Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin has her facts royally mixed up on Rick Santorum (e.g., he’s not opposed to women being in the military, despite her claim) in a column that could pass as a textbook example of ad hominem in a college debate class. Ironically, she has entitled her scathing remarks “Santorum the scold makes the rounds.”
Don’t laugh, but Rick Santorum is making the rounds of conservative dead-tree magazines (he already spoke to National Review and is reportedly heading over to the Weekly Standard after Thanksgiving), trying out his I-told-you-so’s and, one would presume, selling himself as the next great hope of the conservative movement. I know. It’s preposterous. (If you thought a 3-point loss for Mitt Romney was bad, imagine the blowout had Santorum been the nominee.)
What you see above, and in the rest of her column, is what happens when the person next in line for the nomination is someone you despise. Why does she despise him? Because he’s a social conservative, like me. Hence, I am not at all amused. Make no mistake, it is not Rick Santorum she is demonizing. It’s all of us who happen to believe that it’s wrong for school teachers in public schools to tell our kids that homosexuality is natural. Or that it is “important” for women to be able to kill their unborn children in order for them to be “equal” to men in society.
Erick Erickson pointed out Rubin’s disdain for social conservatives back in May, when “gay rights” activist Richard Grenell left the Romney campaign. Who can blame Erickson for a little ad hominem in his critique? It may be the only thing that will reach someone who uses it so frequently, as Rubin does.:
It would not be the first time Jennifer Rubin, the Washington Post’s supposed scribe of the conservative movement, has taken liberty to smear social conservatives she loathes. It seems this time she’s being a willing mouth piece for Richard Grenell, the jerk Mitt Romney hired as a foreign policy spokesman.
And let’s put heavy emphasis on the jerk part as Rubin does not even bother mentioning it and she blows hot air into her little sad trombone.
Back then, she was blowing “hot air” into a “sad trombone.” Now, she is blowing hot air while stabbing her ad hominem knives at Rick Santorum. Either way, it’s not legitimate argument. It’s something you should ground your children over if they did it to a classmate. We’re the grown-ups here, not Rubin, and don’t you forget it.
Ad hominem is used by those who are not that familiar with, nor concerned about, what the truth is in a given situation. The leftist blog Media Matters rightly called Rubin out for being completely devoid of consistency in remarks on Mitt Romney. Take a look. When you do not have truth on your side, the Left can make mince meat of your columns with a few taps on a keyboard. Inconsistencies like that would be on the level of journalistic malpractice if Rubin were a journalist. As it stands, like me, she’s just a blogger who gets paid a lot more money than I do to hurl insults at people she hates.
If you’re an average person who prefers common sense, honesty and integrity to highly paid mudslingers, and if you are tired of Rick Santorum being smeared for his conservatism by people who call themselves “conservative,” head on over to Patriot Voices and sign up for a Premium Membership. There is also a Basic Membership. Working together, we can make a big difference. The video below is an example of a Patriot Voices video that, in my opinion, represents money well spent. This is what the truth looks like. It makes sense and doesn’t engage in ad hominem. It boldly makes the case for reality. That is something you won’t regularly find anywhere on the pages of the Washington Post.
