The Left is having a fundamental disconnect again when it comes to understanding where Rick Santorum is coming from, and this time it has to do with minorities and food stamps.
From CBS News: Santorum Relates Minorities to Food Stamps, Again.
Rick Santorum on Saturday resuscitated one of his more controversial remarks from the past few months of campaigning for president, connecting food stamps with “minority communities.”
No, actually, he understands that the Left claims poverty is a racial issue and he’s giving the response to that claim.
This is what you need to know about Rick Santorum on this topic. He is a bleeding heart conservative. This is not the same thing as what has become known as “compassionate conservatism” which results in more federal programs. It is a policy that is both fiscally and socially conservative. In order to understand what I mean by that, you should read his book “It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good
Try to understand that this man wrote only one book in his life. The fact that he wrote only one book should indicate to you that it is a subject that he feels very strongly about. That is, how will the poor be helped with American remaining fiscally conservative? It’s because Rick Santorum can answer that question and make the conservative argument that I realized he is the best candidate to face Barack Obama in the general election.
I know about this on a personal level as a disabled and single mom of four. I don’t need a big screen television, and I don’t need to watch movies every Friday night, and I don’t need to buy new clothing when the clothes at the consignment shop will work just fine. Further, if I do need help, I would much rather receive the most basic help that I need from people close to me, especially my family and my church, than to have someone drive me to the chancery to pick up paperwork to get on the government dole. I mean, how humiliating. Certainly, I would much rather use my talent to work rather than to sit on the couch and eat Doritos. To be sure, I think most people still would rather work, and that is entirely the point.
From the book description:
Among politicians of national stature today, there is perhaps none more respected as a principled conservative than Rick Santorum. In It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good, Santorum articulates the humane vision that he believes must inform public policy if it is to be effective and just. An appreciation for the civic bonds that unite a community lies at the heart of genuine conservatism. Moreover, Santorum demonstrates how such an approach to political, social, and economic problems offers the most promise for those on the margin of life: the poor, the vulnerable, and minorities who have often been excluded from opportunity in America.
Like Jack Kennedy, the first and only Catholic President of the United States, Rick Santorum has a heart for the poor, the disabled, minorities and all who have been marginalized in society. Unlike the Democratic Party, though, he wants to reduce the cycle of dependency, speak out on behalf of mediate institutions like the family, churches and civic organizations, but most of all to bring jobs back to America so that we, the poor, can actually get ahead in life instead of staying down in poverty.
Speaking to a large crowd at the conservative Americans for Prosperity Presidential forum here, Santorum said he planned to “talk to minority communities, not about giving them food stamps and government dependency, but about creating jobs so that they can participate in the rise of this country.”
Rick Santorum knows that minorities want jobs so that they can work. It’s the Left who believes that food stamps and other forms of government assistance is a racial issue. Rick Santorum is not trying to promote division. He’s responding to the Left’s promotion of division. He’s seeking to speak to a community who have been lied to for decades by the Left, having been told every election that only the Democratic Party will speak up for them by redistributing wealth. Rick Santorum offers a jobs program and a willingness to speak out about the need for private organizations and families to help the downtrodden.
If you think it’s racist for Rick Santorum to believe that minorities want jobs instead of food stamps, then I would say you’ve lost touch with reality and that, perhaps, you are the racist. Read Rick Santorum’s book
One note. CBS News repeats a false claim in the article about a reference they say Rick Santorum made to “black people.” Mediaite responded to CBS News when they did this once before.
CBS News has posted a cleaner version of Santorum’s remarks, and it seems as though Santorum did not actually say “black people’s lives,” but rather, that he stumbled in mid-sentence with a verbal tic that sounded like that.
CBS may want you to believe that Rick Santorum is racist, but I trust that no matter your skin color, you are smart enough to figure out all on your own that his belief that all of us, including minorities, prefer jobs to food stamps is a simple matter of understanding basic human nature and dignity. The Left’s view is the racist view, if you ask me. I don’t think poverty is a race issue. I think poverty is a poverty issue, and I think Rick Santorum just wants minorities to know that the Left is lying to them that poverty is a racial issue.
