Rick Santorum

Gingrich supporter Jim Garlow, a San Diego megachurch pastor, told Tumulty: “There was never a consensus. All the people I know of who came supporting Newt left supporting Newt.” Garlow said he was “shocked” when he heard the announcement that the group had united around Santorum. “It wasn’t a consensus and it wasn’t an endorsement,” added Gingrich backer  J.C. Watts (R-Okla.), who was also there. Watts, Garlow and others attendees released a statement of complaint Monday aftermoon. “It is unfortunate that early press reports incorrectly stated that there was a consensus for Santorum, or that the ’150 leaders endorsed Santorum.’ Such was not the case. Many there were and still are for Newt Gingrich,” it read.

The conservative disarray is also a reminder of the disastrous campaign of Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who was hailed as the man who could unite the party’s Christian right base with the establishment. Remember Perry’s Prayerapalooza last August, which drew a disappointing crowd of evangelicals to Texas and was supposed to be a sign of Perry’s strength with the crowd? It threatened to hurt Perry with the wider public, since Prayerapalooza featured the hateful Rev. John Hagee, who’s on record calling Catholicism “a godless theology of hate,” and the entire rally excluded not just Jewish, Muslim and other non-Christian clergy, but Catholics as well.

So there’s some irony that Perry lost the evangelicals’ support to two Catholics, Santorum and Gingrich, who was a Baptist until he converted to Catholicism to marry Callista. Maybe it’s a victory for tolerance that evangelicals snubbed the prayerful Perry for men who are part of a church some of them believe is “the whore of Babylon.” But it’s also a sign that the right wing of the Catholic Church has made itself at home with the most backward forces in American politics.

There’s another irony among the GOP also-rans (which will probably soon include Perry; one of his top South Carolina supporters, State Sen. Larry Grooms, just endorsed Santorum and called on the Texas governor to drop out of the race before Saturday’s primary.) Late last week Michele Bachmann supporters blamed the sexism of evangelical ministers for her disastrous showing in Iowa. Her Iowa campaign manager Pete Waldron told the Des Moines Register that religious leaders had told him “that a female could not be a civil magistrate.” Waldron also pointed to a Santorum staffer’s email asking “Is it God’s highest desire, that is, his biblically expressed will…to have a woman rule the institutions of the family, the church, and the state?’” Waldron accused Bachmann’s rivals of “a sexist strategy” to deny her the nomination.

A woman who approvingly cites Bible passages saying women must be submissive to their husbands is complaining that right-wing evangelicals are sexist. Shocking. Next Bachmann will discover that vegetarians don’t eat meat and the Chinese live in China.

I’ll be talking about the latest twists in the GOP race on MSNBC’s “The Ed Show” at 8 ET.

Now, Henneberger is not a Republican. She’s a sorta-liberal, a veteran of the New York Times, Huffington Post, Slate and Politics Daily, who too often gives Republicans the benefit of the doubt, particularly when it comes to reproductive health issues. She emerged as a leading voice criticizing President Obama’s decision to require all employers, even religiously affiliated ones (though not churches) to provide contraception coverage in health insurance policies. You know my stand on that. But her questionable views on the politics of birth control got my attention a few weeks earlier, when she carried water for Rick Santorum and let him whine in an interview that Salon’s Irin Carmon had been unfair to him in her piece “Rick Santorum is coming for your birth control.”

Santorum told Henneberger: “The idea 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.” Henneberger sided with him against Carmon. “If that’s the cleanest shot you’ve got, you might want to wait until a better one comes along,” she wrote.

OK, let’s stipulate: Rick Santorum isn’t personally coming for your birth control — in the sense of going into your nightstand and taking out your pills, your condoms or anything else you have there to prevent pregnancy (not even the aspirin that his moneyman Foster Friess would like you to put between your knees, ladies). But Santorum has not only made clear he believes contraception is morally wrong, he has called it “an important public policy issue” in his now infamous conversation with caffeinatedthoughts.com. That’s where he said, “One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is, I think, the dangers of contraception in this country,” calling it “not okay,” and “a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.” Excuse me if I don’t trust that he’ll keep his benighted views to himself.

