Santorum hates the handicapped

Dana Milbank's column in the Washington Post might be of interest to some here:

"President-unelect Rick Santorum made his triumphant return to the Capitol on Monday afternoon and took up a brave new cause: He is opposing disabled people.

Specifically, Santorum, joined by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), declared his wish that the Senate reject the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities — a human rights treaty negotiated during George W. Bush’s administration and ratified by 126 nations, including China, Russia, Iran, Cuba, Syria and Saudi Arabia.

The former presidential candidate pronounced his “grave concerns” about the treaty, which forbids discrimination against people with AIDS, who are blind, who use wheelchairs and the like. “This is a direct assault on us,” he declared at a news conference.

Lee, a tea party favorite, said he, too, has “grave concerns” about the document’s threat to American sovereignty. “I will do everything I can to block its ratification, and I have secured the signatures of 36 Republican senators, all of whom have joined with me saying that we will oppose any ratification of any treaty during this lame-duck session.”

Lame or not, Santorum and Lee recognized that it looks bad to be disadvantaging the disabled in their quest for fair treatment. The former senator from Pennsylvania praised Lee for having “the courage to stand up on an issue that doesn’t look to be particularly popular to be opposed.”

Courageous? Or just contentious? The treaty requires virtually nothing of the United States. It essentially directs the other signatories to update their laws so that they more closely match the Americans with Disabilities Act. Even Lee thought it necessary to preface his opposition with the qualifier that “our concerns with this convention have nothing to do with any lack of concern for the rights of persons with disabilities.”

Their concerns, rather, came from the dark world of U.N. conspiracy theories. The opponents argue that the treaty, like most everything the United Nations does, undermines American sovereignty — in this case via a plot to keep Americans from home-schooling their children and making other decisions about their well-being.

The treaty does no such thing; if it had such sinister aims, it surely wouldn’t have the support of disabilities and veterans groups, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Republican senators such as John McCain (Ariz.) and John Barrasso (Wyo.), and conservative legal minds such as Boyden Gray and Dick Thornburgh.

But the opposition is significant, because it shows the ravages of the Senate’s own disability: If members can’t even agree to move forward on an innocuous treaty to protect the disabled, how are they to agree on something as charged as the “fiscal cliff”? And although the number of senators who actually oppose the treaty — such as Lee, Pat Toomey (Pa.) and Jim DeMint (S.C.) — is probably quite small, Lee’s boast of 36 signatures means he has persuaded enough of his colleagues to block action, at least temporarily. (Treaties require a two-thirds vote in the Senate to pass.)

Santorum made an emotional appeal, even bringing his daughter Bella, who has a severe birth defect, to the Senate hearing room for the event. “There’s no benefit to the United States from passing it,” he said, as Bella wriggled in her mother’s arms. “But what it does is open up a Pandora’s box for the most vulnerable among us: children with disabilities.”

Yet the opponents couldn’t agree on how this box would be opened. “Do I believe that states will pass laws or have to pass laws in conformity with the U.N. edict?” Santorum asked himself. “Do we have to amend IDEA?” the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. “I don’t have any fear anytime soon that IDEA will be amended. But I do have concerns that people will go to courts and they will use this standard in this convention.”

This was contradicted by the next man at the microphone, home-schooling advocate Mike Farris, who pointed out that the document has a provision stating that “you can’t go to court automatically. You must have implementing legislation first” — the very thing Santorum says he does not expect to happen.

Still, their spurious theory of a U.N. takeover of parenting was enough to lead Lee and Santorum to oppose a treaty that would extend American values worldwide and guarantee disabled people equal treatment, and freedom from torture and exploitation.

Santorum justified his opposition by saying that other countries wouldn’t actually enforce the provisions. “It does not provide any moral leadership,” he said.

But in this fight against rights for the disabled, Santorum doesn’t have a leg to stand on."

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Comments

[Bobby Hill]

Keep it up Republicans! Stay true to your ideals! It is the best thing you can do to ensure a Dem majority.

[GOPer]

Good for them for sticking up for the common man. I always thought it funny that stores are required to have both disabled access for parking and restrooms but yet the police only enforce the parking lot and not the restrooms in giving out tickets. Wait, there's a revenue maker for Seattle. Enforce the usage of the handicap restroom stall so TS can have her government handouts.

[Chucks]

Really now. Who really gives a rats ass about gimps? Why? Granted, I really enjoy my close in parking spaces.
It just makes no sense to have the UN have another reason to enforce "laws" in our country.
Screw the UN. Throw them out of our country and our lives. Use the money we piss away on them on free bus passes for middle class Americans. It is a right our nation has neglected for decades.

[GOPer]

Chucks, I agree with you on not obligating ourselves to the whims of the UN. But instead of spending the savings on bus passes, how about using it to pay down this Deficit Obama and the Progressives have given us.

[BlackRhino]

BENJY SARLIN, over at TPM enlighten us of more GOP knowledge fire power. From none other than the brain trust of Mitt the Twit.

Top Rmoney adviser

“Stuart Stevens, who penned an op-ed in the Washington Post on Wednesday arguing that by winning wealthier and whiter voters, Romney secured the moral victory over Obama.”

The implied argument that poorer votes are inferior seems to undercut the campaign’s central message over the last two years: that Romney’s top concern was providing jobs for the jobless.

And the coup de grâce,

Unfortunately for Romney, poor and minority votes counted just the same as the allegedly superior votes Stevens favored.

Keep it klassy GOP.

[T-S]

Aryan superiority anyone? Sound a little familiar?

Fineman on Ed (I think) echoed the sentiments from gopper and the car salesman and added that they must think they're special. He guessed all the other Americans don't count. Of course, the car salesman would be one of the "others" if he hadn't married a gumment worker with a gumment paycheck and gumment healthcare and gone through easy bankruptcy and hit the WAMU lottery. Yeah, he really earned it.

[GOPer]

Aryan superiority, a far bigger stretch than my NK reference the other day. What a joke you are TS. Go to DSHS and get your gum meant handout.

[BlackRhino]

They openly abhor the poor, the handy capped, minorities, women and the young, I get it.
No matter how they feel about themselves, I love ‘em for it.

[T-S]

They're digging their own graves. I love it as well.

Read it again: wealthier and whiter . . . Far bigger stretch? Only if you can't read.

[Hedge Fund Hal]

My loathing of Obama took me off focus somewhat on what was wrong with Romney during the campaign season. No doubt tht Romney would have got the economy really going, unlike Barack, and would have been a better Preident. The problem was that the voters clearly couldn't stand either man, and since the consensus was that Obama got a pass on the economy this term because of Bush, they went with the guy they already knew. Only Romney and a bunch of nuts ran for GOP nomination this time. Jeb Bush could have beaten Obama handily, with his brown-skinned Hispanic wife and mixed race kids, pleasant manner and good , non extreme ideas. Romney was out of touch with minorities and tone deaf to key issues, such as when he said he would veto the Dream Act. America will never elect a Mormon due to their crackpot Book of Mormon and history, unpleasant racist covenants, now removed, in their past,and extreme personal restrictions such as no drinking, smoking or coffee consumption.It was naive othe GOP to think America would accept a Mormon. An extreme goody-goody "square" like Mormon Romney, although a good man, was the absolute worst kind of guy for the Repubs to pit against Obama and his Chicago pitbull campaign org. On a brighter note, if you count the start line from election day 2008 we are blessedly more than halfway through our "long national nightmare".