Bush Derangement Syndrome, then Palin Derangement Syndrom and now...Santorum Derangement Syndrome?
Friday night on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, Zanny Minton Beddoes [1], the economics editor for the Economist magazine, expressed dread that the possibility Rick Santorum could win the Republican presidential nomination “completely terrifies me. I mean, how many decades back, how many centuries back does he want to take us?” She proceeded to relay the derogatory charge “Santorum would be a fine mind for the 13th century.”
Audio: MP3 clip [2]
The British-born Beddoes, now based in Washington, DC, took up Santorum’s 2006 book [3], It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good:
I read a little bit of his book this week, which is terrifying – logical, but terrifying – and there was a review of it, I think it was the Philadelphia Inquirer when it first came out and it said that Santorum would be a fine mind for the 13th century. And it’s kind of right. It’s logical, it’s natural law, it’s the kind of Catholic absolutist view of the world of several centuries ago.
-- Brent Baker is Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center. Click here [4] to follow Brent Baker on Twitter.