Bush Adviser Mark McKinnon’s Apology to Rick Santorum Only Goes So Far: ‘Oh, Yeah, I Think He’s Very Dangerous’

ABC News’ Teddy Davis reports: Former Bush adviser Mark McKinnon is sorry for some of the things that he recently wrote about fellow Republican Rick Santorum. But the apology only goes so far.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Santorum tried to minimize a recent Daily Beast column in which McKinnon said a Santorum presidency would be “very, very dangerous.”

The presidential ambitions of the former Pennsylvania senator are in the news because he is planning to test the 2012 presidential waters in Iowa next monthand he is one of 10 Republicans whose name will be included in a Straw Poll ballot at this weekend’s Values Voters Summit in Washington, D.C.

Asked about the McKinnon column by ABC News, Santorum said: “Mark and I have emailed each other since . . . I haven’t commented on it, but all I would say is that Mark and I had an email exchange and I understand, I mean I think I was as tough as anybody on his candidate for president the person he worked for which was John McCain in the primary, and I used the term, and I think he was repeating it, I said that John McCain would be ‘very dangerous’ and so he amped up and put another ‘very’ in front of ‘very dangerous’ and applied it to me and I think it was as our email exchange illuminated I think it was a visceral reaction of someone who felt that I had unfairly gone after his candidate and so he wanted to respond in kind.”

Santorum continued: “I think he has subsequently thought better of it and at least I won’t say everything he said but many of the things that he said in that initial posting he has apologized for, and apology accepted no harm done, you know we’ve all done and said things at the moment that we wish we had not said and done. I’m sure that Mark would tell you that he still has some concerns about my candidacy and that’s well and good, and I’m sure there will be many who do, and that’s part of the political process.”

When contacted by ABC News, McKinnon confirmed that he had, indeed, apologized to Santorum.

McKinnon, however, only apologized for one portion of his Aug. 12 column — the part which discusses the senator’s family.

In the initial version of his story, McKinnon wrote: “I’m a pretty tolerant guy, but beyond his ideology, some of Santorum’s behavior is just a little bizarre. For example, Santorum has six children. In 1996, he had son born prematurely who lived for only two hours. He and wife brought the child home and introduced the dead infant to the rest of their children as ‘your brother Gabriel’ and slept with the body overnight.”

McKinnon deeply regrets the reference to Santorum’s son, something which he expressed to Santorum.

“I made a big mistake in that column by letting my anger get the better of me and talking about Rick Santorum’s kid,” said McKinnon. “I thought that was highly inappropriate. It was mean spirited and it was precisely the kind of thing that I have been preaching against — not to mention that it diverted from my primary argument which was the hypocritical way in which he went after McCain (in the 2008 presidential campaign) after relying on McCain’s help in his (Pennsylvania) re-election campaign.”

As for McKinnon’s charge that a Santorum presidency would be “very, very dangerous for America,” McKinnon is not apologizing one bit.

“I’m not apologizing for anything else and I’m still very angry for the McCain situation,” said McKinnon.

Asked if he would still call a Santorum presidency “very dangerous,” McKinnon said he absolutely would.

“Oh, yeah, I think he’s very dangerous in terms of his politics,” said McKinnon. “I think it’s dangerous for the country and it’s dangerous for the Republican Party.”

“I want to regain a Republican majority,” McKinnon continued. “I think if the Senator Santorums of the Republican Party prevail, we will be in the minority for the foreseeable future.”

Asked to identify which of Santorum’s views he was referring to, McKinnon said, “He is radically anti-gay, radically- anti-immigrant. Those are two that I feel very strongly about where I think the Republican Party needs to change course.”

When asked about the “personal autonomy” issues criticized in McKinnon’s column, Santorum declined the opportunity to discuss them, saying, “My record has been pretty clear on that and I’ll just leave it at that.”

While McKinnon thinks that Santorum would be damaging to the Republican brand nationally, the former Bush adviser is not ruling out the former senator’s chances in Iowa, a state whose Republican Party is heavily influenced by social conservatives.

“I told Rick that if he runs in Iowa, I think he’s got a great shot to win it,” said McKinnon.

Santorum made his comments on a conference call with reporters organized by the Republican National Committee. The purpose of the call was to discuss President Obama’s Tuesday afternoon fundraiser for Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., the veteran Republican lawmaker who switched parties earlier this year.

ABC News’ Brittany Crockett contributed to this report.

Karl to Interview Laura Bush

ABC News’ Jonathan Karl has landed the first post-White House interview with Laura Bush.

From the ABC press release:

ABC News Senior Congressional Correspondent Jonathan Karl will sit down with former First Lady Laura Bush for her first television interview since leaving the White House last month.

The television exclusive will take place at Houston?s Museum of Fine Arts, where Mrs. Bush will attend the opening of an exhibit from Afghanistan, her first public appearance post-inauguration. In addition to speaking with the former First Lady about her continued interest in and support of the people and culture of Afghanistan, Mr. Karl will ask her about life post-presidency for her and former President Bush and what advice she has for the new First Lady Michelle Obama.

