Rick Santorum spoke and answered questions at St. Anselm College's center for political affairs, an extraordinary facility filled with meeting rooms and posters from political events and people of the past hundred years.
Santorum is interested in validating blue collar working people, both the dignity of their work and their value as human beings. He is critical of elites and he raises a valuable point about the way that our culture has devalued blue collar work, the people who shower when they come home from work, not prior to going to work. Young people are being shamed into going to college and taking on ridiculous debt because good serious jobs like plumbing, welding, running a lathe, etc. is considered less prestigious than office work.
I agree with him.
And he has a second, related point: that the greatest source of poverty in general and bad outcomes for kids is homes without fathers. He said that the obligations of marriage and fatherhood has been devalued.
It is less clear how this moves toward policy positions for the government, particularly since small, less intrusive government is the supposed mission of the GOP. This dilemma is resolved by agreeing that small less intrusive government should be the case in the area of environmental and business regulation, protections for vulnerable workers, matters involving equality for minorities. Big and intrusive government is just fine for the military, for protections for Social Security and Medicare (which are used and enjoyed by the middle and upper classes), and for intrusions into the family.
I asked a question at the breakfast meeting of about fifty people, asking if he stood by his February 2012 statement that contraception was "not okay" because it violated the appropriate relations between men and women and that a president should lead on this. He said he didn't really say it. I responded by saying that it is on videotape and anyone can google it by googling 'santorum contraception is wrong' and it comes right up. He didn't like the question, although it gave him an opportunity to say that he mis-spoke back then.
Prior to the speech and my impertinent question he wandered around the sparse gathering and was happy to cooperate with a photo.
Santorum is interested in validating blue collar working people, both the dignity of their work and their value as human beings. He is critical of elites and he raises a valuable point about the way that our culture has devalued blue collar work, the people who shower when they come home from work, not prior to going to work. Young people are being shamed into going to college and taking on ridiculous debt because good serious jobs like plumbing, welding, running a lathe, etc. is considered less prestigious than office work.
I agree with him.
And he has a second, related point: that the greatest source of poverty in general and bad outcomes for kids is homes without fathers. He said that the obligations of marriage and fatherhood has been devalued.
It is less clear how this moves toward policy positions for the government, particularly since small, less intrusive government is the supposed mission of the GOP. This dilemma is resolved by agreeing that small less intrusive government should be the case in the area of environmental and business regulation, protections for vulnerable workers, matters involving equality for minorities. Big and intrusive government is just fine for the military, for protections for Social Security and Medicare (which are used and enjoyed by the middle and upper classes), and for intrusions into the family.
I asked a question at the breakfast meeting of about fifty people, asking if he stood by his February 2012 statement that contraception was "not okay" because it violated the appropriate relations between men and women and that a president should lead on this. He said he didn't really say it. I responded by saying that it is on videotape and anyone can google it by googling 'santorum contraception is wrong' and it comes right up. He didn't like the question, although it gave him an opportunity to say that he mis-spoke back then.
Prior to the speech and my impertinent question he wandered around the sparse gathering and was happy to cooperate with a photo.
 |
| Unapologetic in his defense of coal, fatherhood, traditional marriage |
 |
| Happy to have someone want a photo |
No comments:
Post a Comment