COMMENTARY | GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum may be the newest flavor in the Republican of the Month contest after Iowa voters finally got to weigh in their votes on Tuesday, finishing just eight votes behind Mitt Romney, but one thing is certain: Santorum is clearly out of touch with reality with the majority of Americans, including the dire state of the economy, health care and employment.
The former senator apparently is so out of touch that he apparently believes African-Americans are the only citizens on welfare in our country.
According to the New York Daily News, while Santorum was at an Iowa campaign stop on Sunday, January 1, he told his supporters, "I don't want to make black people's lives better by giving them somebody else's money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money."
As you can imagine, the NAACP is up in arms about his remark, and as well they should be. We all should be. Santorum hasn't apologized for the remark. He's decided to go another route and deny he made the comment at all, but he can clearly be heard on a CNN video making the controversial statement.
Not only is it an unfair stereotype, it isn't even accurate by a long shot. Federal benefits are not determined by race, but by income. In Iowa, only nine percent of welfare recipients are black. 84 percent are white.
Santorum also goes on during his speech Sunday to explain why four in ten children of Iowa are on Medicaid. It isn't because they need health care. The former Senator says it's because President Obama wants their vote. Somehow I think that's a pretty far stretch from the truth. If you ask parents of these children if they signed their children up for Medicaid for any other reason assure they have access to healthcare, they would likely find his statement laughable.
Does Santorum and the other GOP candidates realize the U.S. is the only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not have a universal health care system? The reason that many children as well as adults do not have health care insurance is because their employment benefits ended after a job loss or change and many employers do not offer benefits at all. To say that Obama wants to provide health care for children just because he wants the vote, is a sad attack on the truth.
Santorum will likely dive to the bottom of the GOP candidate pool soon enough, and there should be an outcry against not only his racially prejudiced comments, but his unrealistic view of American society.
