Santorum daughter's illness ripples in GOP race

• MareneCorp wrote on 2012-04-10 14:25

  Mitt Romney’s attempt to pull off a victory in Rick Santorum’s home state of Pennsylvania was all set to go into overdrive Monday with attack ads highlighting how voters there soundly rejected him in his 2006 Senate race.
  
  But the aggressive tactics that have served Mr. Romney so well in other states faced an unexpected complication: the emergency hospitalization of Mr. Santorum’s disabled daughter Bella, which prompted an outpouring of public sympathy.
  
  The Romney camp abruptly pulled the ads on Monday morning. Bella, 3, who was born with a rare chromosomal disorder, was expected to return home soon to Virginia from the hospital, the Santorum campaign said. Her medical struggles, which in some ways have become the emotional centerpiece of Mr. Santorum’s race, have the potential to complicate Mr. Romney’s effort to quickly end the Republican nominating fight.
  
  Campaign says Santorum's daughter out of hospital.
  
  “The family has been humbled and overwhelmed by the amount of support they’ve received,” said a spokesman for Mr. Santorum’s campaign, Hogan Gidley, citing thousands of comments on the candidate’s Facebook page and e-mailed “prayer chains.”
  
  Mr. Santorum’s decision to cancel campaign events to be with his daughter after she was hospitalized on Friday with pneumonia — her second bout since January — intensified speculation that he would choose the moment to exit the race gracefully, as a chorus of Republican leaders have urged for the sake of party unity.
  
  But Mr. Gidley doused that notion. Mr. Santorum planned to return to campaigning in the south-central Pennsylvania town of Bedford with a rally on Tuesday.
  
  “The fact is, there is still a narrow path, but a path nonetheless, for Rick Santorum to become the nominee, and the Romney campaign knows it or they wouldn’t be sending people all over Pennsylvania and Texas to prevent it,” Mr. Gidley said.
  
  The ad the Romney campaign pulled, after it ran at least 11 times in the Philadelphia media market, according to Kantar Media’s campaign media analysis group, bluntly addressed Pennsylvania voters: “We fired him as senator. Why promote him to president?”
  
  The Romney campaign substituted a positive ad “out of deference” to Mr. Santorum, a spokeswoman, Andrea Saul, said.
  
  Video: When will Santorum return to the trail?
  
  Once Bella is released from the hospital, the Romney campaign is expected to put the anti-Santorum ad back into its rotation, although that could take a day or two. The Romney campaign has planned a $2.9 million barrage of advertising over the next two weeks in Pennsylvania, which Mr. Santorum has called a must-win contest, although polls show him losing ground.
  
  Jim Roddey, chairman of the Republican Committee of Allegheny County, who has endorsed Mr. Romney, said the campaign probably would conduct polling to see whether Bella’s hospitalization remained a sensitive issue. But, he said, sympathy for Bella would probably not bring Mr. Santorum any new votes, nor would it deter the Romney camp from full-throated attacks on Mr. Santorum.
  
  “He’s still not talking about the kinds of things most people are most concerned about, jobs and the economy.”
  
  Bella, who was born with trisomy 18, a rare disorder that is fatal to most of children within their first year, has become a touchstone for Mr. Santorum, both humanizing him and serving as flashpoint for debate over health care with President Obama.
  
  Mr. Santorum mentions her at almost every appearance, sometimes explaining that his wife is not at his side because she is home caring for her, and sometimes, especially in churches, telling of how when Bella was born, doctors sent her home to die because her disorder was “incompatible with life.”
  
  “It angered us to hear that,” Mr. Santorum explains in a video on his campaign Web site. “She was our daughter like every one of our children and we were not going to let her go.”
  
  While many voters find Mr. Santorum’s brand of social conservatism and his speaking style off-putting, it is clear at rallies that Bella softens him. Audiences listen raptly to his descriptions, sometimes wiping away tears.
  
