Rick Santorum and his own wife didn’t always agree on social issues. Santorum: Walker's wife could make him soft on gay marriage

Rick Santorum took a swipe at Scott Walker on Monday, suggesting that because Walker’s wife is not outspoken against same-sex marriage, the Wisconsin governor would make a weak Republican candidate on the issue.

“Spouses matter,” Santorum said in an interview with the Daily Caller Monday. “When your spouse is not in-sync with you — particularly on cultural issues, moral issues — [you] tend not to be as active on those issues.”


Santorum’s came in response to recent comments from Wisconsin’s first lady in an interview with The Washington Post.

Tonette Walker told the paper that her husband’s response to the Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage decision — calling for a constitutional amendment allowing states to define marriage how they see fit — was a hard one for her family, since both of the couple’s sons are in favor of allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry.

“Our sons were very disappointed,” she said. “I was torn. I have children who are very passionate [in favor of same-sex marriage], and Scott was on his side very passionate.”

“It’s hard for me because I have a cousin who I love dearly — she is like a sister to me — who is married to a woman, her partner of 18 years,” Mrs. Walker added, noting that her son Alex served as best man in the cousin’s wedding last year.

Gov. Walker told the Post that his wife and sons’ view “doesn’t mean I change my position,” but rather that he might try “finding a different way of explaining it, so they can appreciate where I am coming from.”

Santorum and his own wife didn’t always agree on social issues.

Karen Santorum, whom the former Pennsylvania senator married in 1990, is a fervently pro-life Republican who wrote a book “Letters to Gabriel” about her miscarriage in 1997.

But Newsweek reported during the 2012 Republican primary campaign that Mrs. Santorum lived with an obstetrician and abortion provider to whom she was not married through much of her twenties. Tom Allen, the doctor with whom Karen Santorum cohabitated, was 40 years older than her and, in fact, helped deliver her in 1960.

“Karen had no problems with what I did for a living,” Allen, now deceased, told Newsweek at the time.

Allen and the future Mrs. Santorum split up in 1988 and she met Rick Santorum when he recruited her to an internship at his law firm. They married in 1990 and have since had 7 children.