Santorum also confirmed to ABC’s Jake Tapper that he opposes the Supreme Court decision in Griswold vs. Connecticut that made state contraception-bans unconstitutional.  That’s pretty far out there: Even conservative Supreme Court Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito backed Griswold in their confirmation hearings. But Santorum told Henneberger that he only opposed Griswold because he believed “states have the right to pass even dumb laws,” and he elaborated: “It could have been a law against buying shoestrings; that it was contraception has nothing to do with it.” Um, sure.

Now that Santorum is catching hell for his extremist views on matters of women’s health, he’s turning up the volume on his insistence that he wouldn’t ban birth control. “My position is birth control can and should be available,” he said in Ohio last week.  And again, Henneberger is suggesting Democrats are overreaching by portraying the former Pennsylvania senator as an anti-contraception crusader. She quotes Santorum’s “longtime media consultant and friend” John Brabender complaining,  “No one is making birth control a topic. It’s not an agenda that anyone’s running on. But it’s a distortion that works to [the other side’s] benefit to imply we’re for limiting access to birth control.”

Henneberger agrees. “When I looked back at a tape of what Republicans have been saying on the topic, what’s striking is how reluctant they are to go there.” She says the “contraception lobby” is firing up outrage to raise money. And again, she defends Santorum and notes that he only wants to defund Planned Parenthood – he’s even voted in the past for Title X family planning funds. (Actually, here’s what he said to Fox: “I support Title X, I guess it is, and have voted for contraception and although I don’t think it works, I think it’s harmful to women, I think it’s harmful to our society.”)

Where to begin?

First of all, Santorum’s website says he will “Repeal Clinton-era Title X family planning regulations, and will direct HHS to restore the separation of Title X family planning from abortion practices and restore a ban on referrals for abortion.”  But federal law already prohibits Title X from funding abortion. So I’m not sure what he’s repealing. Santorum is also pushing to make sure Planned Parenthood can’t get Title X funding, which Henneberger implies is no big interference with contraception access. The fact is, 575 Planned Parenthood clinics get those federal family planning funds – in some states and counties, it’s the only agency providing Title X services. So defunding Planned Parenthood because a separate arm of the organization provides abortion services hits Title X, and hard. Santorum’s plan would also keep Title X money out of health centers or hospitals or agencies that perform abortions, even when they’re medically necessary. So, sorry, John Brabender, your candidate is “for limiting access to birth control.” Severely, as Mitt Romney might say.

Santorum also supports various state “personhood” amendments, which would ban many forms of birth control, including the pill, IUD, the ring and the so-called morning after pill, because they can interfere with a fertilized egg implanting in the uterus. It’s true that some personhood proponents say the measures won’t ban the pill, while other personhood backers happily insist they will. The laws are written so broadly that no one knows exactly what they’ll do. That’s why former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, no fan of the “contraception lobby,” opposed his state’s personhood legislation. But Santorum and the entire GOP field support it (Romney, typically, has been unclear about exactly which version he backs).

So honestly, I find it stunning that anyone is arguing that it’s Democrats who are “putting focus” on this issue and then profiting from it, politically or financially.  President Obama followed the advice of the Institute of Medicine and required insurers to include no-cost contraception under the Affordable Care Act, because it’s best for women’s health and it also saves money. It was Republicans who politicized the issue, even after the president compromised with Catholic groups and took religious agencies out of the middle of the exchange. House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell lined up behind bills to repeal that requirement – Santorum and every GOP presidential candidate support their efforts — even though federal law mandates that insurance plans include all sorts of medical treatment. Democrats didn’t make them single out contraception as a mandated benefit.

