Rick Santorum may have accepted Alan Colmes’ apology but I won’t

Forgive me for being a little bit late on writing about this issue but my week last week was so jammed up with things going on that I didn’t get a chance to write in depth about this (although I did comment at Twitter). What am I talking about, you may ask? Liberal commentator Alan Colmes’ guttersnipe cheap shot at GOP presidential contender Rick Santorum and his family over how they handled the grieving process over the loss of their newborn baby boy Gabriel back in 1996. The remarks, made last Monday on a Fox News segment, were reported by the Huffington Post:

In a heated clash on Fox News, Colmes appeared on air with Rich Lowry, editor of National Review. The two contributors were discussingΒ Santorum’s recent surge in the polls, when Colmes brought up Santorum’s infant son who died just two hours after being born.

Colmes said, “Once [voters] get a load of some of the crazy things he’s said and done, like taking his two-hour-old baby who died right after childbirth home and played with it for a couple of hours so his other children would know that the child was real…”

Lowry interjected and called Colmes’ comment a “cheap shot.” “It’s not, it’s not a cheap shot,” Colmes said.

Lowry continued to cut off Colmes and said, “To say it’s β€˜crazy,’ something that’s that personal and harmful as losing a child, and to mock it, to mock him like that, is really beyond the pale and beneath you.” Lowry added that the remark was “contemptible.”

Colmes doubled down and said, “I’m not mocking the losing of the child, but what I’m saying is I think it shows a certain unusual attitude to take a two-hour baby home that died to play with his other children.”

Later, Colmes climbed down off his high horse and apologized to the Santorums, which they accepted:

Hannity brought up that Colmes had said he had apologized to Santorum and brought the audience to speed on his comments, or at least the subject matter therein. Santorum responded that β€œthere’s a lot of nasty stuff out there on the internet, and I’m sure Alan Colmes reads a lot of that stuff from the left.” He then explained what he had done with the child– remain with him for the night and show him to his siblings after he had passed, as a way to β€œrecognize the dignity of that life”– and added that β€œit was a tremendously healing experience,” though β€œI can understand why people may want to do something differently.”

As for his conversation with Colmes, Santorum explained that he accepted. β€œI know Alan is a very good person at heart,” he told Hannity, β€œHe made a mistake, he admitted the mistake… we all say things and do stupid things.” He did note, however, that it was β€œpart of the culture” for people to make mean comments and impossible to avoid them. β€œThey do say those things, but please, don’t repeat them.”

Santorum was and is extremely gracious in accepting Colmes apology about a deeply personal issue that the Santorums themselves put out there years ago in book form as part of their healing process, and also in order to try and help other families who have had to deal with the tragic loss of an infant child.

On the other hand, yours truly is not nearly as forgiving of Colmes and his despicable personal attack.

Frankly, I don’t believe Colmes’ apology. Β He has a history of going deeply negative and disturbingly personal in his attacks on the political opposition – as was the case with Governor Palin back in 2008, when he actually posted on his blog the insinuation that the Governor and her husband Todd had conceived their first son Track out of wedlock. Β  How did he come to that conclusion? He actually took the time to calculate the time of their anniversary back to the day they eloped, and concluded that because “less than 8 months” after they had their first son (screencap of the post here):

In herΒ speechΒ in Dayton today, Gov. Sarah Palin announced that she and her husband are celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary, which means they were married on August 29, 1988.

On April 20, 1989 – Β less than eight months after they elopedΒ  – their first son, Track, was born.

I think I can guess theΒ realΒ reason why they eloped, and it wasn’tΒ to save money on an expensive wedding.

Of course, Colmes wasn’t the only one who “went there” in nasty personal attacks on Palin. Β None of us will forget the obsession many on the far left (which some still have) had with whether or not Palin’s youngest son Trig, who suffers from Down’s Syndrome,Β Β was really her son or that of her daughter Bristol Palin – who in actuality was five months pregnant at the time with her own child. Β We’ll also never forget outrageous attacks from some so-called “feminists” about how Palin shouldn’t have subjected her special needs son to a brutal vice-presidential campaign and instead should have gone back home and been a full-time mom to Trig, in spite of the fact that Trig was rarely on the campaign trail with her.