A first look at the interview will air on tomorrow?s ?World News with Charles Gibson? and across other ABC News broadcasts and platforms, including ABC News Radio, ABCNews.com, and ABC News Now. An extended portion of the interview will air on ?Good Morning America? on Friday morning, February 27.

Obama and Bush Allies Target Poverty

ABC News’ Teddy Davis and Ferdous Al-Faruque report:

 

The Rev. Jim Wallis (left), who sits on President Obama’s faith-based council, has teamed up with former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson (right) to fight poverty.
Ferdous Al-Faruque/ ABC News 

Bush and Obama allies came together this week to promote a series of initiatives to reduce poverty in the United States.

“The moral test, the religious test, the Biblical test of any society is how we treat the most vulnerable,” said the Rev. Jim Wallis at the Tuesday launch of the Poverty Forum.

Wallis, who sits on President Barack Obama’s faith-based council, teamed up on the project with Michael Gerson, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush.

Wallis and Gerson, the Poverty Forum’s co-chairs, recruited one liberal and one conservative from the faith community to study eight different issues affecting the poor.

The proposals, which range from asset building to family policy, have been sent to the Obama administration through the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Wallis says he and other representatives of the Poverty Forum are scheduled to meet on Friday with Joshua DuBois, the head of the president’s faith office, and Martha Coven from Obama’s Domestic Policy Council.

Gerson, who now works as a Washington Post columnist and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, called the Christian leaders who collaborated on the Poverty Forum’s policy proposals an “orgy of strange bedfellows.”

“It demonstrates that bipartisanship is possible at a time when this is being questioned,” said Gerson. “But more than that, it demonstrates that the most effective bipartisanship is achieved around innovation, not just dialogue but action.”

Of the group’s 28 initiatives, the proposal of greatest concern to liberals on the panel according to a source familiar with its work was the recommendation to keep Bush’s “unborn child” provision as part of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP).

Progressives are typically weary of ratifying any language which could later be used to build a legal argument against abortion rights but Wallis sees the provision as a useful tool for expanding health-care coverage.

“We’ve got to get past the old fear of slippery slopes and what this language might mean to this legal argument,” Wallis told ABC News.

“We didn’t do this to get into a debate about abortion,” he added. “The unborn child regulation here actually helps you to cover women who are undocumented.”

The initiative of greatest concern to conservatives on the panel according to a source familiar with its work was the call to increase to the minimum wage and index it to inflation.

“There were some questions about timing on a proposal like this, particularly at a time where you want to do job creation for low-income people because there is some trade-off in minimum wage laws,” Gerson told ABC News. “But I came to the view, and I think many conservatives would, that I don’t have an ideological objection to increasing the minimum wage under the right circumstances. And the proposal here in the Poverty Forum is actually a pretty moderate one.”

The proposal calls for increasing the minimum wage by “at least” $1.00 above the $7.25 rate which becomes effective in July 2009 and then regularly adjusting it for inflation.

Another possible point of contention for conservatives is the Poverty Forum’s call for restoring federal voting rights for ex-felons.

Gerson, who supports the proposal, defended the idea, saying, “We are the society of the second chance.”

“That is a basic commitment of many faith communities: that our actions in life are not a final judgment on our identity as a person,” he added.

Other measures proposed by the Poverty Forum include depositing $500 into a savings account for every child born in the United States, establishing a “financial services corps” to promote economic literacy, and extending the child care tax credit.

To read the Poverty Forum’s complete list of proposals, click here.

Leahy Calls for Bush ‘Truth Commission’

ABC News’ Rick Klein Reports: Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy is calling for a “truth commission” to investigate alleged legal violations by the Bush administration, becoming the latest prominent voice to call for further scrutiny of decisions made by key Bush aides.

Leahy, D-Vt., used a speech at Georgetown University Monday to outline his proposal for “a reconciliation process and truth commission” that he said could be given subpoena power and the ability to grant immunity to witnesses — though the goal, he said, would not be to bring criminal charges.

“We could develop and authorize a person or group of people universally recognized as fair minded, and without axes to grind. Their straightforward mission would be to find the truth,” Leahy said. “People would be invited to come forward and share their knowledge and experiences, not for purposes of constructing criminal indictments, but to assemble the facts.”

“Rather than vengeance, we need a fair-minded pursuit of what actually happened,” he added. “Sometimes the best way to move forward is getting to the truth, finding out what happened, so we can make sure it does not happen again.”

Leahy joins House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., in calling for a wider inquiry into instances of politics driving policies under the Bush administration.

Conyers has gone even further than Leahy, calling for an “independent criminal probe into whether any laws were broken in connection” with activities including warrantless wiretapping orders, intimidation of whistle-blowers, and the firings of US attorneys.

President Obama has not signaled an inclination to follow their recommendations. Asked by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos last month whether he would support a 9/11-style commission to investigate alleged wrongdoing under President Bush, he responded:

“Well, we have not made any final decisions but my instinct is for us to focus on how do we make sure that, moving forward, we are doing the right thing. That doesn’t mean that if somebody has blatantly broken the law, that they are above the law. But my orientation’s going to be to move forward.”