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The Spectacle Blog
Former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum presidential bid, which already looked like a steep climb, just got steeper.
After referring to President Obama’s infamous line that determining human life was “above (his) pay grade,” Santorum said:
“The question is, and this is what Barack Obama didn’t want to answer — is that human life a person under the constitution?” and Barack Obama says no. Well if that human life is not a person then I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say ‘now we are going to decide who are people and who are not people.”
If we were to give Santorum the benefit of the doubt, he could have been referencing the fact that blacks were counted as three-fifths persons in the Constitution and thus arguing that black people should be especially reticent of government attempts to deny the status of personhood to other human beings. But you have to be tone deaf to not realize how such a remark is going to play out in the modern political environment, especially when you’re combining such volatile issues as race and abortion.
Santorum is admired by supporters for his unapologetic stances on social issues. The problem is, he manages to discuss those issues in a way that alienates people who disagree with him rather than winning converts. Which is one thing if he wants to be a commentator, but a completely different story if he still wants a political career. He should be able to make an argument against Obama’s position on abortion without bringing race into it. Such a statement does not add to, but only distracts from, any argument.
Losing a Senate race by 18 points isn’t usually the launching pad for a presidential run six years later, and this latest controversy isn’t likely to help whatever chances remained for a Santorum comeback.
Via CBN’s David Brody.
UPDATE:
Santorum responds to the criticism:
“For decades certain human beings were wrongly treated as property and denied liberty in America because they were not considered persons under the constitution. Today other human beings, the unborn of all races, are also wrongly treated as property and denied the right to life for the same reason; because they are not considered persons under the constitution. I am disappointed that President Obama, who rightfully fights for civil rights, refuses to recognize the civil rights of the unborn in this country.”
Via Life News.
View all comments (20) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by Philip Klein
http://spectator.org/blog/2011/01/20/santorum-on-abortion-and-obama
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9th ID| 1.20.11 @ 12:01PM
Santorum - don't listen to the PC social liberals like Klein - we gotten nowhere with their ilk. Never be afraid to speak the truth, especially when it comes to those who promote or sit idly by while our nation murders the unborn...
9th ID| 1.20.11 @ 12:07PM
"My friend, the late Adrian Rogers, said it best: " It is not love and it is not friendship if we fail to declare the whole counsel of God. It is better to be hated for telling the truth than to be loved for telling a lie... It is better to stand alone with the truth than to be wrong with a multitude."" via frc.org
Too Many Tims| 1.20.11 @ 12:18PM
Santorum is absolutely right. Anyone who knows the history of the United States knows that the abortion right was aimed at blacks specifically.
Down playing this may seem politically savy to you Mr Klein but has it occurred to you that Santorum puts principle ahead of expediency?
9th ID| 1.20.11 @ 12:29PM
Klein should take a day off and read up on the history of Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood...
David W| 1.20.11 @ 12:30PM
Not sure I support Rick (haven't thought about it). But there are ways he can hit Obama even using the race card that should get him votes.
The comment posted above mentions how disproportionately high the percentage of abortions given to black women is compared to all others. I read that many years ago one of the current black race-baiters wrote a letter that equated abortion to racism (though that he now depends upon the democratic party for support he definitely has a different opinion of that). How could Obama support a program that ensures many black children never see the light of day? Of course we know how he can, but Rick and any other candidate could use that against him.
matthew s harrison| 1.20.11 @ 12:39PM
Phil-
Really? Seriously?
Come on brother Klein-you purport to be on the side of conservatives-and you know EXACTLY what Santorum was speaking of. So do the morons on the other side.
To have a black man arbitrarily decide, or refuse to decide(which he was claiming to do with the pay grade statement, though we know it was the former he was doing) what is or isn't a human being is the irony of all ironies.
Obama is a eugenicist, just like all of his cronies-and just as Hillary Clinton proclaimed early this week when she stated that the foreign policy of the US going forward was going to be centered around "population control".
May I suggest that here on the Spectator, the discussion is maintained clearly, concisely, and without trying to derive nuance(as the dems like to term it, where it is actually subterfuge)!?
Seriously, everyone knows exactly what Santorum meant-especially you. And to place some sort of stigma on him (seemingly on behalf of the nutcase left who will no doubt cease on this point, and will no doubt quote you-a supposed conservative writer) is helping them decimate one of our best chances at true conservatism returning to the US.
Come on-who's side are you on Phil?
