The close second place victory of Rick Santorum in Iowa has elevated the latest choice of Republican for the anti-Romney candidate. Civil libertarians, of course, are well acquainted with Santorum who lost his Pennsylvania seat due to his extremist views. Santorum has outdone his opponents in appealing to evangelical voters by not just virtually promising to go to war upon being elected but is opposed to the Griswold decision.
Santorum believes that the states have a right to criminalize private conduct considered immoral, including the right to use contraceptives. He allows a strong view of states rights to negate the protections of the bill of rights — allowing the 10th Amendment to wipe out the first eight amendment that precede it.
Santorum insists that “[t]he state has a right to do that, I have never questioned that the state has a right to do that. It is not a constitutional right, the state has the right to pass whatever statues they have. That is the thing I have said about the activism of the supreme court, they are creating right, and they should be left up to the people to decide. You shouldn’t create constitutional rights when states do dumb things. . . Let the people decide if the states are doing dumb things get rid of the legislature and replace them as opposed to creating constitutional laws that have consequences that were before them.” But, of course, that is a virtual invitation to majoritarian terror. What is the majority likes such “dumb things” as prejudice against those with alternative lifestyles or moral viewpoints.
Santorum’s greatest threat to civil liberties is found in the area of privacy. He is an advocate of morality codes and laws that cannot be enforced without shredding principles of privacy. Santorum believes that political power means the right to impose a moral agenda: “One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country…. It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”
It is the very view rejected in Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965), where the Court struck down a law criminalizing the sale of contraceptives to married couples. In Griswold, Justice William O. Douglas wrote:
We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights – older than our political parties, older than our school system. Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred. It is an association that promotes a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects. Yet it is an association for as noble a purpose as any involved in our prior decisions.
He appears to embrace the view of Potter Stewart that a law (as Stewart) can be “uncommonly silly” but still constitutional. However, that law denied the right of couples to control their own conception. It is a bit more than “silly” for most civil libertarians and libertarians.
Santorum’s views present a clear and present danger to privacy in this country. While he has not raised the image of federal judges being frog marched to Capitol Hill, his legal vision appears frozen in the amber of 1950s jurisprudence, if not the 1850s.
Great happy song Gene!
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Lotta,
Jeb doesn’t have a prayer or the stomach for the fight. I don’t think a 3rd party can happen unless the voting system is changed. And I know nothing like that will ever happen while Citizens United is still around.
Pete: “…Yeah, i know it won’t happen, but it’s fun to post it at freerepublic or foxnation just to watch them drool.” (Jeb and Palin)
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You wicked man, you 🙂
I’m so glad you post on TurleyBlawg. And AngryMan too.
Raf, see Pete’s answer- Jeb’s name comes up. That he gives a bad name to hookers and would have to run against his brother as Gene rightly observes might not bother him or the GOP. Maybe someone that isn’t on the radar now.
I suspect that Gene is telling me in the most gentle way possible (you ARE a sweety) is that I’m just going to a happy place mentally to lessen the complete horror of this year’s political reality.
But here’s a strange thought: if the Republicans are irreparably broken wouldn’t it be a real possibility that that could be a vehicle for a real third party? The mainstream GOP can just become the party of madness or reconstitute itself as a new (old) party by divorcing the base. I don’t think the base would take that and not nucleate around their own ‘new’ party and slate of candidates. The Republicans are in a pickle.
Dog save the Republic.
raff, you could always invest in burka futures.
Sick joke, I know, but so is the frothy mix.
lets face it , they are scraping the bottom of the barrel.
that and foxnews has been rewriting history to make almost all of w’s screwups into obamas fault.
jeb riding in on a white horse with palin beside him to wrest the republican convention from the godless morman romney.
Yeah, i know it won’t happen, but it’s fun to post it at freerepublic or foxnation just to watch them drool.
Oro Lee, I think you’re right about our dissatisfaction, we wanted a complete change and go Democratic social policy and John McCain foreign/security policies on steroids. That really po’s me.
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Rafflaw, I wouldn’t presume to speak for AM but the ‘berserker’ model of strategic voting is something I have thought about. The end of the road if you are going to work against both your and your opposers best interest specifically to stir up dissent by increasing the harm to the citizenry is IMO, that cities burn. The greatest virtue to a social safety net is that it gives people a stake in maintaining society, take that away and vex them enough and they start setting fires and rioting. I can see a Republican presidency doing that.
I’ve seen it a couple of times. 10 seconds after the Rodney King verdict the better half said (beating me to the punch) “If LA isn’t in flames by supper I just don’t know what this country is coming too.” It was. One of the things I was quick to notice after great and destructive unrest is that the government actually responded with some real reforms. It was scared and didn’t want that stuff, it’s bad for business and the governments business is to stay in business.
