There are simply no boundaries

Rick Santorum will have to expect more of this if he continues to garner support:

During the question and answer portion of Rick Santorum’s second to last campaign event of the day, a voter brought up a painful memory from the former Pennsylvania senator’s past.

At a Pizza Ranch restaurant in Newton, Iowa,  a member of the audience asked Santorum to react to a controversial attack leveled by liberal Fox News contributor Alan Colmes, who called the Santorum family’s approach to grieving for their dead baby boy, who lived for only two hours after his birth in 1996, “crazy.”

In a Fox News interview on Monday, Colmes characterized Santorum’s decision to bring the deceased child home an example of “some of the crazy things he’s said and done.”

But in Iowa this afternoon, Santorum explained that it was important for his other children to “know they had a brother.”

Santorum’s wife, Karen, who was at the event and listened to her husband talk about the experience, began to weep.

“It’s just so inappropriate,” she said as tears streamed from her eyes.

Earlier on Monday, Colmes criticized Santorum’s handling of the death of the child, Gabriel Michael Santorum.

“Get a load of some of the crazy things he’s said and done, like taking his two-hour-old baby when it died right after child birth home and played with it so that his other children would know that the child was real,” the liberal pundit said in a Fox News interview.

Colmes later apologized and Santorum, as many would expect, was gracious in accepting that apology:

Earlier today, Alan Colmes made headlines by making an unseemly comment about Rick Santorum– namely, about his child who died hours after being born. Colmes let his Twitter followers know that he did his part to apologize to Santorum, and the latter responded to that apology on air today with Sean Hannity, explaining his actions with his child and his acceptance of Colmes’ apology.

Hannity brought up that Colmes had said he had apologized to Santorum and brought the audience to speed on his comments, or at least the subject matter therein. Santorum responded that “there’s a lot of nasty stuff out there on the internet, and I’m sure Alan Colmes reads a lot of that stuff from the left.” He then explained what he had done with the child– remain with him for the night and show him to his siblings after he had passed, as a way to “recognize the dignity of that life”– and added that “it was a tremendously healing experience,” though “I can understand why people may want to do something differently.”

As for his conversation with Colmes, Santorum explained that he accepted. “I know Alan is a very good person at heart,” he told Hannity, “He made a mistake, he admitted the mistake… we all say things and do stupid things.” He did note, however, that it was “part of the culture” for people to make mean comments and impossible to avoid them. “They do say those things, but please, don’t repeat them.”

Sadly, people will, incessantly.  I hope Santorum and his wife will prepare themselves for the nastiness that will come, especially if he does as well as polls are indicating he will today in Iowa.

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Posted by Rick Rice on January 3, 2012.
Filed under 2012 Presidential Race, Meme Watch, Rick Santorum.
I blog more regularly at my own place where plain thoughts are delivered roughly. My about page gives you more on who I am.

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