Rick Santorum, who is, by the very nature of the work he does and his position in politics, an elite, tends to strike out at the self-same people in much of his public speaking — but in a recent appearance, he said that “smart people” will never side with conservatives.
Rick Santorum, disliker of smart people, was a formidable threat to Romney and a strong candidate for the conservative base before he dropped out of the race earlier this year. Santorum, who in the past has called Barack Obama a “snob” for saying any American who wants to go to college should be able, spoke to his base in comments made to conservatives in a speech to the Values Voter Summit on Saturday.
BuzzFeed quoted Santorum , as he actually said out loud that conservative voters are basically not critical thinkers.
While many might be offended by such a characterization, a certain know-nothing level of rejection of critical thinking has really emerged prominently as a point of pride for many conservative voters — and former White House contender Rick Santorum seems to proudly be among those conservatives.
Santorum said:
“We will never have the media on our side, ever, in this country … We will never have the elite, smart people on our side.”
According to BuzzFeed, Santorum indicated that the left-leaning media “doesn’t like the other side,” and the former presidential candidate added:
“And not necessarily, I would argue, because they agree with them, but because they can influence the country … If just a few people make decisions about what this world looks like, what this country looks like, then you have people sitting in offices at major media outlets and Hollywood who think they can deal with a small group of people, to get them to jump through the hoops they want you to.”
Santorum doesn’t just think liberals are the problem, however — the conservative speaker also thinks that areligious and socially liberal conservatives and “libertarian types” who wish to cut spending but not tell women that they are on their own when paying for birth control are just as antithetical to true conservatives:
“When it comes to conservatism libertarian types can say, oh, well you know, we don’t want to talk about social issues … Without the church and the family, there is no conservative movement, there is no basic values of America.”
Do you think that conservatives like Rick Santorum are a symptom about how much of the current Republican platform has broken with traditional GOP values of self-sufficiency and individual liberty?
