Wednesday, February 22, 2012 6:23:58 AM
Santorum: Obama is ill-intentioned power grabber who undermines churches, promotes false fears
By Associated Press, Published: February 21, 2012
PHOENIX — A surging Rick Santorum is making increasingly harsh remarks about President Barack Obama, questioning not just the president’s competence but his motives and even his Christian values.
Mitt Romney also is sharpening his anti-Obama rhetoric. He said Tuesday the president governs with “a secular agenda” that hurts religious freedom. In general, however, the former Massachusetts governor has not seriously challenged Obama’s motives, often saying the president is decent but inept.
But Santorum and Newt Gingrich have heightened their claims that Obama’s intentions are not always benign, ahead of Wednesday’s televised GOP presidential debate and next week’s primaries in Michigan and Arizona.
Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator who suddenly is threatening Romney in his native state of Michigan, says Obama cares only about power, not the “interests of people.” He says “Obamacare,” the health care overhaul Obama enacted, includes a “hidden message” about the president’s disregard for impaired fetuses, which might be aborted.
Santorum even seemed to compare Obama to Adolf Hitler, although he denies trying to do so.
Santorum’s remarks have gotten only scattered attention because he weaves them into long, sometimes rambling speeches. Romney’s team is monitoring Santorum’s comments, privately suggesting they could hurt him in a general election.
But it’s difficult for Romney to openly criticize Santorum on these points because Romney already has trouble appealing to the party’s socially conservative base. Santorum’s remarks could come up in Wednesday’s debate in Mesa, Ariz., sponsored by CNN.
Gingrich, campaigning Monday in Oklahoma, called Obama “the most dangerous president in modern American history.” Gingrich said the administration’s “willful dishonesty” about alleged terrorists’ motives threatens the country.
Gingrich has long been known for over-the-top rhetoric, and Santorum’s rapid rise in the polls has drawn much of the campaign’s focus away from the former House speaker.
Some of Santorum’s remarks echo attacks on Obama during the 2008 presidential race, when critics portrayed him as a mysterious politician with hidden motives and questionable allegiance to the United States. More recent examples include:
—Saturday in Columbus, Ohio, Santorum criticized Obama for requiring health insurance plans to cover prenatal testing. He said such tests lead to “more abortions and therefore less care that has to be done, because we cull the ranks of the disabled in our society. That too is part of Obamacare, another hidden message as to what President Obama thinks of those who are less able than the elites who want to govern our country.”
Obama campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith said “prenatal screenings are essential to promote the health of both the mother and baby and to ensure safe deliveries.”
—On Monday in Steubenville, Ohio, Santorum said Obama “talks about how he’s going to help manufacturing, after he systematically destroyed it. You pick any area. Financial services. One after another, where he has this ideology of government-centralized control. Not worried about the interests of people. He’s worried about the interest of power so he can dictate to people what he believes is best.”
Independent analysts say U.S. manufacturing was in steep decline before Obama took office in 2009. Many economists credit Obama’s stimulus packages with keeping the job losses from being considerably worse.
—At the same Ohio event, Santorum said Obama and his fellow Democrats have raised unfounded fears about hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” in which pressurized fluids are pumped into the ground to extract natural gas. Santorum said Obama wants to unfairly regulate fracking “as if this is some new technology out there that we don’t know anything about, and we have to be worried about.” Santorum said the administration tells Americans, “Ooh, we’ve got to be scared, we’ve got to be scared of this technology that’s producing the cheapest natural gas and oil....Why? So we can get your dollars, turn it to politicians who can win elections so they can control your lives.”
—Also in Steubenville, Santorum said Obama encourages a trend in which the church, religious-affiliated colleges and civic institutions grow weaker while government grows stronger.
“We all know that one of the ways that government has been able to accumulate power is to do so by weakening the institutions that people rely upon,” he said. “When they can rely upon them, these stable, mediating institutions in our culture, they don’t need government.”
“That’s why it’s not surprising to see the president’s assault on, first, charities,” Santorum said. “You recall one of his first tax proposals was to limit charitable deductions — charitable deductions to those mediating institutions,” which include colleges, churches and civic organizations.
—Speaking Sunday at First Redeemer Church in Cumming, Ga., Santorum said people who shrug off troubling signs about Obama are like those Americans who ignored the growing fascist menace in Europe before World War II. “Your country needs you. It’s not as clear a challenge,” Santorum said. “Obviously, World War II was pretty obvious. At some point, they knew. But remember, the Greatest Generation, for a year and a half, sat on the sidelines while Europe was under darkness, where our closest ally, Britain, was being bombed and leveled, while Japan was spreading its cancer all throughout Southeast Asia. America sat from 1940, when France fell, to December of ‘41, and did almost nothing.
