Bill Press writes a great column today on Rick's book and how it shows off exactly the kind of "family values" that Rick believes in. Press' piece is appropriately titled "Family values, Santorum-style."
Here's a little taste for you:
Santorum first laments that the rest of the country is not like the U.S. Senate, with only one black member. America started falling apart, according to Santorum's myopic world view, when "sometime in the 1980s, universities began to champion the importance of 'diversity' as a central education value." Shocking! How dare universities reflect the general population?
And, besides, who needs a college education, anyway? Certainly, not single women trying to better themselves. Argues Santorum: "The notion that college education is a cost-effective way to help poor, low-skill, unmarried mothers with high school diplomas ... move up the economic ladder is just wrong." Santorum doesn't suggest what a better route out of poverty might be. Flipping burgers? Taking in laundry? Selling their bodies?
If he has little room for universities, Santorum has less room for public schools. The ideal form of education, he insists, is home schooling. Otherwise, kids risk being exposed to – God forbid! – kids who are different. "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 laments. He continues: "It's amazing that so many kids turn out to be fairly normal, considering the weird socialization they get in public schools." The truth, in fact, is just the opposite: Imagine how abnormal and socially unfit most kids would turn out if they didn't go to public school!
But Santorum reserves his most outrageous comments for working moms. According to the second-most powerful man in the Senate, most mothers working outside the home do so not because they have to, but because they want to. If only they were honest, Santorum argues, parents with young children "might confess that both of them really don't need to ... work as much as they do. And for some parents, the purported need to provide things for their children simply provides a convenient rationalization for pursuing a gratifying career outside the home." In other words, women who say they're working to help feed their kids are lying. They're really saving up for the big Paris vacation.
Spoken like a man totally divorced from reality. And guess what? As a United States senator – with two homes, car and driver, annual salary of $165,200 and full benefits and pension – he is divorced from reality!
Santorum has no idea what it's like for most families where both parents work because they have to and, even then, can't pay their bills at the end of the month. But what do you expect from a man who once defended his opposition to childcare tax credits with the observation: "Making people struggle a little bit is not necessarily the worst thing."
So, women of America, at last you know what the Republican Party has in store for you. Take it from Rick Santorum: no college education, no job, no career, no dignity, no self-worth. Stay home, change diapers, cook meals, scrub the floor, wash and iron your husband's boxer shorts. And, if you have any time left, watch Fox News. You may call it demeaning. He calls it "family values."
