Why Rick Santorum is horrible

I've said before that I'd hold my nose and vote for Rick Santorum over Obama because defense and foreign policy are so important that they override Santorum's despicable social policy.  But let's not lose sight of the fact that Santorum is a lousy candidate who will alienate large segments of the electorate by, as I've said before, advocating the town in Footloose.

Nate Nelson tellis it like it is to Republican caucus-goers:

Yesterday, some of you in Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri delivered stunning victories for former Senator Rick Santorum (R-Penn.) in the race for the GOP presidential nomination. You may have thought in caucusing and voting for Santorum that you were dealing a blow to the big government establishment. Unfortunately, you weren’t. Santorum is and has always been a card-carrying member of the Beltway GOP. Santorum’s record in the U.S. Senate reveals consistent opposition to the principles of limited government, fiscal restraint, and individual liberty. That’s why libertarians can’t support him now or in the general election and why you shouldn’t either.

[...]
Santorum has also been a consistent opponent of individual liberty. Although some do not, many Republican primary voters may agree with Santorum’s proposals to amend the constitution to prohibit abortion and same-sex marriage. But what about birth control? In October 2011, Santorum went on the record about “the dangers of contraception in this country,” arguing that birth control is “a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.” These far outside the mainstream views may be excusable if they were just his personal opinions, but they’re not. Santorum told ABC News’ Jake Tapper late last year that he opposed Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court decision that overturned state bans on discussing birth control with and providing it to married couples. President Santorum would favor letting states dictate what legally married heterosexual couples can and can’t do in the privacy of their own bedrooms. How’s that for big government?
In April 2011, Rick Santorum said that he was “Tea Party before there was a Tea Party.” It looks like caucusgoers and primary voters in Iowa, Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri believed him. But future caucusgoers and primary voters shouldn’t be fooled; Rick Santorum has made a litany of proposals that are questionable at best from a constitutionalist point of view. He wants to use taxpayer dollars to support adoptions; “to incentivize the states to promote parental choice and quality educational options”; to create a public-private partnership between the Department of Health and Human Services and private organizations “for the purpose of strengthening marriages, families, and fatherhood”; to reinstate “2008-level funding for the Community Based Abstinence Education Program”; and “to advance adult stem cell research.”

Roger Simon:

[T]hings are looking good for Santorum. Events, again “for the moment,” are swinging his way, with Obama coming under heavy, and justifiable, criticism from conservatives and some liberals for crossing the line on religious freedom. The Obama administration issued what amounts to a diktat to Roman Catholics to toe the liberal line on birth control, even to the extent of paying for the contraceptives their faith finds immoral. For shame.

Santorum, the candidate most associated with religious faith, should profit from this execrable policy, especially in the short run. But definite perils are ahead for the Republican Party if it allows Santorum-style social conservatism to dominate the election. And those perils go well beyond the obvious that the campaign will be largely about the economy.

The greatest danger is that Rick Santorum will be singled out as the spokesperson for extreme right-wing religiosity and made to look like a bigot to the largest voting group in our country — the independents. This is particularly true in the area of gay rights, but not because those people favor gay marriage. The majority of them probably don’t. But most people these days have homosexuals among their friends, family, or work colleagues and don’t appreciate even the whiff of bigotry. It’s become a big no-no.

Um, he won't be made to look like a bigot.  Judging by his own statements and policy positions, he actually is a bigot.

Santorum does not have a good track record in that regard. He is the only politician I know of who merits his own Wikipedia entry on the subject: “Santorum controversy regarding homosexuality.”
Some of the quotations at that site from the former senator are not pretty. In one rather notorious interview with Lara Jakes Jordan of the Associated Press, Santorum, defending his position on sodomy laws, which he apparently supports, or supported then, asserted he did not oppose homosexuals, but rather homosexual acts. In other words, it’s fine to be a homosexual, as long as you don’t have a sex life.
On the marriage issue, he picked a rather peculiar analogy:

In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be.

In the original version of the AP story, Santorum was quoted as saying:

If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything.

Of course, who knows the truth of these quotations? Or what really is in Santorum’s heart. And that was 2003. Perhaps he has matured.
That is not entirely clear, however. On January 6, 2012, during the New Hampshire primary period, Robin Abcarian wrote the following for the Los Angeles Times from Dublin NH:

At Dublin School, a private ninth- to 12th-grade boarding school whose headmaster said the audience included three children of gay parents, Santorum’s voice dropped and became emotional as he argued that only a man and woman should have the “privilege” and “honor” of marrying.
“Marriage is not a right,” Santorum said. “It’s a privilege that is given to society by society for a reason….We want to encourage what is the best for children.”
So important is it to have both a father and a mother, Santorum suggested, that even a father who “is in jail and has abandoned” his family is better for a child than two gay parents.

Whoa. A man who is in jail and has abandoned his family is better for a child than two gay parents?

Yeah, he sounds like a real sweetheart, or the POTUS in Escape from L.A.

Does the GOP really want to run someone like this? Granted, he's better than Ron Paul, but that's not saying much.