Democrats also didn’t tell GOP Rep. Darrell Issa to hold a hearing on the issue – and to leave women off the opening panel entirely. Yes, Emily’s List is raising money on Issa’s blunder, with an ad featuring Rep. Carolyn Maloney asking Issa sternly “Where are the women?” It’s a good ad, but Issa and crew provided the visuals willingly.

Likewise, Democrats didn’t concoct the trend of requiring women seeking legal abortion to be harassed by undergoing an ultrasound first. The news that Virginia’s version of that law would mandate a creepy transvaginal ultrasound shocked the nation – and Wednesday Gov. Bob McDonnell says he won’t sign a bill mandating that forced penetration. That’s progress – and women’s rights groups and Democrats achieved it, by publicizing the Virginia GOP’s overreach.

Are Democrats and women’s groups capitalizing on the political opportunity these backward Republicans are providing? Absolutely, as well they should. But we should be clear: To say, “It’s Democrats who are putting focus on contraception” is a distortion. On “Hardball” today, Henneberger, to her credit, backed away from the language about the “contraception lobby” that she used in her Post piece, and said about Democrats and women’s groups, “it’s no outrage to raise money.” You can watch our conversation here:

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The man who calls contraception “a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be” went from being a failed Pennsylvania senator, Mr. “Man on Dog,” to GOP presidential front-runner over the last month. Now he’s crusading against prenatal testing because he claims it encourages abortion (when in fact most prenatal testing helps women help babies who develop in utero health issues) and claiming President Obama’s policies will ultimately send Christians to the guillotine. (By the way, I apologize for harping on the way Protestants have persecuted Catholics in the U.S., because Santorum reminded me of some of the reason why, with his charge that mainline Protestant churches are a Satan-sponsored “shambles” that are “gone from the world of Christianity as I see it.”) He and Mitt Romney, who’s trying to match him outrage for outrage, have been chasing women voters away from the GOP in droves over the last couple of months.

Into that polarizing political climate came the news that Virginia Republicans want to go where no politician of any stripe belongs: up the vaginal canal and into the uteruses of pregnant women who are seeking an abortion. The bill already passed the state Senate, and clearing the House of Delegates seemed a mere formality, especially given that Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas already have ultrasound requirements. A mere formality, that is, until people began paying attention.

Now, for two days straight, the Virginia House of Delegates has postponed its vote on the bill. More than a thousand protesters lined walkways to the state Capitol to silently protest the bill on Monday, and their powerful statement seemed to still resonate on Tuesday. The bill is expected to pass eventually, but with every day, the national backlash against the measure helps its opponents’ chances. On MSNBC’s “Politics Nation” Tuesday Virginia delegate Kaye Kory urged the media to keep paying attention. Gov. Bob McDonnell, who supports the bill, is often mentioned as a GOP vice presidential nominee, and his office has emitted a few warning signs of alarm over the last couple of days. As far right as Republicans have lurched, it can’t be helpful for McDonnell to find his Virginia GOP accused of supporting state-sanctioned rape for forcing unwilling women to submit to vaginal penetration in order to exercise their legal right to an abortion.

Of course, the Virginia GOP still has its fervent defenders. CNN commentator Dana Loesch outdid herself (and that takes a lot) by suggesting that women had implicitly consented to such a procedure when they consented to vaginal penetration during sex. Wait. Let me make sure I’m not misinterpreting her. Here’s what she said: “Progressives are trying to say, that it’s rape and so on and so forth … They had no problem having similar to a trans-vaginal procedure when they engaged in the act that resulted in their pregnancy.” If that sounds like crazy talk – and it is — a Virginia Republican who supports the procedure said much the same thing, telling a Democratic colleague that women had already consented to being “vaginally penetrated when they got pregnant,” according to Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick. I hope Virginia Republican women will ask their male partners whether they believe consenting to sex represents consenting to state-sponsored vaginal penetration as well. I know, it might be a mood-killer, but it’s a good thing to find out.

