Rick Santorum’s Comments Are Misguided And One Dimensional

Rick Santorum, a former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, was on Greta Van Susteren’s Fox News show doing what conservatives do: defending Sarah Palin and whining about the mainstream media. Santorum scoffed at the idea that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was roughed up the way so many conservatives feel that Palin has been roughed up. Rick, this is big-time Washington politics. If she can’t fight through it as governor of Alaska then how is she going to fight through it as president of the United States? Clinton fought through all of the attacks against her and her family and, arguably, endured much worse than Palin has had to deal with and she is still a pillar of strength to this day.

Santorum claimed that people rough up women and blacks who are conservatives and cited U.S. Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas as an example. The objection to Thomas is less about being a black conservative and more about his policies which many consider to be anti-black (policies that some people feel he benefited from and now wants to pull the ladder up with him since he has made it to the top). That is why some considered (and still consider) Clarence Thomas an “Uncle Tom.” As one counter example, many blacks still appreciated Gen. Colin Powell even as he voted for Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush (something many Republicans don’t talk about when they try to ridiculously portray him as a closet liberal who only supported Barack Obama for the presidency because he was black).

There are many women conservatives who have not been beat up as conservatives claim Sarah Palin is being beaten up.

Here is a list from the National Federation of Republican Women.

I see only two women who get negative media attention (as Santorum and other conservatives might see it): Palin and Rep. Michele Bachmann. Palin and Bachmann have provided (all well documented … especially Bachmann, who is the gift that keeps giving) their opponents with all kinds of ammunition. Hey, as off the wall as Bachmann can be, she somehow managed to get herself reelected in Minnesota. In other words, their criticism is self-created criticism.