Yes, some people issue(d) apologies and “clarifications” after the fact, but by that point it’s too late Β – which is exactly the way they want it. The idea with the political left, as it has been for decades now, is to throw mud on the wall and hope some of it sticks, even if some sacrificial lefty lambs come of as heartless jerks in the process. It’s a way of them inserting rumors, innuendos, and deliberate misrepresentations and distortions of the facts into the public discourse in order to try and convince just enough people that the right is full of nothing but Β backroad hicks, country bumpkins, and other various and assorted fruit cakes who are not fit to be your local dog catcher, much less a public servant in a high political office.

Conservative writer Mark Steyn slammed that point home in a column he wrote for National Review Online over the weekend which talked about the mythical “empathy” of the left, and how it has limits – especially when it comes to “weirdifying” conservatives for shameless political and social gain:

Lest you doubt that we’re headed for the most vicious election year in memory, consider the determined effort, within ten minutes of his triumph in Iowa, to weirdify Rick Santorum. Discussing the surging senator on Fox News, Alan Colmes mused on some of the β€œcrazy things” he’s said and done.

Santorum has certainly said and done many crazy things, as have most members of America’s political class, but the β€œcrazy thing” Colmes chose to focus on was Santorum’s β€œtaking his two-hour-old baby when it died right after childbirth home,” whereupon he β€œplayed with it.” MyNational ReviewΒ colleague Rich Lowry rightly slapped down Alan on air, and Colmes subsequently apologized, though not before Mrs. Santorum had been reduced to tears by his remarks. Undeterred, Eugene Robinson, the Pulitzer Prize–winningΒ Washington PostΒ columnist, doubled down on stupid and insisted that Deadbabygate demonstrated how Santorum is β€œnot a little weird, he’s really weird.”

[…]

There is something telling about what Peter Wehner atΒ CommentaryΒ rightly called the β€œcasual cruelty” of Eugene Robinson. The Left endlessly trumpets its β€œempathy.” President Obama, for example, has said that what he looks for in his judges is β€œthe depth and breadth of one’s empathy.” As he told his pro-abortion pals at Planned Parenthood, β€œwe need somebody who’s got the heart β€” the empathy β€” to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom.” Empathy, empathy, empathy: You barely heard the word outside clinical circles until the liberals decided it was one of those accessories no self-proclaimed caring progressive should be without.

Indeed, flaunting their empathy is what got Eugene Robinson and many others their Pulitzers β€” Robinson describes his newspaper column as β€œa license to feel.” Yet he’s entirely incapable of imagining how it must feel for a parent to experience within the same day both new life and death β€” or even to understand that the inability to imagine being in that situation ought to prompt a little circumspection.

The Left’s much-vaunted powers of empathy routinely fail when confronted by those who do not agree with them politically. Rick Santorum’s conservatism is not particularly to my taste (alas, for us genuine right-wing crazies, it’s that kind of year), and I can well see why fair-minded people would have differences with him on a host of issues from spending to homosexuality. But you could have said the same thing four years ago about Sarah Palin β€” and instead the Left, especially the so-called feminist Left, found it easier to mock her gleefully for the soi-disant retard kid and her fecundity in general. The usual rap against the Right is that they’re hypocrites β€” they vote for the Defense of Marriage Act, and next thing you know they’re playing footsie across the stall divider with an undercover cop at the airport men’s room. But Rick Santorum lives his values, and that seems to bother the Left even more.

Bang on.

And is it just me or does anyone else find it to be the height of absurdity for pro-abortion leftists like Colmes- you know, the kind who support a woman’s “right” to have her developing unborn child’s body parts sucked out piece by piece as part of the abortion process – attempting to assert moral authority over anything, much less a family’s respectful grieving process for an unborn baby they loved from the moment of conception?

Dear Alan Colmes and any other liberal, feminist or not, who has used and twisted (or who will use and twist in the future) this personal family tragedy in an attempt to score cheap political points during an election year: I’ve got two words for you and they’re not fit to print here, much less for a lady to say out loud. Β The first one starts with an “F” and the last one ends in a “u.” Β I’m sure you can figure the rest out, geniuses.

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