Public Enemy #1

After 16 years in Congress — four in the House, 12 in the Senate — Santorum lost his bid for reelection in November.

Yet he hopes to remain in the public spotlight as director of the EPPC’s brand-new America’s Enemies program.

The maxim "takes one to know one" comes to mind, no?

Via Attytood, Santorum's "enemies", comes the word that former (how I love saying that word) PA Senator Rick Santorum has found a new job. The National Review (link available at Attytood) has an article, Rick's Return, which notes that he's joining the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative Washington-based think tank.

Quoting Santorum, the piece explains the new position:

“It’s a stark name,” says Santorum. “But we wanted to be candid about the fact that America really does have enemies and to point out that the nature of these enemies is much more complex than what people realize. It’s not just Islamic fascism, but also Venezuela, North Korea, and, increasingly in my opinion, Russia.”

This new endeavor will expand on a theme that Santorum developed toward the end of his campaign, when he focused almost exclusively on foreign threats.

“Maybe that wasn’t the smartest political strategy, spending the last few months running purely on national security,” he says. “I was even more hawkish than the president.”

* * * *

“We expect to be very, very active,” he says. One of his focal points will be religious liberty and how people of faith might confront radical Islam.

* * * *

So it appears that although Santorum is gone from the Senate, he’s not about to fade away from public view.

According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Santorum joins think tank:

The center was established 30 years ago to apply moral principles derived from Christianity and Judaism to public policy issues. It is strongly, but not exclusively, associated with conservative Catholic intellectuals.

With Santorum, they got the conservative and Catholic part right anyway. And as to the "ethics" of Santorum, John Morgan of The Pennsylvania Progressive, in Santorum Finds Work, does a nice job of expressing Santorum's challenging new gig:

He'll also be challenged by ethics. Of course you cannot assume these right wing think tanks names have anything to do with reality. For example he'll be director of the organization's "America's Enemies" program. Many of us thought he constituted one of America's enemies, especially when his ethical lapses became public. Ethical lapses like setting up a charity to pay his campaign employees and his Starbucks bills. Lapses like forcing Pennsylvania taxpayers to fund his children's education when they resided in Virginia. Ethics problems like his sweetheart mortgage deal.

Actually this seems very apropo. An unethical former Senator working for an institution which pretends to be about ethics then hires one of the most unethical Senators ever. I couldn't have made this one up.

Gee, and the job's in D.C. I guess he won't be spending much time in his Penn Hills palace, huh?

UPDATE: Couldn't resist this comment about the America's Enemies program from Wonkette, Santorum Paid Big Bucks to be Scared of Everyone:

The program’s mission is to make as many enemies as possible and try to convince people to be terrified of them.

Tags: Pennsylvania, Politics, Santorum