The good part about Rick “Man on Dog” Santorum making the rounds to tout his new book is that it gives us so many new opportunities to hear his “unique” ideas. Last night, Santorum appeared on CNN’s NewsNight with Aaron Brown, who seemed anxious to pin the Pennsylvania senator down on a few points. C&L, as always, has some entertaining video, but even the transcript makes for amusing reading.
For example, Santorum said Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court case that said the state can’t regulate birth-control use among married couples, was wrongly decided.
Brown: Do you think there’s a right to privacy in the Constitution?
Santorum: No — well, not the right to privacy as created under Roe v. Wade and all…
Brown: Do you think there’s a right to privacy in the Constitution?
Santorum: I think there’s a right to unreasonable — to unreasonable search and seizure…
Brown: For example, if you’d been a Supreme Court judge in Griswold versus Connecticut, the famous birth control case came up, which centered around whether there was a right to privacy. Do you believe that was correctly decided?
Santorum: No, I don’t. I write about it in the book. I don’t.
Now, in fairness, Santorum went on to explain that Connecticut shouldn’t have passed the law regulating birth-control use among married couples in the first place. In the interview, Santorum was wearing his lawyer’s hat, arguing against the “penumbra.” I get that. But when it comes to playing by Republican rules, since when does fairness have anything to do with politics?
If Dems were to look at this the way Republicans would if the roles were reversed, we’d see that the third-ranking Republican in the Senate told a national television audience that a Supreme Court ruling that protects what married people do with contraceptives in their own bedroom was wrong. Maybe we could get his 54 GOP colleagues to indicate whether they agree with Santorum’s conclusion?
I didn’t see the interview live, but it seems as though there were plenty of other interesting exchanges as well. For example, Santorum said John Roberts shouldn’t have to answer questions about his thoughts on Roe v Wade because Ruth Bader Ginsburg didn’t.
Brown: You can’t know. I’ll talk a little about the book, a little about other things. I saw a poll the other day that said 60 percent of the country wanted to know how Judge Roberts felt about Roe v Wade. It’s a settled case. Do you think the country’s entitled to know whether he believes that that case was decided correctly?
Santorum: You know my feeling is, you have to look at the standard of what’s been applied in the past. And what judges in the past have been forced to answer is, you know, how they felt about, you know, sort of the black letter law, if you will. Not really looking at, how would you rule in cases…
Brown: I’m not asking how you’d rule. This is a settled case. Roe v Wade is a settled case, it is settled. Is this a fair question, do you agree that that case was settled correctly? Is that a fair question to ask him?
Santorum: Well, let me put it this way. That question was asked of Judge Ginsburg, it was asked of Judge Breyer and neither of them answered the question.
That might be mildly persuasive, if it were true. But it’s not — Ginsburg specifically told the Senate Judiciary Committee that “[a decision on abortion] is something central to a woman’s life, to her dignity. It’s a decision that she must make for herself. And when government controls that decision for her, she’s being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for her own choices.” If Santorum wants Roberts held to the same standard, then Roberts has plenty of explaining to do.
There was also this ridiculous exchange about Santorum holding the city of Boston partially responsible for the Roman Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandal.
Brown: OK. I don’t know if we have this. We can put it on the screen, but you said “when the culture is sick, every element becomes infected. While it is no excuse, the scandal” — referring to the priest abuse scandal — “it is no secret that Boston, the seat of academic, political, cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm.” First of all, wasn’t that a little over the top?
Santorum: Well, what’s over the top is taking a three-year-old article…
Brown: What’s the context?
Santorum: And the context was, I was writing about the priest scandal and condemning the priest scandal, condemning the church…
Brown: Well, of course you were condemning it. No one supports it.
Santorum: … and talking about concrete things we need to do to fix it. I was out there. No other United States senator…
Brown: Why so — why Boston?
Santorum: Because, again, context. What was going on in 2002 — not 2005, but in 2002 — that’s where the scandal was. It wasn’t anywhere else. We weren’t talking about it. In 2002, it was the epicenter. We didn’t have the report by the bishops conference. We didn’t have…
Brown: So now you wouldn’t say that?
Santorum: I wouldn’t — well, no, there’s a lot of other cities that were involved. But the point is that cultural liberalism and what I talked about is a contributing factor to how people view sexual activity. And I am not the one that says that. Robert Bennett, in the report that he issued on behalf of the bishops conference, called the Bennett report, said exactly my words, except the word Boston wasn’t in it.
Brown: OK. But you wouldn’t say that about Boston now. Is that right? Based on what we know about the scandal.
Santorum: I said it then, it was the…
Brown: Not then, now?
Santorum: … yeah, it was the epicenter, and there are many other cities that that would apply.
This guy’s really not well. Hearing him tell his side of things, it’s all right to blame Boston, as long as it happened three years ago; the sex scandal wasn’t an international crisis in 2002; and he won’t take back what he said about Beantown.
Amazing.