PA people: Don't say I don't love you - Santorum story WOW!

[TayTay]

OMG - Read this. And, ah, Merry Christmas, or Hapy Hannukah, or I just rmemebered your Birthday. WOW! Read about Santorum's wife.

http://citypaper.net/articles/current/cover.shtml
The Path of the Righteous Man
How Rick Santorum became the nation's evangelical poster boy.

by Mike Newall


Rick Santorum is taking a piss. He'd been tapping his foot and fidgeting with his suit jacket throughout the awards ceremony, and after draping the last medal around the last neck, he waved to the crowd and quickly disappeared offstage, power-walking the long hallway and curving flight of stairs leading to the men's room here in the lobby of the National Constitution Center. A trio of the senator's aides and I struggled to keep up. Now we putter outside the lavatory, waiting.

I'd been promised some time with the senator once this ceremony honoring local students' public service achievements had ended. But things have changed. Santorum has been summoned back to Washington for an unexpected Senate vote. There is a train to catch. I'm to ask my questions on the eight-minute ride to 30th Street Station.

Earlier this summer, the senator was all over the airwaves defending his new book, It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good, a 449-page tome in which he methodically lays out his provocative views on gay marriage, abortion, parenting and the role of religion in public life. Released on the eve of his re-election effort against Democrat Bob Casey, the book's timing confounded pundits. A November win would likely land Santorum the second-ranking leadership position in the U.S. Senate and help pave the way for a possible future run at the White House. But polls already had Santorum trailing Casey by 11 points, and here he was expounding on the very beliefs that were hurting him in the first place.


old school: A longtime friend says Santorum "wouldn't be the guy dating the senior queen, but he was probably friends with her."
: courtesy of Butler county eagle

What the heck was he thinking?

I went out and bought his book. There are some classic Santorum moments. Like on page 138: "The notion that college education is a cost-effective way to help poor, low-skill, unmarried mothers with high school diplomas or GEDs move up the economic ladder is just wrong." Or page 386: "It's amazing that so many kids turn out to be fairly normal, considering the weird socialization they get in public schools." At one point, he accuses feminists of hating women.

[whometense]

1. That is a real jaw-dropper.

Wow. Little Ricky's wife was living in sin with a guy in his 60's when they met.

When she met Rick, Karen was living with Tom Allen, an OBGYN who in the early-1970s cofounded Pittsburgh's first abortion clinic. It was a somewhat unusual pairing. Allen was the doctor who delivered Karen. She began living with him while an undergraduate nursing student at Pittsburgh's Duquesne University. She was in her early 20s, he was in his 60s.

"When she moved out to go be with Rick, she told me I'd like him, that he was pro-choice and a humanist," said Allen, an elderly but vibrant man, during a brief conversation on the porch of his Pittsburgh row home. "But I don't think there's a humanist bone in that man's body."

She should have stuck with the other guy.

[karynnj]

4. Maybe she was born again

As a nurse, living with a man who co-founded an abortion clinic, I would assume she was pro-choice and probably performed abortions. Someone seems to be a bit of a hypocrit.

[sandnsea]

2. Chief of Psychology/ Chief of Nursing

His parents. Yet we get this from a friend:

"This is a middle- to lower-class town," says Goettler. "If anything, Rick was probably economically a little below the middle. They were good people, a well-principled, blue-collar family."

Either Goettler never knew Santorum or Santorum never knew how well off he was economically. Kind of like O'Reilly, Matthews too. Do these people really not know how good they had it compared to true blue collar families?

On to the rest of the article...

[whometense]

3. His wife

comes off as pretty scary.

Here at the Carlisle courthouse, the College Republican rally draws to a close. The Santorum campaign is filming the event for a campaign commercial to be aired sometime next spring as the election heats up. Little 4-year-old Patrick becomes overwhelmed by the crowd and the cameras and begins to cry. Santorum takes his son in his arms and seeks out a quiet spot on the edge of the crowd, just a few feet from where I'm standing.

"You did wonderful," he says, hugging and comforting the child. "You're such a brave boy."

The cameramen pick up on the touching moment and rush over to film it. Karen follows and notices that Patrick's tear-streaked face is turned away from the camera. Karen tells her husband to turn around so their son can be filmed.

The senator obliges.