Rick Santorum has garnered quite a bit of attention recently for his animated remarks against pornography, and on two separate Sunday shows the Republican presidential candidate refused to cede an inch, doubling down on his crusade against “hard-core pornography.”
A recently added section on the candidate’s website declares that America is “suffering a pandemic of harm from pornography,” and laments that the “Obama Administration has turned a blind eye to those who wish to preserve our culture from the scourge of pornography and has refused to enforce obscenity laws.” The site goes on to say that the Justice Department “seems to favor pornographers over children and families.”
Asked to defend this odd claim, Santorum argued Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union that the Justice Department is not enforcing pornography laws as rigorously as President George W. Bush’s DOJ did.
“Well you have to look at the proof that’s in the prosecution. Under the Bush administration, pornographers were prosecuted much more rigorously under existing law than they are under the Obama administration,” Santorum said. “My conclusion is they have not put a priority on prosecuting these cases, and in doing so, they are exposing children to a tremendous amount of harm. And that to me says they’re putting the un-enforcement of this law and putting children at risk as a result of that.”
It’s not clear what data there is to back up Santorum’s claim, and his spokesman did not immediately return TPM’s inquiry for evidence. A Justice Department spokesperson also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The former senator made the same argument on ABC’s This Week.
“There are laws against purveying hard-core pornography,” he said. “And that — we have attorney generals in the country, at least under the Bush administration, who did prosecute that. And this administration isn’t. And I simply said I would follow the law, which I know in the case of Barack Obama can be somewhat of a hefty challenge for him.”
The sudden emphasis on pornography is a questionable strategy for a candidate whom top Republicans, eager to keep the focus in 2012 on fiscal concerns, worry has a tendency to get sidetracked with culture-war issues that are often a dead end with swing voters. While it animates a segment of social conservatives, battling pornography doesn’t make the list of top concerns for most Americans.
Yet, Santorum isn’t confining his anti-pornography crusade to enforcement of the law — he’s passionately making the case against the broader concept.
“Congress in its wisdom understood that hard-core pornography is very damaging,” he said on ABC, “particularly to young people, and that exposure on the Internet can be very damaging, and of course it’s very damaging to a lot of folks.”