  Trisomy 18 results in stillbirth for about half the babies carried to term, and 90 percent of children die before their first birthday, said Dr. Robert Marion, chief of genetics and developmental medicine at the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx.
  
  After the first birthday the survival odds increase, he said, although pneumonia is a common cause of hospitalization because trisomy 18 children often have congenital heart diseases that cause fluid to build up in the lungs, causing infections. The condition has become rarer in the past 25 years, Dr. Marion said, “because people are diagnosing it prenatally and terminating the pregnancies more often now.”
  
  Video: Looking at Romney's road ahead.
  
  That is one of the reasons Mr. Santorum cites Bella in his campaign — an embodiment of his respect for the sanctity of life and a reason he opposes Mr. Obama’s health care overhaul. He opposes its requirement that insurance plans cover prenatal screenings, principally amniocentesis, which he said are used to “cull” fetuses with birth defects.
  
  The procedures “are done by and large to find out late in pregnancy whether the child in the womb has a disability,” Mr. Santorum said in Ohio in February.
  
  “And as we all know, 90 percent of Down syndrome children in this country are aborted once the mother and father find out that child is going to be less than what they were expecting.”
  
  He also maintained that the 2010 health care law, because it was designed in part to slow runaway costs, would lead to “a brave new world” in which doctors are pressured to ration care, and disabled children like his daughter would be denied care.
  
  Dr. Marion, whose program sees about 7,500 children a year with developmental disabilities, said most health insurance does not cover many services the children need and that currently “the government has washed their hands” and there is no public financing for them either.
  
  “It’s not a matter of these kids being squeezed because there’s pressure on the person providing the care,” he said. “What happens is we’re going to have to turn away some kids with trisomy 18 because there’s nobody to pay for it.”
  

  
  
  Source.
  
  Umm....?? I know we hate him but I feel bad for him to have to take so much care for his daughter. :C
• Cynic wrote on 2012-04-10 14:31
  I feel bad for his daughter. Not only for being so sickly, but also because of who her father is.
  
  That doesn't mean I'm about to go and feel any sympathy for frothy lube, though. I'm kind of surprised people are forgetting you can feel bad about her without giving a shit about her Father.
  
  But no doubt his campaign people are going to milk it for all it's worth.
• rzetlin wrote on 2012-04-10 20:30
  Isn't it nice that Santorum have all this money to pay for medicine and doctors to take care of his daughter - too bad the rest of the average Americans don't have this type of money.
• Hannah's Lover wrote on 2012-04-10 20:36

  Quote from rzetlin;835597:

  Isn't it nice that Santorum have all this money to pay for medicine and doctors to take care of his daughter - too bad the rest of the average Americans don't have this type of money.

  
  
  health insurance.
  pay for that instead of luxuries sure as internet, cable, and whatever you people buy.
• Yoorah wrote on 2012-04-10 20:40
  Well, most of the Santorum hate consists of stupid arguments, anyway. And then people are often not wise enough to realize that they need to separate the person from the campaign, and his target audience.
  
  That aside, the article itself mentions that these sorts of disorders are not covered by health insurance.
• paladin wrote on 2012-04-10 20:52
  People are glad to see him Go I am too
  Poor bella thou
• rzetlin wrote on 2012-04-10 20:59

  Quote from Yoorah;835603:

  Well, most of the Santorum hate consists of stupid arguments, anyway. And then people are often not wise enough to realize that they need to separate the person from the campaign, and his target audience.
  
  That aside, the article itself mentions that these sorts of disorders are not covered by health insurance.

  
  
  Santorum drove his campaign on infusing his religious rhetoric into his political policies rather than using science or facts.
  
  It is ironic that Santorum is relying on educated doctors and science to keep his daughter alive while in the same breath he calls people who seek a higher education a snob.
  
  Why doesn't Santorum take his sick daughter to church and pray to God for a miracle - surely Santorum would have found favour in God's eyes by now.
• Claudia wrote on 2012-04-10 21:16

  Quote from Hannah's Lover;835602:

  health insurance.
  pay for that instead of luxuries sure as internet, cable, and whatever you people buy.

