{"id":3947,"date":"2005-04-12T09:29:35","date_gmt":"2005-04-12T13:29:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/3947.html"},"modified":"2005-04-12T09:29:35","modified_gmt":"2005-04-12T13:29:35","slug":"out-of-respect-santorum-should-give-the-money-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/out-of-respect-santorum-should-give-the-money-back\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Out of respect,’ Santorum should give the money back"},"content":{"rendered":"

One really has to wonder what the guy was thinking. It seemed bad enough that Rick “Man on Dog<\/a>” Santorum was exploiting Terri Schiavo’s family last month, traveling to Florida, visiting her hospice, and appearing with her parents — all the while scoring points with religious conservatives, whom Santorum wants to embrace in advance of 2006 (and 2008).<\/p>\n

The Pennsylvania senator was going to hold a forum on Social Security while in Florida, but “out of respect” for the Schiavo tragedy, Santorum decided it would be inappropriate to “do a big policy event.” But as Capitol Buzz<\/a> and Political Wire<\/a> noted, Santorum saw nothing wrong with some lucrative fundraising<\/a> during the same trip.<\/p>\n

Santorum told MSNBC-TV, according to the March 30 “Hardball” transcript, he was in Florida because, “I had other plans to – and other meetings.” (Schiavo died March 31.) What he didn’t say was the plans and “meetings” were fund-raisers for his ’06 re-election effort.<\/p>\n

There was a luncheon in Orlando and a dinner in Miami on March 29 with Florida Sen. Mel Martinez, a luncheon in Tampa March 30 hosted by Outback Steakhouse, which is headquartered there, and a dinner that night in Palm Beach hosted by execs from Revlon.<\/p>\n

The trip was made on a Wal-Mart jet paid for by Santorum’s campaign fund.<\/p>\n

Total take, according to Santorum finance director Rob Bickhart, was about $250,000 (en route to an April 15 FEC filing expected to show the senator with close to $3 million already).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Classy. Exploit a family’s tragedy for political gain, and as long you’re there, pick up some cash for the next election. Talking about Social Security would be “inappropriate” and possibly “disrespectful,” but adding a quarter-million to the campaign coffer is entirely polite and considerate.<\/p>\n

The Philadelphia News’ John Baer asked, “Doesn’t the culture of life outweigh the culture of cash?” The answer according to Santorum, apparently, is no.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One really has to wonder what the guy was thinking. It seemed bad enough that Rick “Man on Dog” Santorum was exploiting Terri Schiavo’s family last month, traveling to Florida, visiting her hospice, and appearing with her parents — all the while scoring points with religious conservatives, whom Santorum wants to embrace in advance of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3947\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}