We had a reference to it in our Around The ‘Sphere below, but it’s just such an achievement in a political turnabout, such a quick dumping of previous allies after a finger held aloft in the wind detected a different direction that he beat out Majority Leader Bill Frist.
And so: The Moderate Voice awards its highly coveted Plastic Wrap Political Transparency Of The Year Award to Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum:
Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) withdrew on Thursday his affiliation from the Christian-rights law center that defended a school district’s policy requiring the teaching of “intelligent design.”
Santorum, the Senate’s third-ranking Republican, is facing a tough reelection challenge next year. Earlier, he praised the Dover Area School District for “attempting to teach the controversy of evolution.”
But the day after a federal judge ruled that the district’s policy on intelligent design is unconstitutional, Santorum told the Philadelphia Inquirer that he was troubled by testimony indicating that religion motivated some school board members to adopt the policy.
He just discovered that religion played a part in the concept of intelligent design? But let’s give him the benefit of the doubt.
Maybe he thought that those who sincerely believe the concept think that living organisms were created by a giant pumpernickel. But after he read the court decision, he realized religion played a role.
Santorum was on the advisory board of the Michigan-based Thomas More Law Center, which defended the district’s policy. “I thought the Thomas More Law Center made a huge mistake in taking this case and in pushing this case to the extent they did,” Santorum said. He said he will end his affiliation with the center.
The leading Democratic challenger in Santorum’s 2006 reelection bid, state Treasurer Robert P. Casey Jr., accused him of backtracking. Casey spokesman Larry Smar said that Santorum’s statements were “yet another example of ‘Election Year Rick’ changing his positions for political expediency.” Casey has led Santorum in recent polls.
This post is NOT meant to be a PARTISAN post — and the award is not given for partisan reasons.
Rather, it will be given each year to a politico from either party who earns our eternal admiration by shifting positions in such a delightfully transparent way that he/her/it allows citizens of all parties to see politics having reached sheer personal critical mass. A politico who earns it must demonstrate an ability to twist a political position so abruptly and sharply that he/she/it could win a retro twist contest.
For his ability to jettison former allies at the bat of an eyelash (or, rather, with the decision of a court and signs that a stance may be a difficult to defend at minimum political cost), and offer a truly breathtaking explanation, Senator Rick Santorum wins our award.
A CROSS SECTION OF OTHER WEBLOGS IN AWE OF RICK SANTORUM’S NIMBLENESS:
The Penultimate Genius
Southern Appeal
Backfill
Noisey Room
American Agenda
Catholic To The Left
Below Me
Restless Mania
aTypical Joe
The Eternal Gaijin
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.