“Why? Because we’re a hopeful people. We think, ‘Well, you know, he’ll get better. You know, he’s a nice guy. I mean, it won’t be near as bad as what we think. This will be OK.’ Oh yeah, maybe he’s not the best guy, and after a while, you found out things about this guy over in Europe, and he’s not so good of a guy after all.”
Asked by a reporter Monday if he was comparing Obama to Hitler, Santorum said “No, of course not.”
White House spokesman Jay Carney declined Tuesday to get drawn into a point-by-point rebuttal of Santorum’s comments. He said Obama “is focused on his job as president, getting this country moving in the right direction, ensuring that the recovery, which is under way, continues forward.”
Associated Press writers Kasie Hunt in Michigan and Ben Feller in Washington contributed to this report.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/santorum-obama-is-ill-intentioned-power-grabber-who-undermines-churches-promotes-false-fears/2012/02/21/gIQAUQeiRR_story.html [with comments]
===
Rick Santorum defends Satan comments
'You know… I’m a person of faith. I believe in good and evil,' Rick Santorum said.
AP Photo
By JUANA SUMMERS | 2/21/12 11:02 PM EST
PHOENIX — Rick Santorum said Tuesday that he will “defend everything I’m saying” as 2008 comments he made about Satan having his “sights on” the United States drew renewed fire.
Santorum told roughly 200 supporters at a rally here that when candidates veer from “very structured, very ordered events,” voters believe they have to “worry about everything he says.”
“No, you don’t, because I’ll defend everything I’ll say,” Santorum told the applauding crowd, pledging to “tell you the truth about what’s going on in this country.”
Santorum didn’t specifically mention the four-year-old speech from Ave Maria University in Florida, from which the Satan comments came, or a number of other statements on the campaign trail that have raised eyebrows in recent days, including remarks that some say called into question President Barack Obama’s Christian faith. Questions have also arisen over comments Santorum made that appeared to compare the Obama presidency to the rise of Nazism before World War II and remarks about prenatal testing.
Asked about the Ave Maria speech by reporters following the Phoenix rally, Santorum called the question “a joke” and “absurd.”
“You know … I’m a person of faith. I believe in good and evil. I think if somehow or another because you’re a person of faith you believe in good and evil is a disqualifier for president, we’re going to have a very small pool of candidates who can run for president,” Santorum said.
Santorum said questioning whether he believed Satan was attacking America was “not relevant.”
“Look, guys, these are questions that are not relevant to what’s — what’s being discussed in America today. What we’re talking about in America today is trying to get America growing. That’s what my speeches are about, that’s what we’re going to talk about in this campaign,” Santorum said.
“If they want to dig up old speeches of talking to [a] religious group, they can go ahead and do so, but I’m going to stay on message and I’m going to talk about things that Americans want to talk about, which is creating jobs, making our country more secure, and yeah, taking on the forces around his world who want to do harm to America, and you bet I will take them on.”
While Santorum’s past remarks are facing renewed scrutiny now, they aren’t atypical for him. The former Pennsylvania senator often paints a portrait of an America in peril, led by a president who does not believe in American exceptionalism and greatness.
The Satan remarks re-emerged Tuesday on the political landscape thanks to a banner headline on the Drudge Report, with quotes from the 2008 speech but no link to a news article. The headline was accompanied by a black-and-white photo of Santorum at a pulpit with a cross on it.
In Phoenix, Santorum stuck to his traditional stump speech — embracing the values of “small-town America” and promoting the rebirth of U.S. manufacturing — but he seemed miffed about the reaction to the use of terms like good and evil from his 2008 speech.
“Ronald Reagan did it. He called the Soviet Union an evil empire and the media went wild,” he said. “How dare you, how dare you ascribe terms like good and evil to regimes? Because Ronald Reagan told the truth, he didn’t sugarcoat it. He went out and called it the way it was. He went out and promoted the values of our country.”
