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ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, IL -- Rick Santorum accused President Barack Obama of not enforcing the country's obscenity laws and said Friday that as chief executive he would crack down on illegal pornography.
Santorum found himself answering pornography questions during a stop at an Italian restaurant here after the discovery of a statement posted in his campaign website in which he asserts that "America is suffering a pandemic of harm from pornography." Recent reporting has shed light on the letter in which the former Pennsylvania senator vowed to "vigorously enforce" all the country's obscenity laws, though he said the statement was posted three weeks ago.
"We actually respond to questions that we get into our campaign when they say 'What are you going to do about these issues?' And when we respond we post them up on our website. And the response is, ‘we'll enforce the law,’" said Santorum.
"I don’t know what the hubbub about that is," he said. "We have a president who is not enforcing the law, and we will."
The candidate best known for espousing family values argues on his website that pornography causes changes in the brain to both children and adults, and contributes to violence against women, prostitution and sex trafficking.
"The Obama administration has turned a blind eye to those who wish to preserve our culture from the scourge of pornography," he wrote.
Santorum's campaign has been sidetracked throughout the primary by eyebrow raising statements on social issues that many Republican voters feel pale in comparison to the importance of the economy. In Illinois, a state where polls show Santorum mounting a close challenge to Mitt Romney, he again found himself answering questions about a social issue that is unlikely to play a role in the 2012 election.
The other problem for the candidate running the most serious challenge to Romney is the fact that again he is not eligible for all the delegates up for grabs in Illinois during Tuesday's primary.
Santorum only filed for 44 of the 54 at stake. It is the same issue his campaign had in Ohio where they went into Super Tuesday knowing they could not win all the Buckeye State's delegates.
Santorum today said his ineligibility for a handful of delegates can be attributed to the grassroots, underdog nature of his campaign.
Months ago, when it was time to file to get on the ballot in many states, Santorum maintained, "We didn’t have a big campaign, a big superstructure, we didn’t have big offices in Boston," he said, a shot at Romney, whose campaign headquarters are in the Massachusetts capital. "We didn’t have millions of dollars to organize this, we had grassroots people."
The GOP hopeful has a tall task ahead of him in the Land of Lincoln, a state where he's being considerably outspent and he cannot rely on a strongly conservative base of voters like the ones who put him over the top in Mississippi and Alabama.
"They like the guy who is scrappy," Santorum said of Republican primary voters. "They like the guy who is trying to overcome the machine. Folks here in Chicago know all about the machine and what it means to fight that machine. It's hard but it's possible."
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Rick Santorum must long to go back in time to be a member of the Inquisition. His need to be the leader of the Morality police is unsettling and scary. He probably sees pornography in the two sunny side up eggs he ate for breakfast. Or maybe he doesn't order such pornographic food? I think he wants to crack down on porn so he can see the evidence for himself. He is a very messed up man who needs an intervention.
Mr Frothy is an obscenity to anyone with common sense.
I find it funny that he decries porn and says the government needs to enforce laws but tends to skew a little religious. The Constitution expressly forbids government sponsorship of religion but expressly provides for the protection of freedom of speech. Guess he should have read that 1st Amendment a little closer. The government can only regulate porn where there is a compelling state interest and the law is narrowly tailored to effectuate that compelling interest. IE no porn to minors and that type of thing. However, prior to extremely conservative Supreme Court terms, most any type of religion in government was not tolerated. I wish Constitutional law classes were mandated in order to be a functioning citizen of the United States. It'd be nice to have an intelligent conversation with someone about the rights of citizens and the powers of the specific governments, state and federal.
If the people of the United States actually understood the Constitution, and the numerous violations against it by the federal government there would be riots in the streets tomorrow.
What is it with the obsession with all things sexual on the part of the holier than thou crowd? Someone should organize a Church of Latter Day Freudians on their behalf. I suppose all of these types came to their marriages as virgins, and never heard a foul word spoken. I would love to have a look into their dirty, little, narrow minds.
"Tell me what a preacher preaches against, and I'll tell you what his sins are."
Ricky, you got some 'splainin to do.
Ok! Thats It!! There are
threeFour things you don't mess with in America Beer, Guns, Baseball and Sex! I would add Sunday night Football, but then there wouldn't be be time enough for ...sex ;}It sounds like Ricky is digging himself into a hole.
