Allyn Gibson

On Reading Republicans

Filed under Politics 

Recently, for Sooper-Sekrit reasons, I have been following the post-Senate career of Rick Santorum, the former Senator from Pennsylvania (though he didn’t really live there).

This has meant, for instance, reading Santorum’s newspaper column for the Philly Inquirer.

I feel a thousand brain cells cry out in terror, and then suddenly silenced, every time I read a Santorum column.

I find that I don’t understand the hardline conservative Republicans. I wonder if they inhabit the same planet that I do. I wonder if they read and see and hear the same news that I do.

But they don’t. Santorum’s words may be in English, but they represent no reality I recognize.

C’est la vie.