Rick Santorum
Ricky Santorum is the Republican candidate who came within eight votes of beating Mitt Romney in the Iowa caucus that is the first step in the race to be the Republican’s presidential candidate this year.
Santorum is very strongly pro-life and pro-family and for this reason is being thoroughly demonised by his enemies and thorougly labelled by much of the media.
We can even find some of this labelling going on in The Daily Telegraph which is usually friendly to conservative candidates.
In this article in today’s paper we read about his “zero-tolerance” stance of abortion and gay rights. Why not simply say his “strong” stance, or his “unbending” stance, or even his “principled” stance?
The reason for the use of “zero-tolerance” is because we are being invited to disagree with his stance.
A little further on Santorum is described as being “stridently pro-life” while Barack Obama stance on abortion is described as “moderate”.
But when he was a State Senator in Illinois and a US Senator in Washington, Obama was one of the most militantly pro-abortion/pro-choice politicians around. His voting record shows this. So in what way is he “moderate” on the issue?
Again, we are being invited to reject Santorum and accept Obama.
Admittedly the Santorum style grates even with some pro-life voters but this manipulation of language has at most a place in opinion columns (within reason) but no place at all in a news report.