I am dismayed by this-and my not spend so much time here reading Spectator, if this is the kind of death from within we can expect from this usual beacon of conservatism!
9th ID| 1.20.11 @ 1:20PM
I recently gave up on social liberals like Ed Morissey & Andrew Breitbart, and refuse to sponser their sites by reading their posts anymore...
W| 1.20.11 @ 1:31PM
Mr. Klein, are you now one of those "conservative" pundits that scrutinize the words of conservatives and then offer the worst interpretation? like Rove with O'Donnell, or the legion of "conservatives" with Palin?
You know what Santorum meant, that people who have been enslaved and discriminated against, and not regarded as fully human, would be more sympathetic to others who are not regarded as "fully human."
the three-fifths rule had to do with restrcting the congressional house members of the Southern slave states by not counting the slaves fully in the population of the state to determine the number of house representatives.
Disappointed in your article.
Neutered Gingrich| 1.20.11 @ 1:50PM
Rick Santorum really needs to be more careful and watch his words.
Chris "Extra" Crispy, R-NJ| 1.20.11 @ 1:52PM
Rick Santorum needs to wing it, more. this all sounds very scripted.
Charles Crowdhammer| 1.20.11 @ 1:53PM
Why did Santorum have to say anything? I, er we, had already won the debate. He should stop injecting himself into everything.
Michael DePietro| 1.20.11 @ 3:20PM
I am baffled as to what exactly was wrong with Sen. Santorum's comments. The obvious meaning is at one time, in the United States some human beings, specifically African Americans were denied basic rights and treated as things, and their humanity was denied by the legal system. ( ie the Supreme Courts Dred Scot decision and the cultural acceptance of slavery with its historic legacy of racial discrimination.) Today We have an identical situation in that a group of human beings ( preborn humans in utero) have their humanity denied as a consequence in part of Supreme Court decisions and the resultant cultural fall out. (Roe v Wade and its progeny). While all of us should be aware that the arguement that some humans are not really "people" and thus can can be treated as disposable by the more powerful, inherently leads to great injustice, it is particularly sad that President Obama does not recognize it, because nearly identical arguments were used to harm other African Americans in a very similar manner. In fact today with places like NY seeing 41% of African American pregnancies end in abortion one could easily argue that the current social acceptance of abortion on demand is something that can be seen as acceptable by only the worst racist. There was a time that African American leaders recognized that this amounted to a kind of genocide. Among them, at one time Jesse Jackson himself recognized this before his political ambitions forced him to embrace the prochoice orthodoxy of the left. A common fate among the Democrats ( see http://groups.csail.mit.edu/ma.....ckson.html)
Given this disproportionate murder of preborn black children one wonders how someone could not inject race into it. In fact the culture of death as manifested in its abortion practice is in fact as racist as anything that crawled out of the Jim Crow south. All we need is to see Ruth Bader Ginsbergs statements that Roe V Wade was all about ... well lets let her speak for herself. She is quoted in a NY times interview as saying the following " Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. " I will leave it to the reader as an exercise to speculate as to what "populations" troubled her.
In any case I think the discomfort with Santorum's remarks is more because he is attacking abortion with such vigor. At the end of the day what some conservatives are uncomfortable with is the prolife position, we see this again and again in specific criticisms of social conservatives ( Palin, Huckabee, Santorum..) and o nsocial conservatives in general)
Michael Bender| 1.20.11 @ 4:55PM
Sometime shortly after the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, I told a colleague how troubled I was morally over the legalization of abortion; he tried to consul me with the practical: that at that time every black child born cost the taxpayers $25,000.00. That was good enough for him and I suspect that it’s good enough for must abortion supporters today.
Tina B| 1.20.11 @ 6:09PM
When I was a young mom in SoCalifornia in the early 70s, I was asked by a friend (not a close friend) to give her a ride to get an abortion.
I, too, had been pregnant and unmarried at 17 and a freshman at UC Santa Barbara. I remember praying, and then planning to "run away" to MD, which (I read in an almanac) had a legal age of 16. I thought, I'll work as a waitress and the baby and I will make a life together just fine. I knew my parents would be heartbroken, two little Europeans who had worked much of their lives to put me in Catholic School. it would crush them. I planned and prayed some more.
