Earlier in the week, in an interview with the funny conservative columnist S.E. Cupp, former senator Rick Santorum took a couple of potshots at Sarah Palin for skipping this weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference. “I have a feeling she has some demands on her time. And a lot of them have financial benefit attached to them, uh, so I’m sure that she’s doing what’s best for her and her family,” he said. “I wouldn’t have turned it down, but I don’t live in Alaska, and I’m not the mother to all these kids.” So, basically he’s saying that she wasn’t speaking at CPAC because she was probably somewhere else making lots of filthy money for herself, which is sort of defensible because she’s a mom and has to provide for her brood.
Mediaite columnist Tommy Christopher noted the problems with this statement on Wednesday. “He’s essentially saying that Palin turned down the CPAC keynote slot because she’s too busy gettin’ paid (Palin does command hefty speaking fees), but that he wouldn’t have turned it down because he’s not ‘the mother to all these kids,’” he wrote. “Palin has five children. Santorum has seven, so the implication is that there’s something about being a mom that necessitates whoring yourself out for speaking fees, while dude parents can freewheelingly stick to their principles.”
Palin does do things for free, and she’d have been a rock star at CPAC, so the idea that her self-interest kept her away doesn’t really hold water. And she took care to say so last night in an appearance on Fox News’ Hannity. “I think some things maybe were maybe taken out of context. So I will not call him the knuckle-dragging Neanderthal that perhaps others would want to call him. I’ll let his wife call him that instead,” she joked. “I think that maybe he is uninformed as to why it is that I can’t make it to another political speech in a couple of weeks. As I’ve explained, February is our busiest winter month. And just because I am a mom that does not mean that I didn’t want to be there.
“I’m the proud mother of five children,” she said. “My kids don’t hold me back.” Well said. And on that note, Happy 47th Birthday Sarah, from Daily Intel!
