Let's start with an observation from Rush, pointing to John McCain's interview on Sunday's Meet the Press with David Gregory...
Gregory: You're worried about tone of the campaign. You've been in some nasty fights yourself politically. Do you think this is having a toll, this Republican primary?
McCain: This is the nastiest I have ever seen. It's a result of the worst decision the United States Supreme Court has made in many years, the Citizens United decision where you have naivete and sheer ignorance, uh, the majority, uh, of the Supreme Court, uh, just unloosened all mo -- released all money now.
...to which Rush appropriately responded, "That's absurd. With all due respect." When asked about the comment on CBS This Morning with Charlie Rose, Santorum responded to Sen. McCain's 'nastiest campaign' allegation quite succinctly:
"Yeah, he should tell the guy that he's supporting to stop spending tens and tens of millions of dollars running negative ads. It's not Rick Santorum who's been running all the negative ads or even Newt Gingrich. It's Mitt Romney who's systematically just gone out there and run a negative campaign, has had no positive vision for this country, and spends billionaire dollars to tear down every single opponent that's in his path."
Then came MSLSD (as Levin affectionately refers to that madhouse). As theRightScoop put it, Rick Santorum "stepped into the lions den" this morning on Morning Joe with Scarborough and crew...but he came out looking like Daniel, particularly towards the tired attempt to pigeonhole Santorum on the phony contraceptive debate.
"Joe, the only reason I talk about this issue, as I said, is with respect to government mandates on people of faith. That's why this issue continues to be talked about and should continue to be talked about in the context of government forcing people of faith to do things that are against the religious beliefs -- something the federal government has never done and should never do when it comes to whether it's the Catholic Church or any other legitimate religion."
Once again, right there with Rush: "Right on. Exactly right."
This is an issue because of Barack Obama violating the Constitution, acting without the authority to mandate that people who conscientiously object to these things must provide them. That's why it's in the news. It's in the news because Obama wants it in the news because Obama wants to be able to construct this phony Republican war on women. Nobody was talking about contraception until one of Obama's operatives, George Stephanopoulos at ABC News, brought it up in a question to Romney. It was in a Republican primary debate on January 7th in Manchester, New Hampshire.
It was not being discussed until then, and Stephanopoulos' question came literally out of the blue. And Romney said (paraphrased), "I don't know what you're talking about, George. This is silly. Nobody wants to ban contraception." Well, it turns out that Obama wanted to mandate that the Catholic Church buy it for everybody. If you want your own contraception, go down to Walmart and get it. It's five bucks or nine bucks. Going to do it! Why does everybody else have to pay for it? And where's Obama get the authority to tell the Catholic Church or any other church or religious school to buy it for somebody?
That's what this is about.
And Santorum is dead-on right about it.