  
  
  Gurl, health insurance is expensive as shit (especially in MA), and even with that you might end up paying a lot out-of-pocket.
  
  

  Quote from Yoorah;835603:

  That aside, the article itself mentions that these sorts of disorders are not covered by health insurance.

  
  
  Which is why I scratch my head when I read that Santorum opposes Obamacare reform, which i'm pretty sure includes laws that say health insurance companies can't discriminate against people based off of their conditions. But he's got enough money to pay for his daughter's care, so I guess it doesn't matter to him either way.
• Episkey wrote on 2012-04-10 22:21
  I feel bad for the daughter. Whether or not the family is rich or poor, science has it's limitations.
  
  The fact that she's made it this far is quite remarkable, you can have all the money in the world ... But you can't cure everything.
  Of course, there's also all those other children out there. *Goes and looks up Trisomy 18*
  
  

  Quote from rzetlin;835610:

  
  Why doesn't Santorum take his sick daughter to church and pray to God for a miracle - surely Santorum would have found favour in God's eyes by now.

  
  
  That's not how divine intervention works ~.~
  
  God isn't Santa Claus.
• Claudia wrote on 2012-04-10 22:37

  Quote from Episkey;835645:

  you can have all the money in the world ... But you can't cure everything.

  
  
  Indeed.
  
  This week especially, i've been realizing that this is true. Money can only get you so far.
• Claudia wrote on 2012-04-10 22:38

  Quote from Episkey;835645:

  you can have all the money in the world ... But you can't cure everything.

  
  
  Indeed.
  
  This week especially, i've been realizing that this is true. Money can only get you so far.
• BobYoMeowMeow wrote on 2012-04-10 22:41
  Sanctorum can go back to using government services again
• Yoorah wrote on 2012-04-11 00:18

  Quote from rzetlin;835610:

  It is ironic that Santorum is relying on educated doctors and science to keep his daughter alive while in the same breath he calls people who seek a higher education a snob.

  
  Disregarding the silly stuff... the snob remark was already explained in that very same thread you linked. There's a big difference between calling people who seek higher education snobs, and calling people who claim that the only way to be successful is to seek higher education snobs. He didn't do the former. While I personally disagree with his view on this because it is incorrect in many situations, it is still a valid point of view (and political point).
  
  

  Quote from Claudia;835617:

  Which is why I scratch my head when I read that Santorum opposes Obamacare reform, which i'm pretty sure includes laws that say health insurance companies can't discriminate against people based off of their conditions. But he's got enough money to pay for his daughter's care, so I guess it doesn't matter to him either way.

  
  Well, there's the issue of certain procedures not being covered by certain insurance policies. For example, while she could get health coverage under Obama's health care reform, that coverage will only include for typical services most people would receive at a hospital, like in the event of an illness, accident, etc. It wouldn't cover specialized treatment for her rare condition, so they'd have to pay for that out of pocket either way.
• whocares8128 wrote on 2012-04-11 02:59

  Quote from Yoorah;835735:

  There's a big difference between calling people who seek higher education snobs, and calling people who claim that the only way to be successful is to seek higher education snobs. He didn't do the former.

  
  
  Nor did he do the latter. Santorum only called the president a snob based on what he felt Obama said. Honestly, I feel that too many of Santorum's talking points were based on things he felt, not facts. I'm glad to see him leave the race.
• Yoorah wrote on 2012-04-11 04:16
  While it's true that Obama did not state it explicitly (he did state it implicitly), given the context of the argument here, that makes absolutely no difference. We're talking about how Santorum supposedly viewed people of higher education. And really, it's not even his view, since he's an educated man himself, and so is his wife. It's just the theme they picked to fit well with their target audience, as there is a large portion of Americans who do not trust academics and science when it comes to (some?) things that affect their lifestyles directly.