{"id":1350,"date":"2006-05-28T17:07:00","date_gmt":"2006-05-28T17:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog2\/2006\/05\/wright-is-wrong-on-rick-santorum\/"},"modified":"2006-05-28T17:07:00","modified_gmt":"2006-05-28T17:07:00","slug":"wright-is-wrong-on-rick-santorum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/2006\/05\/wright-is-wrong-on-rick-santorum\/","title":{"rendered":"Wright is Wrong on Rick Santorum"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I got the announcement today from Autism Speaks, that Senator Rick Santorum, Republican from Pennsylvania, of the extreme right wing of the GOP, is to be <a href=\"http:\/\/http:\/\/www.autismspeaks.org\/press\/santorum_pittsburgh_walk.php\">the Honorary Chair of the Seventh Annual Walk for Autism in Pittsburgh<\/a>.  I do not appreciate the Autism Walk being identified with someone who is<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Rick_Santorum\"> so heavily ideological<\/a>, known for his anti-gay rhetoric as well as his infamously stupid statement about Massachusetts,  in which <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hillnews.com\/thehill\/export\/TheHill\/News\/Frontpage\/071405\/kennedy.html\">he actually blamed the &#8220;liberal culture&#8221;<\/a> here as the reason for the pedophilia scandal in the Catholic Church.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, sure, Senator Santorum&#8217;s affiliation with the hallowed cause of autism research proves that autism is a universal challenge that spans all political beliefs. Or does it? I think that the Wrights&#8217; naive use of such a conservative symbol has suddenly and unfortunately thrust autism into the poisonous heart of Washington politics. The Wrights have a right to do whatever it takes to raise money for autism research: the ends justify the means. Or do they? With this decision, Rick Santorum comes out smelling like a rose because of his humanitarian ties to Autism Speaks, instead of the intolerant peabrain he really is. Maybe he ends up being reelected, score another point for the right wing that has grown in such strength in this country and given us wonders like tax breaks for hugely wealthy oil companies (while our gas prices rise astronomically) and voted huge budget cuts for public education while choking school systems with more and more difficult mandates like &#8220;No Child Left Behind.&#8221; While IDEA has never been fully funded.<\/p>\n<p>A person so highly identified with the right &#8212; he only recently recanted some of his beliefs in &#8220;Intelligent Design&#8221; &#8212; is not a wise choice to lead a crusade for something as non-political as autism research. It is foolishly naive. Autism Speaks, yet again, but not for me.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"on\" style=\"display: block;\" id=\"formatbar_CreateLink\" title=\"Link\" onmouseover=\"ButtonHoverOn(this);\" onmouseout=\"ButtonHoverOff(this);\" onmouseup=\"\" onmousedown=\"CheckFormatting(event);FormatbarButton('richeditorframe', this, 8);ButtonMouseDown(this);\"><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I got the announcement today from Autism Speaks, that Senator Rick Santorum, Republican from Pennsylvania, of the extreme right wing of the GOP, is to be the Honorary Chair of the Seventh Annual Walk for Autism in Pittsburgh. I do not appreciate the Autism Walk being identified with someone who is so heavily ideological, known [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-lM","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1350\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}