Santorum Guy Doesn't Think Women Should Be Presidents

Santorum Iowa campaign staffer Jamie Johnson apparently sent outan e-mail last summer questioning whether it would really be appropriate for a woman, e.g. Michele Bachmann, to be president of the United States. Johnson, who sent the e-mail from his personal account, says the thing was "blown way out of proportion," by which he means that the proportion of his sexist bullcrap should be the size of one e-mail, not the size of many, many news articles read 'round the Web. Oh well.

In a post exploring Bachmann's failed presidential bid, the Des Moines Register lists one possible reason for her campaign's demise: "sexism among some conservatives," and proceeds to detail how Johnson's e-mail, sent last June, claimed that "children’s lives would be harmed if the nation had a female president" (in the words of the paper). Johnson wrote:

The question then comes, ‘Is it God’s highest desire, that is, his biblically expressed will, … to have a woman rule the institutions of the family, the church, and the state?’

That's just too many things! Just stick to one, women, and see how you do. Forever. So this is why Romney had a computer bonfire after leaving office. Brilliant man. Really had a vision for the future.

Of course, Bachmann's campaign made several accusations of sexism over the course of her campaign, and while in some of those cases the correct charge was probably gaffism, in the above case her team would certainly be warranted. Johnson wasn't the only person to invoke religion in saying women should sit at home and pop out babies; Pete Waldron, a former Bachmann staffer, said that "three influential pastors" had called for Bachmann to suspend her campaign for that reason, and others had said "a female could not be a civil magistrate."

Johnson, who, by the way, is a Failed Politician, remains on Santorum's staff, though Waldron has called on the candidate to fire him. Yeah right. Santorum has already long established that he thinks women are supposed to stay at home and look after the children that they create annually out of very perfunctory, orgasm-less intercourse while he and the Todd Palins of the worldare out hunting and gathering earmarks and kickbacks (or in Todd Palin's case, just hunting). [Des Moines Register via Huffington Post]