Strange Bedfellows

Politics makes strange bedfellows. Credit for this quote widely goes to Charles Dudley Warner, a writer and friend of Mark Twain, who himself never said anything pithy.
In keeping with the spirit of strange bedfellows, what about Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum? This, according to his website:

Former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1990 at the age of 32, and from 1995 to 2007, served in the US Senate. In 2000, he was elected by his peers to the position of Senate Republican Conference Chairman.


Eventually, he got walloped in a Senate re-election bid. Mr. Santorum fancies himself "A Champion of Traditional American Values." That's actually the title of a PDF you can download on his site. He advocates fiscal sanity and wrote a book called "It Takes a Family." To that end, he and his wife have seven kids. The youngest, Isabella, 3 years old, is in the hospital with something called Trisomy 18, a genetic abnormality tha can cause developmental and cardiac problems. Apparently about 90% of children with this problem die before birth or result in a stillbirth. For those who survive, fewer than 1% reach age 10. A horrible situation for a little girl and her family.
The difficulties the Santorums face and his recently elevated profile bring to mind another incident involving one of their children. Their son, whom they called Gabriel, died at 20 weeks gestation in 1996. Again, tragic. And under such a circumstance, parents could have unusual reactions. But they took the dead fetus home and allowed their other children to hold it. Before that, the couple apparently spent the night in a hospital bed with the dead baby. He's against embryonic-stem-cell research but finds it acceptable to sleep with the dead baby. Truly a strange bedfellow. People of faith, if you were to poke around the Internet, seemingly find inspiration in the Santorum family's embrace of the fetus and willingness to channel its grief in such a fashion. Wouldn't anyone not caught up in religious zealotry find it troubling, not to mention sleep-disruptive, to have a fetus in bed? If he were really pro-life, perhaps Mr. Santorum would support stem-cell research, which has the potential to save other lives.
Aside from which, you, as an adult, bringing a dead child home to your other children are either forcing them to retreat further into your religion to rationalize such behavior or fucking them up forever. Or both.
This guy is running for the Republican nomination? Seriously?

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Speaking of people running for the Republican nomination (again, seriously?). Newt Gingrich, Mr. Conservative, the one who trumpets himself as the true standard bearer. One of his ex-wives recently did a television interview in which she said Newt wanted to, basically, fuck another woman but not necessarily separate. She called it an open marriage. and Newt isn't unique in that respect.
That was his second wife. He currently is married to #3. I might be wrong, but that kind of track record doesn't seem fitting for one who campaigns on such a platform. When the CNN guy, John King, hosted a subsequent debate and asked him about the open-marriage issue, Newt responded quite testily that he was appalled the moderator would broach such a subject during a presidential debate. Indignant self-righteousness, that's the way to go. Bully the guy because you're so far off-base you have no cogent argument to provide. With his campaign platform relying on conservative values, people do have a right to question whether he advocates, at least for himself, a guilt-free piece on the side. Even more amazing is that at least three women have been willing to fuck him.