The Rude Pundit: When Rick Santorum Was a Snob
The proper response to former Senator Rick Santorum calling Barack Obama "a snob" over the President's desire for every American to get further education (although Santorum seemed to think Obama just wanted everyone to get cultural studies degrees from Ivy League universities or, perhaps, as safety schools, small liberal arts colleges) is, truly, "Why aren't your hands filthy from work, Mr. Coal Miner's Grandson? And who the fuck are you to say what's elitist, Mr. BA/MBA/JD?" (Please note that Santorum has more degrees than Obama. Please also note that it did not turn Santorum into a progressive drone.)
What galled Santorum is the idea that "everyone" should go to college, which is not what Obama said, but, hey, "facts" never get in the way of a good applause line to the yahoos. However, Santorum himself has had no issue in proposing shit that he thinks would be right for "every American." To wit:
1. Santorum in The Hill, July 28, 2005: "The ASPIRE Act...will create a Kids Investment and Development Savings (KIDS) account for every American child at birth, providing a new opportunity for the children of low-income Americans to build assets and wealth." He wanted to give away "an initial deposit of $500" and allow "for additional, voluntary donations to grow tax-free." What a snob. The goal here is to indoctrinate children and families into materialist capitalism. (And, holy shit, why hasn't Romney brought up this heaping pile of big government spending that never passed?)
2. Santorum in The Hill, February 2, 2006: "First, every American must have access to affordable healthcare. The physical and emotional problems caused by inadequate healthcare are too great for any of our citizens to endure...Congress must make long-term-care insurance accessible and affordable for every American. We must pass a long-term care bill this session. Additionally, every American deserves patient-centered health care that they can control." What a snob. Some families don't want to control their health care. They just want to have it. In fact, having it without worrying about controlling it is even better.
3. Santorum in the Washington Times, November 6, 2000: "By protecting the current mortgage finance system, fostering a strong economy, and supporting targeted initiatives, we can make the dream of home ownership a reality for every American." What a snob. The Rude Pundit isn't interested in owning a home. He likes renting. So screw everyone else's ambitions. Bonus points: the editorial praises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. (Once again: Paging the apparently incompetent oppo people in the Romney campaign.)
The Rude Pundit's gonna pull rank again here. He's a professor at a college where most of the students come from working and lower-middle-class backgrounds. He's been there at graduation and met their parents who never had the chance to get an education beyond high school. They don't ask if what their kids learned was liberal or conservative. They were just glad that, now, all those jobs out there that have a college degree as a minimum requirement were open to their kids. They were just glad that they learned something about the world.
Rick Santorum actually is guilty of the rankest kind of elitism: the kind that says you shouldn't aspire to something more than what you were born into. But, then again, his economic policies pretty much assure that some people, like, you know, the Santorums, stay on top while everyone else takes jobs fixing his cars or plumbing.
One other thing: a motherfucker who says believes that the government of the nation should be following the morality of a certain church really has no business talking about who is indoctrinating whom.
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