If you ask me while most people will tell you that they don't look at pornography on the internet the vast majority will then go home and look up their personal fetish. People who claim they have no interest in things like that are denying their own sexuality.
He's pandering to what people want other people to think about them, rather than who they really are. This can only end badly for him.
Got an email from a right wing group designed to inflame voters. Now supposedly Obama is taking peoples guns. Hope these people reap from they sow from their lies. And Santorum imo is no representative for Christians. He needs to read the Bible first of all and then act like a Christian is supposed to act. No bearing false witness and he is supposed to be courteous to those in authority.That is being courteous and truthful? He doesn't have to agree but there is a way he is to respond and apparently he doesn't know what that is.
(cheap shot warning) Sounds like Santorum wants to put sex back where it belongs - in the local Catholic church! (rim shot) Sorry, but saying it's the responsibility of the Pres of the U.S. to police porn, when the Supreme Court has ruled, it's black letter law, and laid out pretty obvious boundaries, is kinda dumb. What's the word I'm looking for...oh, yeah pandering.
Can we please ship this idiot to Saudi Arabia or Iran? For as much as he rants about Iran, it seems he would love it there. He could make women cover their bodies in public to prevent men from having impure thoughts. There pornography is illegal, and there is no abuse of women, unless the man thinks they deserve it. There are not even any open homosexuals there because they are afraid for their lives, so he would have even more reason to stay in the closet.
How weak is Romney that this is the guy that's giving him a run for his money, and lots of money at that? Porn, really? That's now an issue. Unbelievable how off the rails the Republicans have been this year.
It says more about the state of the Republican party in America than it does any candidate they can fund.
He sees Romney moving to the right and has decided that he needs to move even farther to the right to be even more conservative. But he's gone so far to the right now, that he's in danger of coming back from the left. He is after all talking more government regulation.
Which means he's going to put the entire City of New York in jail. :)
Good luck with that Scrotorum.
Maybe he's just a big fan of the Escape from New York movie and wants to turn it into the worlds largest prison.
And here I had been thinking that Slick Rick Perry and Motor Mouth Michelle Bachmann were the only two class clowns this year for the GOP. Turns out we have Mr. Dumbass (Perry) and Mrs. Pat Myself on My Own Back (Bachmann) and we can add the Mr. Bumbling Fool, Faux Evangelical Zealot (Santorum) to the fray. No wonder this country is so screwed up. Add Cantor, Cry Me a River Boehner, Mitch Mc Donald Duck, and a few more of the GOP lack of leadership council and you know why the tea baggers had to stir everything up.
The TEA Party are ones stirring most of this carp up.
This guy is such a fruitcake. What's he got, 7 kids? That means he's had sex 7 times in his life, otherwise he's been using SOME form of birth control. No wonder the guy's all angry - he needs to get laid! As for the porn nonsense, I'm not a fan of the industry, but this is America, land of the sexually dysfunctional, so if he thinks he's gonna get people here to give up sex, birth control and porn, he's not only un-electable, he's completely delusional as well.
That being said, I'd love for him to be the nominee, because him going up against Obama in debates would be a fabulous pay-per-view event!
I am beyond disgusted with the Republican Party - whatever else he is, Romney is a proven and highly capable administrator and manager and, after 12 years of amateurs at the helm, we need someone who knows how to make things work. He's proven that he can work with the Democrats, since he had to govern Massachusetts when they controlled the Legislature. After 20 years of mindless partisanship, we could use someone in the White House who doesn't view every issue as a fight to the death. Romney is self-made wealthy, unlike Bush Jr., who was shepherded from figurehead position to figurehead position by his daddy's oilmen buddies, or Clinton and Obama, who never earned an honest dollar in their lives and, instead, spent their entire careers suckling off the public teat. So why are so many Republicans desperate to find "the anti-Romney"? Well, because he's not "conservative enough". Okay, I get that - I'm pretty far right of Romney, myself, but how, pray tell, did they then settle on Rick Santorum? Politically, at least to judge by his record, he's been far more liberal than Romney - even being a party to the betrayal of the Party by Arlen Specter. So, in what way is he "more conservative"?
AND (drumroll, please), the answer is: Because he's pandering to the whacked out, "Christian Right", "Social Conservatives". It's not the "Tea Party" he's appealing to, it's the 'Church Ladies' Tea Social" set...
