sure.

Also, he could have changed his mind, so it is possible he no longer thinks what he did a few years ago.

In my opinion his own statements speak for themselves.

 

[iceworm]

Interestingly, there are a number posting here that appear to be from single issue voters. Primary issues are religion and abortion. This view appears to me to be extreemly narrow minded and short-sighted.

Even so, I certainly can't fault anyone for being a single issue voter - I am. My vote for any elected official is entirely dependent on her second ammendent stand. I may not like some of Santorum's positions, but I could never vote for someone, such as Obama, actively engaged in decimating my right to keep and bear arms.

Luckily, a lot of Americans agree with me.

ice

 

[Gokul43201]

Academia has fallen to Satan:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4jopm7hYFk&feature=player_detailpage

Transcript:

He was successful. He attacks all of us and he attacks all of our institutions. The place where he was, in my mind, the most successful and first successful was in academia. He understood pride of smart people. He attacked them at their weakest, that they were, in fact, smarter than everybody else and could come up with something new and different. Pursue new truths, deny the existence of truth, play with it because they're smart. And so academia, a long time ago, fell.

And you say "what could be the impact of academia falling?" Well, I would have the argument that the other structures that I'm going to talk about here had root of their destruction because of academia. Because what academia does is educate the elites in our society, educates the leaders in our society, particularly at the college level. And they were the first to fall.

And so what we saw this domino effect, once the colleges fell and those who were being education in our institutions, the next was the church. Now you’d say, ‘wait, the Catholic Church’? No. We all know that this country was founded on a Judeo-Christian ethic but the Judeo-Christian ethic was a Protestant Judeo-Christian ethic, sure the Catholics had some influence, but this was a Protestant country and the Protestant ethic, mainstream, mainline Protestantism, and of course we look at the shape of mainline Protestantism in this country and it is in shambles, it is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it. So they attacked mainline Protestantism, they attacked the Church, and what better way to go after smart people who also believe they’re pious to use both vanity and pride to also go after the Church.

Government should have nothing to do with schools; all schools should be private:

For the majority of time in this country, there were no government-run schools. We had private education. We had local education. Parents actually controlled the education of their children. What a great idea that is.

http://sites.ewu.edu/easterneronline/2012/02/24/private-education-key-for-santorum/

Edit: Started this post a while ago, but had to walk away. Just got back and hit 'submit' - much of it is probably redundant at this point.

 

[Pythagorean]

Your belief doesn't seem consistent with my experience in this thread - I've found it's best not to attempt a direct contrast between candidates as it may de-rail/move the debate off-topic - it's best to stay focused strictly on the subject candidate.

Unfortunately, by tunneling on one candidate, you run the risk of taking things out of context. Candidate X may do something bad, but if all the other candidates have a "worse" position than candidate X's bad is a good with respect to candidacy (the lesser evil).

Likewise, if candidate X's good behavior is reported on, his candidacy merit is only raised with respect to other candidates.

I suppose one could avoid using names and try to generalize "other candidates". This becomes difficult if candidate X is in between other candidates; you can no longer say that the person's candidacy is supreme with respect to all other candidates. Especially now, where the incumbent's candidacy will be affected by who wins the republican primaries. To further complicate things, the republican candidates will have a different candidate merit when compared to their republican competitors vs. when they're compared to their final competitor.

Candidacy is defined by relativity: where candidates stand in relation to other candidates. I agree that idea can be practiced without using actual names, but removing comparison to other candidates defeats the purpose of candidacy. It allows for easier misrepresentation by taking things out of context.

 

[Gokul43201]

...I could never vote for someone, such as Obama, actively engaged in decimating my right to keep and bear arms.

How exactly has he done that?

Wait, we know the answer to that. NRA vice president Wayne LaPierre explains it pretty well. According to LaPierre Obama has done absolutely nothing to hurt anyone's right to bear arms. In fact, he's even signed bills into law that expand gun rights. And he's disregarded calls from within the Dem party to renew the Clinton assault weapons ban. But clearly, this is all part of a big conspiracy to lull gun owners into a false sense of security so Obama can engage in "decimating my right to keep and bear arms" when he gets re-elected in 2012!

http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/09/nra-claims-massive-obama-conspiracy-not-to-ban-guns/
[see video]

Sheesh!