© 2012 POLITICO LLC
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0212/73149.html [with comments]
===
The Real Problem with Rick Santorum's "Satan" Remarks
Rick Santorum
(Image via Wikipedia)
Josh Barro
Washington | 2/21/2012 @ 4:51PM
In 2008, Rick Santorum gave a talk [ http://mrctv.org/audio/santorum-2008-satan-systematically-destroying-america ("UPDATE: Sarah Palin says "lamestream media" are "all wee-weed up" about Santorum's Satan remark", http://www.mrctv.org/videos/sarah-palin-lamestream-media-are-all-wee-weed-about-santorums-satan-remark { http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=32639759 and preceding and following})] at Ave Maria University about Satan’s efforts to undermine America. A lot of attention has focused on Santorum’s comments on mainline Protestant churches—but that’s not the really notable part of this speech. Here’s how Santorum opened his discussion of Satan in America (emphasis mine):
“If you were Satan, who would you attack, in this day and age? There is no one else to go after, other than the United States. And that’s been the case for now almost 200 years, once America’s pre-eminence was sown by our great Founding Fathers. He didn’t have much success in the early days—our foundation was very strong, in fact, is very strong. But over time, that great, acidic quality of time corrodes away even the strongest foundations. And Satan has done so, by attacking the great institutions of America, using those great vices of pride, vanity and sensuality…
Let’s think back to what America was like almost 200 years ago. Slavery was legal, indeed enshrined in our Constitution by our Founding Fathers. The federal government was forcibly removing American Indians from their lands, leading to thousands of deaths. Women couldn’t vote and were limited in their rights to own property. And yet, Santorum sees Satan wielding more influence and having more success in America today than he did then.
The issue is not that Santorum favors slavery or Indian removal—if prompted, I’m sure he would agree strongly that these were great evils. But how does somebody look at the history of American society and see a country that was more Godly under Andrew Jackson than it is today? The answer is by focusing only on the rights and treatment of white, Christian men. When some conservatives and libertarians make paeans to a lost period of American greatness, they are treating the perspectives of women and minorities as if they don’t exist, or don’t count.
Two years ago, David Boaz wrote a great piece for Reason called “Up from Slavery [ http://reason.com/archives/2010/04/06/up-from-slavery/singlepage ].” You should read the whole thing, but the subhead is a good summary: “There’s no such thing as a golden age of lost liberty.” Of course, Boaz is a libertarian and Santorum is not, but the distinction shouldn’t matter here: both Boaz and Santorum subscribe to value systems that should treat slavery and Indian removal as two of the greatest injustices in American history.
By contending that America has fallen from grace relative to 200 years ago, Santorum shows a major blind spot for injustices committed against out-groups. That, not his take on mainline Protestants, is the really troubling component of his remarks at Ave Maria.
Copyright 2012 Forbes.com LLC™ (emphasis in original)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/joshbarro/2012/02/21/the-real-problem-with-rick-santorums-satan-remarks/ [with comments]
===
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By Associated Press, Published: February 21, 2012
PHOENIX — A surging Rick Santorum is making increasingly harsh remarks about President Barack Obama, questioning not just the president’s competence but his motives and even his Christian values.
Mitt Romney also is sharpening his anti-Obama rhetoric. He said Tuesday the president governs with “a secular agenda” that hurts religious freedom. In general, however, the former Massachusetts governor has not seriously challenged Obama’s motives, often saying the president is decent but inept.
But Santorum and Newt Gingrich have heightened their claims that Obama’s intentions are not always benign, ahead of Wednesday’s televised GOP presidential debate and next week’s primaries in Michigan and Arizona.
Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator who suddenly is threatening Romney in his native state of Michigan, says Obama cares only about power, not the “interests of people.” He says “Obamacare,” the health care overhaul Obama enacted, includes a “hidden message” about the president’s disregard for impaired fetuses, which might be aborted.
Santorum even seemed to compare Obama to Adolf Hitler, although he denies trying to do so.
Santorum’s remarks have gotten only scattered attention because he weaves them into long, sometimes rambling speeches. Romney’s team is monitoring Santorum’s comments, privately suggesting they could hurt him in a general election.
But it’s difficult for Romney to openly criticize Santorum on these points because Romney already has trouble appealing to the party’s socially conservative base. Santorum’s remarks could come up in Wednesday’s debate in Mesa, Ariz., sponsored by CNN.
Gingrich, campaigning Monday in Oklahoma, called Obama “the most dangerous president in modern American history.” Gingrich said the administration’s “willful dishonesty” about alleged terrorists’ motives threatens the country.
Gingrich has long been known for over-the-top rhetoric, and Santorum’s rapid rise in the polls has drawn much of the campaign’s focus away from the former House speaker.
Some of Santorum’s remarks echo attacks on Obama during the 2008 presidential race, when critics portrayed him as a mysterious politician with hidden motives and questionable allegiance to the United States. More recent examples include:
—Saturday in Columbus, Ohio, Santorum criticized Obama for requiring health insurance plans to cover prenatal testing. He said such tests lead to “more abortions and therefore less care that has to be done, because we cull the ranks of the disabled in our society. That too is part of Obamacare, another hidden message as to what President Obama thinks of those who are less able than the elites who want to govern our country.”