After carrying a portable stereo down some stairs to be repaired in Isla Vista and walking for blocks, I began to miscarry. I had never thought a thing about it. I was as only child, no experience with pregnancy. My roommates identified my problem and a friend just happened to have a car on campus. It was 1966 and kids didn't have cars much then. She drove me, I was hospitaled and daddy never found out I was pregnant. Thank God.
I told Robin I couldn't giver her a ride to get her an abortion. I spoke to her a bit about God and my previous pragnancy but to no avail. The baby was an accident, and inconvenient. All gone. To this day I am relieved I didn't driver her. I wish I could have helped her. I wasn't fully committed to Christ myself then and wasn't much good to anyone else.
After a second unplanned pregnancy, yes I was very foolish in my youth, I gave a wonderful little boy up to an adoptive family. We all met for the first time 5 years ago, and it was wonderful. I have such confidence that adoption, not abortion can be the answer. With God I went theough it and it was my finest hour.
To Rick Satorum and all of you here at AmSpec who are writing so eloquently and supportively for the preborn, thank you, thank you, thank you, from the bottom of my heart
Nick| 1.21.11 @ 6:43PM
Tina B,
Thank you, so much, for sharing.
Frisbee| 1.25.11 @ 9:47PM
Tina B: thank you.
C. Greathouse| 1.21.11 @ 6:57AM
The child in the womb is as much a life as you or i.With all the documentation ,watching from conception to birth,all points to the truth that while forming ,everyday is growing and developing as the child pre-birth.The facts are right there ; they are living ,have brainwave activity at 8wks,are forming all that is of human characteristics. One thing to remember about our now President, just a few days after he was sworn in, he signed the "Freedom of Choice Act" which makes every type of abortion legal,from the Day-After pill to a pill that might take over a week to kill , and can and does cause physical damage to the mother as it desolves the baby. Obama, since being a Rep,a Sen, teacher at aChicago college, and now Pres, has held the belief that all abortions should be legal , from conception to the point of partial-birth to that if the baby is aborted and is alive , by law, they are to set the baby aside to die! This is Obamas Care. And at Vanderbilt University , a nurseing student must assist in abortions to be able to graduate. Who knows what other schools are doing? Gov. law to start teaching sex-ed', in whatever form, and that all lifestyles are good and proper,and needs to be accepted or you will face Federal laws and you will be arrested. If a pregnant Mom is in a car accident or assaulted and the baby is killed, the law states that they will be charged with murder. Seen as a living ,viable humanbeing, it's protected and is real in the eyes of the law. Please , stop the slaughter of the most innocent of us, the womb being the most dangerous place in the World!!
jolizoom| 1.21.11 @ 9:59PM
Within 5 days of his inauguration, he had also repealed the Mexico City Policy, allowing US Taxpayer money to be used to provide abortions in 3rd world countries.
JPM| 1.21.11 @ 9:04AM
The substance of what Santorum said is utterly unobjectionable. Is it now shocking to make any mention of race? Maybe Eric Holder was right and we are a nation of cowards. But what about the purely tactical point that Santorum showed himself to be "tone deaf" and hurt himself politically?
We keep seeing this argument in reference to Sarah Palin. Any forceful use of the language in the conservative cause is supposed to be politically damaging. No evidence is ever put forward for this proposition, it's just asserted as Klein asserts it here. You can't say "blood libel," or "death panels," or suggest that a black man should be particularly aware of the error that Roe v. Wade perpetrated. Those things just aren't done. Ladies will faint; dogs will cower under tables; right thinking voters will turn away in droves.
This is all nonsense analogous to the absurd leftist argument that everything we do to fight our foreign enemies will only make them stronger. When you find yourself in a barroom brawl you don't arbitrarily decide that you won't hit anyone with a bottle, a mug or a chair, not if you hope to get out alive. In a rhetorical contest you don't arbitrarily put your strongest points and your most forceful language out of bounds. You need to be truthful and you need to be fair, but you can't pull punches just because the other side squeals when you land a good one.
Santorum in particular can't afford to play safe and restrict himself to bland rhetoric. He needs to be noticed. He just got noticed. The idea that this was a tactical mistake is just silly.
Frisbee| 1.25.11 @ 9:51PM
Even if it was a boo boo, so what? He is a good man, with his heart in the right place. I loved it when he discussed stare decisis during Roberts' confirmation hearing, that precedent is not absolute and can be overturned (like Dred Scott was). We need more men like Santorum in office, and fewer speechers who only represent Gosnell-Planned Parenthood.