While months remain before the American populace votes in the 2012 presidential election, Rick Santorum may have won the race for most anti-woman candidate.
A Republican, Rick Santorum was a former U.S. Senator, and according to his campaign website, “was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1990 at the age of 32, and from 1995 to 2007, served in the U.S. Senate.” (1) His strategy focuses on issues such as an Economic Freedom Agenda, in which he promises to approve the Keystone Pipeline, which would transport synthetic crude oil from Canada to various locations in the United States, for jobs and energy (2); limiting marriage between a man and a woman; securing and strengthening America’s borders; and, repealing and replacing Obamacare, which increased insurance coverage of pre-existing conditions and expanded access to insurance to more Americans. (3) Santorum has designed his campaign to defend traditional American values, and in this battle, he will reclaim those values from the people, groups, and organizations that have threatened the sanctity of American principle.
One of Santorum’s most important targets has become women, or as he more specifically described them in his book It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good, “radical feminists, for undermining the traditional family and convincing women that professional accomplishments are the key to happiness.” (4) Although he promises that the phrase in question was co-written by his wife, Santorum will not let the radical feminists get off with corrupting the American family. He has made it his purpose to reveal the truth about women in America.Speaking with CNN’s John King last month about the Pentagon’s decision to allow female military personnel closer to the front lines, Santorum spoke about women’s nature to be a distraction.
“I do have concerns about women in front-line combat, I think it could be a very compromising situation, where people naturally may do things that may not be in the interest of the mission, because [of] other types of emotions that are involved,” Santorum said. (5) He continued to explain that man’s natural instinct to protect “a woman in harm’s way,” would make this military change particularly dangerous to men, women, and the mission. (6)
Santorum is no novice advocate of the American value system, and has found ways to remind women of their proper place in American society throughout the years. Santorum made welfare reform a priority during his first campaign for U.S. Senate in 1994, and targeted unwed and single mothers in his proposed amendments.
In transcripts from one of his campaign speeches in Pennsylvania, Santorum is quoted as saying, “What we say is that in order for Mom to be able to go on welfare if she has a child of wedlock, you have to tell us who the father is… You tell us who the father is or you don’t receive benefits.”
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Brown chapter.