In a move that was a great relief for the United States as a whole but a great drain on Fatal Downflaw specifically, Rick Santorum has officially dropped out of the presidential race. Sure, we’re glad that sanctimonious, gay-bashing lunatic won’t get a shot at the White House, but we’ve gotten so much mileage out of him for the last eight months or so that honestly, we’re not entirely sure how we’re going to continue to provide content without him.
As a tribute to the end of The Froth’s campaign, we offer you a list of our ten favorite idiotic things that managed to find their way out of his word-hole in the last four months alone. To soften the blow to your sanity, each one will be accompanied by an adorable picture of a panda bear. Because honestly, this much stupidity can be really taxing on the soul.
10. “In the Netherlands people wear a different bracelet if you’re elderly and the bracelet is ‘do not euthanize me.’ Because they have voluntary euthanasia in the Netherlands, but half the people who are euthanized every year, and it’s 10 percent of all deaths for the Netherlands, half of those people are euthanized involuntarily at hospitals because they are older and sick. And so elderly people in the Netherlands don’t go to the hospital, they go to another country, because they are afraid, because of budget purposes, that they will not come out of that hospital if they go in with sickness”
See, this is actually complete horseshit, as you may have guessed. I won’t pretend I understand what goes on inside Santorum’s head, but this appears to be a wholesale misunderstanding of Holland’s euthanasia laws coupled with the good old “death panel” saw that Republicans never seem to get tired of, no matter how often and how vehemently it is debunked
9. “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. Many of the Christian faith have said, well, that’s OK; contraception is OK. It’s not OK. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”
Ah yes, the old “birth control makes women sluts” chestnut. It’s a classic for a reason. And that reason is that douchebag religious nuts and social conservatives are as terrified of a woman’s sexuality as they are of tax audits, black people and grizzly bears combined.
8. “President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob!”
Yeah, it’s nothing but pure elitist liberal snobbery to want everyone in America to go to college. It probably has nothing to do with the fact that statistically, people with a bachelor’s degree earn almost 50% more than those without. Or simply that one’s life is innumerably enriched by education, even separate from the economic gains. Or that Santorum himself holds a BA in political science from Penn State, an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh and a Juris Doctor from the Dickinson School of Law. Fucking snob.
7. “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money; I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.”
To be fair, The Froth, when confronted with this stupefyingly racist statement on John King, defended himself thus: “I’ve looked at that quote, in fact I looked at the video. In fact, I’m pretty confident I didn’t say black. I started to say is a word and then sort of changed and it sort of — blah — mumbled it and sort of changed my thought.” Oh. Well, that sounds completely reasonable.
6. “If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual (gay) sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything.”
Of course, because legal, consensual sex between two people of the same gender is exactly the same thing as incest. Also, just a little heads-up here, you actually do have the right to adultery. Last I checked, Newt Gingrich was still a free man.
5. “I don’t believe in an America where the separation between church and state is absolute. The idea that the church can have no influence or no involvement in the operation of the state is absolutely antithetical to the objectives and visions of our country.”
Great. Does that go for Muslims as well?
4. “We went into a recession in 2008 because of gasoline prices. The bubble burst in housing because people couldn’t pay their mortgages because of $4 a gallon gasoline.”
Wait…what? 
3. “Like any other state, there has to be compliance with this and any other federal law, and that is that English has to be the principal language. There are other states with more than one language such as Hawaii, but to be a state of the United States, English has to be the principal language.”
This one almost sounds reasonable, if you ignore the fact that the United States has no official language, there has never been a requirement for a state to make English the principal language for a state to join the union, and that he was talking about Puerto Rico. At a speech in Puerto Rico. Loosely translated from the Dickbaggish: “I know you’ve been a Spanish-speaking nation then protectorate of the United States since your founding, but if you want to become a state everyone here has to learn English or go back to wherever they came from. Like…Puerto Rico, I guess…”
2. “We need a candidate who’s going to be a fighter for freedom. Who’s going to get up and make that the central theme in this race because it is the central theme in this race. I don’t care what the unemployment rate’s going to be. Doesn’t matter to me. My campaign doesn’t hinge on unemployment rates and growth rates. It’s something more foundational that’s going on.”
Well sure. I mean, who the fuck cares about unemployment when there’s freedom fighting to be done? 
1. “Higher income people don’t have to pay taxes if they don’t want to.”
Full disclosure: I couldn’t find any context for this one at all. But at the same time, I honestly can’t even imagine a context in which that statement doesn’t make me want to punch the speaker in the face repeatedly while screaming “FUCK YOU YOU FUCKING FUCK”.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/03/05/santorum-higher-income-people-dont-have-to-pay-taxes/
It is no better in context . . .
How can I get a bracelet that says “Please DO euthanize me”?