I see 3 possibilities for voting: 1. Obama (hold your nose and do it), 2.vote your soul- a write in or whatever, or 3. go full-tilt berserker. I really don’t know what I’m going to do.
Yes, there would be blood, people would be killed, all those new ‘toys’ that will deafen you or blind you or cook you like a hot-dog in a microwave would be used. I gives me pause but history shows that all great movements were bought with blood. I’m still considering all options. Srsly, almost 50 years of politics and playing the game and THIS is what I get for coloring inside the lines? Fascism-lite or the abyss as a choice? ‘Berserk’ is on my radar for the first time.
pete,
Please. Jeb gives a bad name to pimps. He wouldn’t just be running against other R’s and D’s, he’d be running against his treasonous idiot brother too.
JEB?
LK,
“A lot of people are unhappy with Obama and his re-election isn’t a lock against a palatable (R) candidate if one were available.”
And there is the rub, isn’t it? As you note, Santorum is flat out crazy and Romney is just whore, er, more of the same old same old. As to the GOP being dead as a party and just not knowing it yet? That is a strong possibility. As a party, they show every sign of fractiousness. What’s worse is that none of the factions as they’ve developed leave a place for moderate or traditional conservatives to go. Either their theocratic bent is too strong and/or their economic policies are disastrous and/or they are open war mongers. But as you say, the DNC is not a whit better. That’s what happens when money is allowed to pick candidates instead of the marketplace of ideas. A pox upon both their houses of ill-repute.
I shouldn’t say things like that.
It gives a bad name to hookers.
Lotta,
Who is the Republican that can save the day for them? None of the announced candidates are worth a damn.
I had errands so I couldn’t keep up with this discussion which is a shame – for me – because I have a whole host of thoughts on the matters raised here but I’m not going to belabor us all with a 2K word reply to about 13 posts. It’s a great thread.
I don’t think Santorum can win because he’s crazy as is every Republican candidate but Romney. Romney is evil and a liar/whore. Everybody knows that. Romney is the only current Republican candidate that may be able to attract mainstream Republicans and the Republicans that label themselves Independents. I don’t think that’s enough to win against an incumbent though.
This thought keeps popping into my mind though; will the Republican party allow itself to run Mitt Romney (the only candidate that isn’t bat-shit crazy and proud of it) and probably lose in a year that could see them win? A lot of people are unhappy with Obama and his re-election isn’t a lock against a palatable (R) candidate if one were available.
If I were the GOP I would offer a palatable candidate anything to enter the race in a few months. Or arrange a draft if possible. Can the GOP actually be going to be led to defeat by the losers and loonies? If so, the GOP as an organization is dead and I just missed the headline. It’s just …inconceivable… to me even though they are obviously eating themselves from the inside. Is there no dark horse they can trot out to save themselves?
I have no respect for the Democratic Party, they are their own worst enemy, but I expect better from the GOP because they just love that lock-step mentality, they are masters of developing a message and keeping all of their politicians focused on it. That they would be overtaken by a Neanderthal-like internal revolution and piss away a good opportunity is amazing to me. (Not to cast aspersion on our brother species, the Neanderthal.)
Am I just plain deluding myself? This whole election cycle is just short-circuiting my brain. I just can’t believe what I’m watching happen.
Angry man
What happens when a theocrat like Santorum gets elected and then appoints theocratic Supreme Court justices? Our country could not afford that scenario in my opinion. Not to mention what would happen to women’s rights!
“You really want to change things Jill I’m with you, but you have no clear idea of how to do it, so I would be following you at my peril.”
An interesting exchange. I, as a basic ‘drop in’ without knowing the history of either poster, am impressed but not surprised how well they represent two pretty fundamental poles stemming from the disaster of our corporately owned government (there, now my prejudice is showing).
Let me opine, FWIW, neither is ‘right’, and part of the frustration with our currently being screwed over by politicians, is that it doesn’t seem to me like we’re going to be able to ‘get it right’ for a long time, if ever. A humane, responsive, and responsible politics doesn’t seem to be in the cards. The way forward from that sad probability is, obviously, fertile ground for debate.
I expect the openness with which Jill and Mike reveal their seemingly zero sum opinions has to do with knowing each other and the history here. I think that’s great.
And if anyone has THE answer, please post it here!
angryman
i could almost agree with you except i’m not sure if america could recover from a theofacist right now.
besides we don’t know if rupert murdoch has ok’d santorum yet.
Weighing the success of the Obama administration has much less to do with where we are now compared with where we had hoped to be, and almost everything to do compared with where we would be now if McCain/Palin had been in office. [Goodness, I just made myself shiver.]
Curious,
To Jill, Obama is and has been the personification of all recent evil. I her view he can do nothing right and her complaints have been more or less a self-fulfilling prophecy. The only problem is she has not ever offered a viable alternative, unless you count Buddy Roehmer/Ralph Nader as viable.