PS: As often happens, this is better explained by Jon Stewart: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-september-29-2011/wayne-s-world

 

[Astronuc]

Attributed to Santorum from ewu.edu

“For the majority of time in this country, there were no government-run schools. We had private education. We had local education,” he said. “Parents actually controlled the education of their children. What a great idea that is.”

Now interestingly -

The first public school in America was established by Puritan settlers in 1635 in the home of Schoolmaster Philemon Pormont and was later moved to School Street. Boys from various socio-economic backgrounds attended Boston Latin School until 1972 when girls were also accepted.

A portrait statue of Benjamin Franklin overlooks the former site of Boston Latin School which Franklin, Samuel Adams, and John Hancock once attended. Franklin's place of birth was just one block away on Milk Street, across from the Old South Meeting House.

The Boston Latin School is now located in Boston's Fenway neighborhood.

http://www.cityofboston.gov/freedomtrail/firstpublic.asp
http://www.thefreedomtrail.org/visitor/boston-latin.html

In 1785, the Continental Congress mandates a survey of the Northwest Territory. The survey is to create townships, with a portion of each one reserved for a school. These land grants came to be the system of public land grant universities in the years 1862 to 1890. These universities include many of those named “University of <state name>” or “<state name> State University,” such as University of Vermont and Pennsylvania State University.

In 1790, the state constitution in Pennsylvania required free public education for children in families that could not afford to pay for an education. Also concerned about the education of poor children, the New York Public School Society in 1805 set up schools that had a school master to teach the older children with a system in place for the older children to teach those who were younger.

In 1820, Boston is the site of the first public U.S. high school. And in 1827, a Massachusetts law makes all grades of public school free to all. Massachusetts innovation continues with the state’s first Board of Education formed in 1837, headed by Horace Mann. And in 1851, Massachusetts makes education compulsory.
. . . .

http://www.educationbug.org/a/history-of-public-schools.html

1698 February 12 The first public school in the America Colonies was established at Philadelphia, and a corporation created, entitled "The Overseers of the Publick Schoole founded in Philadelphia." In this school it was ordered by the governor and Council: "All children and servants, male and female, whose parents, guardians and masters be willing to subject ym to the rules and orders of the said schoole, shall from time to time, with the approbaon of the overseers thereof for the time being, be received or admitted, taught or instructed; the rich at reasonable rates, and the poor to be maintained and schooled for nothing." The first school house was built on the east side of Fourth Street below Chestnut Street. Inoch Flower was the first Schoolmaster.

http://www.ushistory.org/philadelphia/philadelphiafirsts.html

Santorum has quite an imagination!

 

[turbo]

Santorum has quite an imagination!

It seems that anti-intellectualism plays well to the Republican base. He's the man to beat right now.

 

[Hobin]

But I will take this opportunity to inform others - others that are still open to listening.

Given Santorum's extremely dubious ethical and political views, prefering him over Obama because of gun control is just irresponsible.

EDIT: Wait, iceworm's post suddenly disappeared? Hm. I'll leave this here. Just in case.

 

[WhoWee]

Attributed to Santorum from ewu.edu


Now interestingly - http://www.cityofboston.gov/freedomtrail/firstpublic.asp
http://www.thefreedomtrail.org/visitor/boston-latin.html

http://www.educationbug.org/a/history-of-public-schools.html

http://www.ushistory.org/philadelphia/philadelphiafirsts.html

Santorum has quite an imagination!

I think he was talking about rural America - rather than the major cities of Boston, Philadelphia, and New York - still an easy target. I maintain that Santorum is his own worst enemy.

 

[WhoWee]

Unfortunately, by tunneling on one candidate, you run the risk of taking things out of context. Candidate X may do something bad, but if all the other candidates have a "worse" position than candidate X's bad is a good with respect to candidacy (the lesser evil).

Likewise, if candidate X's good behavior is reported on, his candidacy merit is only raised with respect to other candidates.

I suppose one could avoid using names and try to generalize "other candidates". This becomes difficult if candidate X is in between other candidates; you can no longer say that the person's candidacy is supreme with respect to all other candidates. Especially now, where the incumbent's candidacy will be affected by who wins the republican primaries. To further complicate things, the republican candidates will have a different candidate merit when compared to their republican competitors vs. when they're compared to their final competitor.

Candidacy is defined by relativity: where candidates stand in relation to other candidates. I agree that idea can be practiced without using actual names, but removing comparison to other candidates defeats the purpose of candidacy. It allows for easier misrepresentation by taking things out of context.

