Rick Santorum reiterated his belief that states should have the right to outlaw contraception during an interview with ABC News yesterday, saying, “The 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.”
As he told CaffeinatedThoughts.com editor Shane Vander Hart in October, “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,” the former Pennsylvania senator explained. “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.”
No biggie. If a state outlaws your birth control you should just move to a state that doesn't! What's extreme about that? No need to get all hysterical about this stuff.
Glenn wrote a provocative article for the Guardian the other day positing that the reason that the GOP field is so confused and crazy is because Obama has taken national security and civil liberties off the table by adopting all their policies so they have nowhere to go but over the cliff. There's a lot of truth in that. (They aren't called reactionaries for nothing.) I'm eagerly awaiting Romney's announcement during the general election that we must invade Mexico to secure the border from terrorists. (And I'm not really kidding.)
But I would also suggest that while Ron Paul's anti war stance has not changed the GOP one iota, his states' rights theory has given them a push over the cliff as well. It's not that they haven't always believed this, but he's made it a more acceptable, mainstream --- dare I say transpartisan, view. In that sense I think he's been as pernicious as he's been helpful in the civil liberties realm. He's given the social conservatives cover for their noxious views with the states' rights cop-out.
Santorum is a hardcore theocrat, but he and the other members of the Christian Right are happy to tell people they are states' rightists if that's what it takes. They have from now until the rapture to get it done.
Update: Jake Tapper took a picture of the Duggars introducing Santorum. Perfect:
