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<div class="timestamp">February 21, 2012</div>
<h1>Rick’s Religious Fanaticism</h1>
<span><h6 class="byline">By <a rel="author" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/maureendowd/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More Articles by Maureen Dowd" class="meta-per">MAUREEN DOWD</a></h6>
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WASHINGTON </p>
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Rick Santorum has been called a latter-day Savonarola. </p>
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That’s far too grand. He’s more like a small-town mullah. </p>
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“Satan has his sights on the United States of America,” the conservative
presidential candidate warned in 2008. “Satan is attacking the great
institutions of America, using those great vices of pride, vanity and
sensuality as the root to attack all of the strong plants that has so
deeply rooted in the American tradition.” </p>
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When, in heaven’s name, did sensuality become a vice? Next he’ll be banning Barry White. </p>
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Santorum is not merely engaged in a culture war, but “a spiritual war,”
as he called it four years ago. “The Father of Lies has his sights on
what you would think the Father of Lies would have his sights on: a
good, decent, powerful, influential country — the United States of
America,” he told students at Ave Maria University in Florida. He added
that mainline Protestantism in this country “is in shambles. It is gone
from the world of Christianity as I see it.” </p>
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Satan strikes, a Catholic exorcist told me, when there are “soul
wounds.” Santorum, who is considered “too Catholic” even by my
über-Catholic brothers, clearly believes that America’s soul wounds
include men and women having sex for reasons other than procreation,
people involved in same-sex relationships, women using contraception or
having prenatal testing, environmentalists who elevate “the Earth above
man,” women working outside the home, “anachronistic” public schools,
Mormonism (which he said is considered “a dangerous cult” by some
Christians), and President Obama (whom he obliquely and oddly compared
to Hitler and accused of having “some phony theology”). </p>
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Santorum didn’t go as far as evangelist Franklin Graham, who heinously
doubted the president’s Christianity on “Morning Joe.” </p>
<p>
Mullah Rick, who has turned prayer into a career move, told ABC News’s
Jake Tapper that he disagreed with the 1965 Supreme Court decision
striking down a ban on contraception. And, in October, he insisted that
contraception is “not O.K. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm
that is counter to how things are supposed to be.” </p>
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Senator Sanitarium, as he was once dubbed on “The Sopranos,” sometimes
tries to temper his retrogressive sermons so as not to drive away
independent and Republican women who like to work, see their kids taught
by professionals and wear Victoria’s Secret. </p>
<p>
He told The Washington Post on Friday that, while he doesn’t want to
fund contraception through Planned Parenthood, he wouldn’t ban it: “The
idea that I’m coming after your birth control is absurd. I was making a
statement about my moral beliefs, but I won’t impose them on anyone else
in this case.” </p>
<p>
That doesn’t comfort me much. I’ve spent a career watching candidates
deny they would do things that they went on to do as president, and
watching presidents let their personal beliefs, desires and insecurities
shape policy decisions. </p>
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Mullah Rick is casting doubt on issues of women’s health and safety that
were settled a long time ago. We’re supposed to believe that if he got
more power he’d drop his crusade? </p>
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The Huffington Post reports that Santorum told Philadelphia Magazine in
1995 that he “was basically pro-choice all my life, until I ran for
Congress.” Then, he said, he read the “scientific literature.” </p>
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He seems to have decided that electoral gold lies in the ruthless
exploitation of social and cultural wedge issues. Unlike the Bushes, he
has no middle man to pander to prejudices; he turns the knife himself.
</p>
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Why is it that Republicans don’t want government involved when it comes
to the economy (opposing the auto bailouts) but do want government
involved when it comes to telling people how to live their lives?
</p>
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In a party always misty for bygone times bristling with ugly inequities,
Santorum is successful because he’s not ashamed to admit that he wants
to take the country backward. </p>
<p>
Virginia’s Republican governor, Bob McDonnell, touted as a vice
presidential prospect, also wants to drag women back into a cave.
</p>
<p>
This week, public outrage forced the Virginia Legislature to pause on
its way to passing a creepy bill forcing women seeking an abortion to
undergo an ultrasound, which, for early procedures, would require a wand
being inserted into the vagina — an invasion that anti-abortion groups
hope would shame some women into changing their minds once they saw or
heard about traits of the fetus. </p>
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Democratic Delegate Lionell Spruill hotly argued that the bill would
force “legal rape.” “I cannot believe that you would disrespect women
and mothers in such a way,” he chided colleagues. “This legislation is
simply mean-spirited, and it is bullying, bullying women simply because
you can.” </p>
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While the Democratic-controlled Maryland House of Delegates just passed a
bill that would allow same-sex marriage, the Republican-controlled
Virginia Legislature passed a bill allowing private adoption agencies to
discriminate against gays who want to be parents. </p>
<p>
The Potomac River dividing those states seems to be getting wider by the day. </p>
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<br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)<br><a href="mailto:art.deco.studios@gmail.com" target="_blank">art.deco.studios@gmail.com</a><br>