I couldn't agree more and find it frustrating not to make comparisons. Regardless, we can still measure the evolution of a single candidates comments and record over time through comparison.

 

[ThomasT]

He told the truth...?

I hadn't thought of it like that. Good one.

 

[ThomasT]

Santorum has quite an imagination!

Apparently.

 

[SixNein]

It seems that anti-intellectualism plays well to the Republican base. He's the man to beat right now.

Why do you think anti-intellectualism plays to the base of the republican party?

 

[turbo]

Why do you think anti-intellectualism plays to the base of the republican party?

I have no idea. It seems like a trend that is well-established and is bound to continue as long as it bears fruit. Does some segment of the voting public want candidates that are no more educated and skilled than themselves? I have a hard time understanding why, because I would love to have candidates that are so smart and skilled that I would love to have a chance to vote for them. A candidate that has a hard time elucidating policy issues or has to resort to jeans-and-flannel-shirt photo-ops with "oh-shucks" ads has no business running for high office.

 

[SixNein]

I have no idea. It seems like a trend that is well-established and is bound to continue as long as it bears fruit. Does some segment of the voting public want candidates that are no more educated and skilled than themselves? I have a hard time understanding why, because I would love to have candidates that are so smart and skilled that I would love to have a chance to vote for them. A candidate that has a hard time elucidating policy issues or has to resort to jeans-and-flannel-shirt photo-ops with "oh-shucks" ads has no business running for high office.

I've often wondered if conservatives have a high need for closure. The world is very complicated, and it has a great deal of uncertainty. But the conservative message offers a very simplistic view of the world. So the message that it's all Satan's fault may provide closure to people afraid of the continuously changing world.

 

[ThomasT]

Why do you think anti-intellectualism plays to the base of the republican party?

I sense the same thing (ie., that the base of the Republican party is essentialy anti-intellectual) from my experience. Maybe it's not generally the case. I don't know.

 

[WhoWee]

Attributed to Santorum from ewu.edu


Now interestingly - http://www.cityofboston.gov/freedomtrail/firstpublic.asp
http://www.thefreedomtrail.org/visitor/boston-latin.html

http://www.educationbug.org/a/history-of-public-schools.html

http://www.ushistory.org/philadelphia/philadelphiafirsts.html

Santorum has quite an imagination!

Santorum took a few minutes to explain his recent comments.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/u...iticizes-education-system-and-obama.html?_r=1

"At one appearance here, he said the idea of schools run by the federal government or by state governments was “anachronistic.” Mr. Santorum did not say public schools were a bad idea, and he said that there was a role for government help in education.

But it was the latest in a series of comments by the former Pennsylvania senator — who is tied in polls in the critical Ohio and Michigan primary contests — suggesting that he takes a dim view of public schooling. He and his wife home-schooled their children.

For the first 150 years, most presidents home-schooled their children at the White House, he said. “Where did they come up that public education and bigger education bureaucracies was the rule in America? Parents educated their children, because it’s their responsibility to educate their children.”

“Yes the government can help,” Mr. Santorum added. “But the idea that the federal government should be running schools, frankly much less that the state government should be running schools, is anachronistic. It goes back to the time of industrialization of America when people came off the farms where they did home-school or have the little neighborhood school, and into these big factories, so we built equal factories called public schools. And while those factories as we all know in Ohio and Pennsylvania have fundamentally changed, the factory school has not.”

Historically, state and local governments have been responsible for public schooling. According to the Department of Education, the federal government contributes almost 11 percent of the cost of elementary and secondary education, financing intended to compel districts to enforce standards to help disadvantaged children and ensure students with disabilities receive equal education. This year, Republican candidates have called for a cutback in this formula, which has had bipartisan support for decades, saying they would give block grants to states and local districts while repealing federal requirements. "

 

[WhoWee]

It seems that anti-intellectualism plays well to the Republican base. He's the man to beat right now.

I'm a bit confused about Santorum's supposed "anti-intellectualism" and it's appeal to the base of the Republican Party. Can you please define this base further and explain how wanting to keep the Federal Government out of the local school system (Santorum's position) is "anti-intellectualism"?

