| 20120303 TIME |
TIME March 5, 2012
Page 17
In the Arena, Joe Klein
Rick Santorum's Inconvenient Truths
The former Senator puts the hard questions on the table, even at his peril
...In the days after the Schieffer interview, audio was unearthed of 2008 Santorum speech in which he seemed to argue the literal existence of Satan and a Mephistophelian intent to subvert the United States of America. He also seemed to compare the Obama Administration to Hitler, saying America now was like America in 1940, when some people thought Hitler wasn't a threat. "It's going to be harder for this generation to figure this out. There's no cataclysmic event, he said, just a slow creep toward state control of practically everything. These sorts of statements will probably stall the Santorum surge and hand the Republican nomination right back to Mitt Romney. Most Republicans aren't going to want to battle Obama on contraception and prenatal testing.
And yet when you leave Hitler and Satan aside, there is something admirable about Santorum's near Tourettic insistence on bringing up issues no one else wants to talk about. His position on education--that parents need to spend a lot more time supervising their children's schooling--draws stifled groans from the overworked parents in his audiences, but he is right: parents know best how their children learn...
David CK Chang, SSN057-86-4042,
March 3, 2012, Saturday,
New Taipei City Library,
Panchiao, New Taipei City
