Rick Santorum, still confused

August 11, 2005

Rick “Man on Dog” Santorum is still on his book tour, touting his words of wisdom for audiences nationwide. Yesterday, Santorum was in Delaware speaking to the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, which, not incidentally, published his book.

Based on the AP account, it was the usual pitch from Santorum, but one part stood out for me.

“There’s no more ‘Father Knows Best’ on television,” he said. “It is a hostile world for the traditional values of America. That means we need parents to be home more, when in fact what’s happening is that parents are home less and the multimedia world that we live in is raising our children.

“I make the argument, I got hammered for this, that parents should actually consider spending less time at work and more time with their families,” Santorum said. “… I’ll take the hit for saying parents need to parent.”

Now, anyone who’s followed this at all knows that the notion on which Santorum was “hammered” was the idea that parents should give up on the idea of being a two-income family. Here’s a portion from the book that has raised eyebrows:

“In far too many families with young children, both parents are working, when, if they really took an honest look at the budget, they might confess that both of them really don’t need to, or at least may not 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.” (It Takes a Family, page 94)

In Santorum’s worldview, criticism of this means criticism of the idea that parents should spend less time at work. One has to wonder if even he believes such transparent nonsense.

I’ll spell this out slowly, in case Santorum checks in on the site: the criticism was about the bizarre idea that working families have so much money that one of them can give up their job altogether. Santorum got slammed for being wildly out of touch and for promoting policies in government that make it harder for working families to get by while millionaires get more tax cuts.

I do, however, have a question: is Santorum smart enough to know the basis for the criticism and mischaracterize it, or is Santorum delusional enough to believe he’s under attack for wanting parents to spend more time parenting? I honestly don’t know. He’s pretty out there, but is here this out there?

I’ll spell this out slowly, in case Santorum checks in on the site: the criticism was about the bizarre idea that working families have so much money that one of them can give up their job altogether.

Wait. Not everybody makes a senator’s salary? Huh.

  • I also wonder if Santorum even recognizes the necessity of both parents working. In the la la world he lives in a single income may still provide a life where the mother stays at home but that is not necessarily the case with many families. My guess – since he doesn’t see the necessity of both parents working he doesn’t recognize the real criticism. So I think he is more delusional for that than wanting parents to parent more. Hope that made sense.

    It is hard to understand people who either live in their own reality or an alternate universe.

  • Santorum is definitely out of touch with Americans. Since the 70s, real family income has stayed stagnant, but that has depended on us as a country moving from a single-earner system to a two-earner system. As with most US senators (especially the Republican ones) who make many times more than the rest of us, he has no comprehension of the plight of most of middle America, or of how much harder it is to keep one parent at home to raise the kids. No one (except the business lobby that demands cheap labor, of course) is going to criticize him for saying what we all agree on, that parents should spend more time raising their children, that he thinks we’re sacrificing that for luxuries rather than needs, proves he has no idea how the “little people” live. I doubt he’d go so far as to criticize business for their role in encouraging this by making it harder and harder to raise a family with one breadwinner.

  • If we all could get not just tax breaks, but actual subsidies to… I don’t know… keep a parent home to home school the kids in a state where we don’t even live, then I guess a single income would be acceptable.

    In the real world there are mortgages, all kinds of taxes, healthcare costs, food, GAS for the car, heating OIL for winter, other utilities, insurance of various types, savings and investments if you are lucky enough to have anything left (which you better because the GOP is going to destroy social security by the time you need it). What else? Clothing, the college fund (the price of college is growing wildly more than wages or inflation), and dozens of other things that are not luxuries. You better hope nothing breaks. And this is to stay more or less running in place! Forget about what is involved for a person or family with less who is trying to move upward.

    Santorum is a tool.

  • yep, he’s that far gone and more, i heard him on dianne rheem yesterday, and he has that persecuted deer/christian/conservative mindset, beset on all sides by the rabid liberal media….these a-holes want to pretend they are not in power and holding the whip…. what a crock… there was some suck-up that called and complimented him on not having a ‘watered down conservative message’ in the book and wanted him to run in ’08……

  • I guess we can all get our local school boards to give us $$ to have our kids go to cyberschools

  • I wish I had taped this. It’s impossible to
    authenticate now, so you’ll have to take
    my word for it. Before I got terminally ill
    from hate radio, I was tuned in to Bill
    O’Reilly one morning, where he said,
    “Social Security is chump change. Nobody
    could live on that.” – Slightly paraphrased.

    These people are totally out of it. That
    he doesn’t even know that SS represents
    about a third of the average retiree’s
    income is appalling. And that millions
    of Americans are entirely dependent
    upon their SS benefits. “Chump change,”
    indeed.

  • All great points on how you have to have two wage earners to get by today in the real world but M on D doesn’t live in the real world and was making a broader plea, I think. He doesn’t really mean parents should spend more time with their children. He means MOTHERS should be at home with their children. Women shouldn’t work and we should all go back to that lovely time when Father knew best. Right wing, religious fanatics always think that women are working for their own, ugh, personal satisfaction and, of course, luxury items fit right in with that. I’d bet he’s not suggesting that perhaps he should take some time off from running for Dear Leader to spend with his children. No, “parents” is the politically correct, coded designation for working mothers… and the misguided fathers who enable them, of course.

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