As Steve Kornacki observed this morning, Santorum may be compromising his own political future almost as much as he’s compromising women’s rights with his increasingly crackpot declarations. He’s also helping Virginians who oppose their state GOP’s extremism to get attention to their cause, while the Virginia GOP helps national Democrats sound alarms about Santorum’s lunacy.  It’s a win-win for proponents of women’s freedom. I keep pinching myself to make sure it’s not a political trick.

I talked about the GOP’s war on women’s rights with Virginia delegate Kaye Kory on MSNBC’s “Politics Nation”:

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The other factor in my dismissing Santorum is that I’ve assumed Romney’s money would demolish Santorum the way it did Gingrich. And it may yet. But if Wednesday marked the opening of Romney’s scorched-earth campaign against Santorum, it didn’t scorch anything.

Romney’s anti-Santorum ads are weak tea, compared with his ads against Gingrich.  I even went to Rickfacts.com to find the outrages behind the ads. There aren’t any. Maybe Tea Party voters can get exercised over Santorum’s support for earmarks, raising the debt ceiling and other government spending, but I sort of doubt it. The worst thing Romney’s got on him is that he voted to restore the voting rights of certain felons, along with Hillary Clinton, in 2003. That makes me like Santorum a little bit, which I’m sure is a sign it will appall the Tea Party. Still, Clinton isn’t as polarizing as Nancy Pelosi, who relishes her role in bringing Gingrich down with that cozy, couch-sitting climate change ad. Romney’s new barrage makes me wonder if maybe, there isn’t that much material to use trashing Santorum. Or at least not much that Romney can use.

The Obama campaign would have endless material, should Santorum survive the Romney contest. But the former Massachusetts governor can’t attack Santorum’s extremism, because on most social issues he’s gone out and joined him over on the far right. Now, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough says Romney folks are quietly behind several new media revelations about Santorum’s contraception extremism. But Romney can’t blast him in ads when he’s trying to join his side in the culture wars.

On “Hardball” today, former Mike Huckabee campaign manager Chip Saltsman advised Romney to be himself, to run on his record – as a family man, a business man, a governor, and the head of the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. But I don’t think it’s that easy. Romney and Santorum both have big, lovely-looking families. That’s a draw. He tried to run on his record as a “job creator” and business maven at Bain Capital, but it turns out he was also a job destroyer and his Bain role is part of what makes him the face of the top 1 percent. Attention to Romney’s business record was actually disastrous for him.

Of course, his record as the Republican governor of a blue state, who paved the way in providing universal health insurance and accommodated Massachusetts liberalism on reproductive health, might really help him in a match with Obama, if he gets there. But he’s abandoned most of the positions that might attract independents and speak to his ability to get beyond the partisan gridlock everyone supposedly hates – a pitch that worked for a first-term senator from Illinois in 2008. Besides, that wouldn’t be much help during the primaries, anyway.

Worst of all, his Michigan roots were supposed to make that state’s primary a cakewalk. But unbelievably – or not – Santorum’s now ahead there, too. Romney bet wrong when he declared in a 2008 New York Times op-ed that the president should let the auto industries go bankrupt, and he’s paying for it now (despite ridiculous attempts to spin what Obama did as somehow derived from his advice.) And in a sentimental ad about his Detroit roots, it turns out Romney is riding in a Chrysler manufactured in Canada. The guy can’t fake authenticity no matter how hard he tries.

So all the former front-runner’s really got is his money to smear his opponents (I’m sorry I used the term “smear Santorum” on television tonight. It won’t happen again.) But his first barrage at Santorum won’t do much damage. In fact, Santorum released a surprisingly funny (normally funny and Santorum don’t mix) ad attacking “Rombo” for his well-funded mudslinging. It’s all in the video, below. I still think Romney is the candidate to beat, given his war chest and Santorum’s spare campaign, but he’s going to ride some tough road in his Canadian-manufactured Chrysler in the weeks to come.

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