 

[SixNein]

I'm a bit confused about Santorum's supposed "anti-intellectualism" and it's appeal to the base of the Republican Party. Can you please define this base further and explain how wanting to keep the Federal Government out of the local school system (Santorum's position) is "anti-intellectualism"?

Santorum made an argument that Academia is under the influence of Satanism, and it was responsible for destroying society.

I don't know how much more anti-intellectual you can get then that.

 

[WhoWee]

Santorum made an argument that Academia is under the influence of Satanism, and it was responsible for destroying society.

I don't know how much more anti-intellectual you can get then that.

I'd like to hear from the person that made the comment.

However, why don't we stick to his exact quote - from Gokul's post - Santorum making some type of philosophical argument (I'll assume related to teaching evolution?).

"He was successful. He attacks all of us and he attacks all of our institutions. The place where he was, in my mind, the most successful and first successful was in academia. He understood pride of smart people. He attacked them at their weakest, that they were, in fact, smarter than everybody else and could come up with something new and different. Pursue new truths, deny the existence of truth, play with it because they're smart. And so academia, a long time ago, fell."

Perhaps it would be intellectually honest to keep his comments in context - who was he speaking to, what was the format/setting, what was the topic of discussion - rather than jump to a conclusion?

 

[Office_Shredder]

http://www.impeachobamacampaign.com/author/newseditor/

OK I admit that the website itself is clearly biased but it has santorum's exact quote (including in a video). He never mentions evolution, and immediately after the quote you posted says (emphasis mine)

And you say “what could be the impact of academia falling?” Well, I would have the argument that the other structures that I’m going to talk about here had root of their destruction because of academia. Because what academia does is educate the elites in our society, educates the leaders in our society, particularly at the college level. And they were the first to fall.
And so what we saw this domino effect, once the colleges fell and those who were being education in our institutions, the next was the church

He's not just talking about arguing about evolution, he's talking about how the arrogance of academics was the fatal flaw that is destroying the very ethos of America

 

[BobG]

I've often wondered if conservatives have a high need for closure. The world is very complicated, and it has a great deal of uncertainty. But the conservative message offers a very simplistic view of the world. So the message that it's all Satan's fault may provide closure to people afraid of the continuously changing world.

It would be more accurate to say a segment of the conservative population have a high need for closure - specifically religious conservatives. The Protestant movement was, among other things, a product of the printing press that made Bibles common enough that a person could read and interpret for themselves what the Bible meant (as opposed to the Catholic religion, which is much more hierarchial, relying on interpretations made by the church leadership). Printed words that can't change are much more static than interpretations which can change over time as new leaders take control.

There's another, larger segment of the population as a whole that feels a little uncomfortable with the idea of 'truths' constantly changing over time as more is learned (granted, the 'truths' are really just the current state of understanding).

You could say the same thing about opponents of the death penalty (usually liberals) as you do about conservatives, since one of the arguments about the death penalty is that people are convicted beyond the shadow of a doubt with scientific evidence, only to have the science disproven and/or changed.

That really has more to do with the imperfect relationship between science and the legal system. In the legal system, proven scientific evidence really means the science was admitted in at least one court case; not that the science was really sound or that the evidence properly applied the science (Compositional analysis of bullet lead, http://www.innocenceproject.org/docs/Willingham_Hurst_Report.pdf ). As more research is done, the science behind a lot of forensic evidence changes and there's no guarantee investigation procedures change in a timely manner to accommodate changes, some forensic evidence is admitted with the limitations in the current state of the science ignored, and some "science" admitted in court is simple crack-pottery that at least one lawyer managed to get admitted.

You could also say the same thing about the abortion debate - in fact both sides choose arbitrary dividing lines simply because it's too hard to define any kind of defining dividing line between life and human consciousness based on current science. In fact, when change is gradual, as in a developing embryo, any dividing line winds up being kind of arbitrary when the differences on either side of the line are so small. (In my personal opinion, you could establish a dividing line that's safely before the development of human consciousness without taking it to the point of abolishing birth control or early term abortions, but that's just me.)

Whenever you make the jump from pure research to applied science in almost any area affecting personal lives, the uncertainty leaves many people either wishing for simpler answers or proclaiming no definitive answer is ever possible - not just conservatives.

 

[mheslep]

Santorum made an argument that Academia is under the influence of Satanism, and it was responsible for destroying society.

I don't know how much more anti-intellectual you can get then that.

Academia is far from the beginning and end of intellectualism.