Remember Mike Huckabee, back in 2008? Did anyone take that guy seriously? A one term, rather undistinguished (not to mention kind of goofy looking) governor of Arkansas, with a "mixed" record, at best, on "conservative issues". He was a "no-name" in the contest for the Republican nomination until the eve of the Iowa caucuses, when, suddenly, Mike Huckabee (appropos of nothing) publicly announced that he believed in the literal story of Creation and a 6,000 year old earth. Uh, okay, not very scientific, but a lot of Americans seem to buy that one, but, even so, of no possible relevance to the selection of a Presidential candidate. At least, that's what one would think. But NOOOOO... in fact, that announcement suddenly made Huckabee a "contend-uh" (so much so that he almost knocked off McCain in S. Carolina). And that's what Santorum is selling, too - not a "conservative alternative" to Romney, but, rather, a "good Christian" (unlike that whacky Mormon cultist...). And THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is the source (and cause) of this latest, anti-porn pronouncement. Santorum's just playin' to the crowd, selling religious snake oil to the yokels, that's all. He is mobilizing the troglodyte far right of the Party by appealing to their religious sentiments and prejudices. He knows he can't get around the Supreme Court on abortion rights or freedom of speech, so it's safe. He can make all the promises he wants and will never be held to account. And, ya' know, it also keeps his supporters from looking too closely at his credentials and actual voting record. Anytime they ask something genuinely pertinent to his qualifications, he just points at all those slutty teenagers getting abortions on the public's dime and, well, that's all he has to do.
Of course, if Santorum is successful in getting the nomination, that tactic will make him unelectable. Real conservatives won't support him. Liberals certainly won't. And independents will be scared to death of electing an American Ayatollah who will get rid of the Dept. of Education and replace it with a Department of Vice and Public Morals, just like Saudi Arabia has.
Until the Republican Party faces up to this whacky far-right element, it is NOT going to regain power, which would be a shame, considering the mess the incumbent has made. And Barack Obama is the incumbent precisely because Bush Jr. got the Presidency by pandering to that element of the GOP (and then ran the country into the ground) and McCain lost the race for the Presidency because that element of the Party refused to let him be McCain, insisting that he should be more like his running mate, Sarah Palin. McCain should have stood up to them. He'd have gained more in independent votes than he lost in far-right nutjob votes, but he didn't. That was sad for McCain. It's also been sad for the country. Unfortunately, the right wing of the Republican Party, as Talleyrand said of the Bourbons "Never forget anything - and never learn anything". Rick Santorum is proof of that proposition.
You don't seem to understand the republican party.
The man does not get it, WE LIVE IN A REPUBLIC, NOT A THEOCRACY! If people want to purchase porn, as long as its not using underage models, let them do just that. This whole idea that if one ever lays eyes on one piece of porn during their lifetime, they will suddenly want to beat their girlfriend or wife, or suddenly turn rapist is the most outlandish thing I've heard! If Santorum wants to live in that type of country, then he should move his ass to Italy so he can be closer to the pope and his god. Making statements like that only makes him look even more foolish in the eyes of independents, and can't be proven anymore than the body of Christ, or Noah's ark, or most of what is in the bible. PURE FICTION.
Then after that he'll go after the blasphemers and heretics, and then reinstate the witch trials. It's so comforting to have someone to tell us what to believe and how to live and be absolutely that their way is the only way.
Mr. FrothyBrownStuff is a living argument for both the utility and virtue of abortion.
Ricke's too obsessed with other people's sex lives and reproductive behavior. Now he's worried about porn.... This guy has a real problem. He doesn't need to be in the oval office, he needs to be in the psychiatrist's office ... as patient....
I support Santorum on this one. Since he himself is a walking, talking obscenity, he'd have to have himself arrested and put in jail. Seriously, I can't wait for a debate between Obama and Santorum. The constitutional lawyer vs the anti-First Amendment candidate.
I'm just wondering which anti-obscenity laws to which Santorum is referring, the real ones (as narrowed and defined by the Supreme Court of the United States) or the laws he imagines (like statehood requirements for Puerto Rico or President Obama being responsible for non-existent rolling power blackouts). Seems the Senator only attended Big Lie 101, the introduction course, and not the Big Lie 102, application and practice.
Getting pretty desperate .