That's Right, The Women Are Smarter

More evidence that men - especially conservative Republican men - are completely clueless when it comes to raising children on a (very) fixed income was provided at a recent Senate Finance Committee hearing, when the spectacularly insufferable Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) defended a move to, at the request of the White House, eliminate a provision that would have added $11.25 billion in child care money to a welfare reform bill.

"Making people struggle a bit," Santorum declared, "is not necessarily a bad thing."

So, women with children who work for minimum wage in some dead-end job should get less money if any for child care - it'll build their character. Now I get it.

Two female senators - one a Democrat, the other a Republican - responded with shock and indignation. "It [Santorum's remark] put me in a bad mood all day," Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) said. "It's almost as if it's an objective to make people struggle. There's plenty of hardship to go around. We don't need to create it for them.

"It's so obvious when you're out there with those single moms that they want to give 150 percent to get off welfare and provide for their families and achieve self-sufficiency and pride. But they just can't do it without help and especially without child care."

Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME), the only Greek-American other than Michael Dukakis who has no passion, was immediately expected to offer an amendment on the Senate floor that would try to restore about half of the original proposed amount. What happens then is unknown.

Postscript: Rick Santorum is quickly becoming the Dan Quayle of our time, a relatively young legislator (he's about 45) whose fresh-faced youthfulness is overshadowed by his immaturity, his neanderthal voting record, and his overall thickheadedness. He's also the third most powerful Republican in the Senate. If the 2008 Republican presidential nominee is from the South (very likely; Senate Republican leader Bill Frist and Florida governor Jeb Bush are potential candidates), this dangerous right-wing ideologue from the Northeast could be a possible vice presidential candidate.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.