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Santorum Writings Voice Strikingly Consistent Views
![]() Tony Cenicola/The New York Times
Rick Santorum at a rally in Peoria, Ill., on Monday.
By JEREMY W. PETERSPublished: March 19, 2012 [url=]
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He objected to Mitt Romney’s insistence that the tenets of Mormonism are not in conflict with traditional Christianity. He said there was good reason to doubt the theory of evolution and argued that intelligent design should be taught in schools. And when critics questioned Rick Santorum on even the most innocuous matters, like his support for stronger federal oversight of pet stores, he fired back.
Rick Santorum: ColumnistOver the past decade, Rick Santorum has penned articles and columns in various publications, even serving as a guest columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Following is a selection of some of Mr. Santorum's columns. Mr. Santorum's Columnist Page on Philly.com
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Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesRick Santorum at a "Rally for Rick" campaign event in Moline, Illinois on Monday.
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Richard Perry/The New York TimesRick Santorum, center, at a campaign event with Mitt Romney in 2008. After his time in the Senate, Mr. Santorum served as a guest columnist for The Phildelphia Inquirer.
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Over the last decade, Mr. Santorum has been a prolific writer of op-ed articles, letters to the editor and guest columns in some of the country’s largest and most influential newspapers. All the while he displayed many of the traits that define him as a presidential candidate today: a deep and unwavering Catholic faith, a suspicion of secularism and a conviction that the country was on a path toward cultural ruin. A review of his columns and letters going back 10 years reveals a striking consistency in his conservative political views and spiritual guiding principles. He could be harsh, as when he mocked President Obama’s mantra of hope and change as “pathetically counterfeit.” He could throw out scientific terms whenever topics like genetics were involved. “Scientists who are pushing for embryonic stem-cell research are seeking pluripotent stem cells.” And there was even a brief turn as a film critic. “Any movie titled ‘Knocked Up’ isn’t going to win any awards for decorum, and this one doesn’t disappoint.” He wrote in national newspapers like USA Today, Washington-centric publications like The Hill and Roll Call, religious ones like Catholic Online, and metropolitan dailies in Pennsylvania like The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and The Philadelphia Inquirer, which paid him as a columnist for more than two years after he was voted out of office in 2006. The column had the cheeky title “ The Elephant in the Room.” His writings were often sprinkled with Biblical and religious references. On global warming, he said, “Climate change’s Pharisees reassure us that the global-warming science is still settled.” On the reaction in Congress to his amendment on teaching evolution in schools, he wrote, “The High Priests of Darwinism went berserk.” In a few cases, Mr. Santorum’s words foreshadow some of his more provocative comments on the campaign trail this year, as when he said that the president was a snob for advocating that all Americans have access to some form of college education. Mr. Santorum displayed hostility toward academia in 2002 when he wrote a column for the Web site Catholic Online that linked the pedophilia scandal in the Catholic Church with an overall cultural corrosion. American seminaries, he wrote, “demonstrate the same brand of cultural liberalism plaguing our secular universities.” In one column in 2009 in The Inquirer he outlined his objections to requiring that Catholic institutions cover birth control as part of their health insurance plans. “The left’s continuing hostility to Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular is on gaudy display today,” he wrote — a comment that is nearly verbatim to what he says today. He has long expressed his concern that American colleges and universities have been corrupted by liberal faculties. Even Catholic institutions were not immune, he said in his Inquirer column in 2008. “Catholic higher education has not only failed to counter the forces of cultural decay across America, but has added to the rot as well,” he wrote. As evidence, he cited a recent production of “The Vagina Monologues” at the University of Notre Dame. He occasionally weighed in on issues of primary and secondary education as well, arguing as he did in The Washington Times in 2002 that intelligent design should be taught as an alternative theory to evolution. To not do so, he said, would deny students “a first-rate science education.” He could be highly protective of Christian teachings, as he was in 2007 when he wrote about Mitt Romney’s religion as a divisive issue in the election. At the time, Mr. Romney had just given a speech in which he sought to assuage suspicions about his Mormon faith. Mr. Santorum dedicated an entire column to responding to the speech. “He tried to address the questions by discussing Jesus, suggesting that the specific theological tenets of Mormonism are not in any important respect different from those of traditional Christianity,” Mr. Santorum wrote. “I disagree.” In the column, which has not received much attention since it was written, Mr. Santorum says people should have an open mind about Mr. Romney’s faith. But he also says it is perfectly reasonable to make judgments about the former Massachusetts governor based on his religious beliefs. “His supporters say it is akin to rejecting a Barack Obama because he is black,” Mr. Santorum wrote. “But Obama was born black; Romney is a Mormon because he accepts the beliefs of the Mormon faith. This permits us, therefore, to make inferences about his judgment and character, good or bad.” He often wrote passionately about one of his signature issues, abortion, and advocated greater protection for the unborn. In an article for Roll Call in 2004, he used the case of Laci Peterson, the California woman who was murdered by her husband a couple of months before she was set to give birth, to argue for passage of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. When he wrote about pop culture, he was usually bemoaning its amorality. But in one Inquirer column in 2008, he praised movies like “Juno” and “Knocked Up” for their sympathetic portrayals of mothers who were faced with unwanted pregnancies and did not get abortions. Though he was receptive to the overall messages in those films, he was squeamish about their content. “Juno,” he wrote, was “pretty edgy.” And he complained that “Knocked Up” was full of “X-rated language, sex jokes and drug abuse.” (Some of the characters in the film smoked marijuana.) Same-sex marriage was a topic he opined on regularly, usually in a critique about the family unit being in a state of decay. He seemed particularly troubled by a 2003 Supreme Court ruling, Lawrence v. Texas, that struck down a state law that criminalized gay sexual conduct. Warning in USA Today at the time that the decision opened the door for unions between gay and lesbian couples, he wrote, “The last thing we should do is destroy the special legal status of marriage.” In his Inquirer column, Mr. Santorum once raised the alarm about a fairy tale he said was introduced in Massachusetts public schools that featured two princes who marry. “One superintendent said the district was ‘committed to teaching children about the world they live in,’ ” he wrote. “Interesting.” When he felt his views had been mischaracterized in an editorial or a letter to the editor, he was known to fire off letters of his own. He did so to The Post-Gazette frequently. One from 2005 began: “Recently, letter writer Mary Lee Snyder of Mount Lebanon criticized me for my work on the Pet Animal Welfare Statute.” When he wrote for The Inquirer, he was often very hard on John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee at the time, using a line of attack that will sound familiar today. “We see a presumptive Republican nominee who has too often joined the very people who seek to destroy and replace what we fight to conserve and improve,” he wrote in The Inquirer. Those words echo what he now says about Mr. Romney.
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发表于 2012-3-11 23:13:03