Obama campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith said “prenatal screenings are essential to promote the health of both the mother and baby and to ensure safe deliveries.”
—On Monday in Steubenville, Ohio, Santorum said Obama “talks about how he’s going to help manufacturing, after he systematically destroyed it. You pick any area. Financial services. One after another, where he has this ideology of government-centralized control. Not worried about the interests of people. He’s worried about the interest of power so he can dictate to people what he believes is best.”
Independent analysts say U.S. manufacturing was in steep decline before Obama took office in 2009. Many economists credit Obama’s stimulus packages with keeping the job losses from being considerably worse.
—At the same Ohio event, Santorum said Obama and his fellow Democrats have raised unfounded fears about hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” in which pressurized fluids are pumped into the ground to extract natural gas. Santorum said Obama wants to unfairly regulate fracking “as if this is some new technology out there that we don’t know anything about, and we have to be worried about.” Santorum said the administration tells Americans, “Ooh, we’ve got to be scared, we’ve got to be scared of this technology that’s producing the cheapest natural gas and oil....Why? So we can get your dollars, turn it to politicians who can win elections so they can control your lives.”
—Also in Steubenville, Santorum said Obama encourages a trend in which the church, religious-affiliated colleges and civic institutions grow weaker while government grows stronger.
“We all know that one of the ways that government has been able to accumulate power is to do so by weakening the institutions that people rely upon,” he said. “When they can rely upon them, these stable, mediating institutions in our culture, they don’t need government.”
“That’s why it’s not surprising to see the president’s assault on, first, charities,” Santorum said. “You recall one of his first tax proposals was to limit charitable deductions — charitable deductions to those mediating institutions,” which include colleges, churches and civic organizations.
—Speaking Sunday at First Redeemer Church in Cumming, Ga., Santorum said people who shrug off troubling signs about Obama are like those Americans who ignored the growing fascist menace in Europe before World War II. “Your country needs you. It’s not as clear a challenge,” Santorum said. “Obviously, World War II was pretty obvious. At some point, they knew. But remember, the Greatest Generation, for a year and a half, sat on the sidelines while Europe was under darkness, where our closest ally, Britain, was being bombed and leveled, while Japan was spreading its cancer all throughout Southeast Asia. America sat from 1940, when France fell, to December of ‘41, and did almost nothing.
“Why? Because we’re a hopeful people. We think, ‘Well, you know, he’ll get better. You know, he’s a nice guy. I mean, it won’t be near as bad as what we think. This will be OK.’ Oh yeah, maybe he’s not the best guy, and after a while, you found out things about this guy over in Europe, and he’s not so good of a guy after all.”
Asked by a reporter Monday if he was comparing Obama to Hitler, Santorum said “No, of course not.”
White House spokesman Jay Carney declined Tuesday to get drawn into a point-by-point rebuttal of Santorum’s comments. He said Obama “is focused on his job as president, getting this country moving in the right direction, ensuring that the recovery, which is under way, continues forward.”
Associated Press writers Kasie Hunt in Michigan and Ben Feller in Washington contributed to this report.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/santorum-obama-is-ill-intentioned-power-grabber-who-undermines-churches-promotes-false-fears/2012/02/21/gIQAUQeiRR_story.html [with comments]
===
Rick Santorum defends Satan comments
'You know… I’m a person of faith. I believe in good and evil,' Rick Santorum said.
AP Photo
By JUANA SUMMERS | 2/21/12 11:02 PM EST
PHOENIX — Rick Santorum said Tuesday that he will “defend everything I’m saying” as 2008 comments he made about Satan having his “sights on” the United States drew renewed fire.
Santorum told roughly 200 supporters at a rally here that when candidates veer from “very structured, very ordered events,” voters believe they have to “worry about everything he says.”
“No, you don’t, because I’ll defend everything I’ll say,” Santorum told the applauding crowd, pledging to “tell you the truth about what’s going on in this country.”
Santorum didn’t specifically mention the four-year-old speech from Ave Maria University in Florida, from which the Satan comments came, or a number of other statements on the campaign trail that have raised eyebrows in recent days, including remarks that some say called into question President Barack Obama’s Christian faith. Questions have also arisen over comments Santorum made that appeared to compare the Obama presidency to the rise of Nazism before World War II and remarks about prenatal testing.
Asked about the Ave Maria speech by reporters following the Phoenix rally, Santorum called the question “a joke” and “absurd.”
“You know … I’m a person of faith. I believe in good and evil. I think if somehow or another because you’re a person of faith you believe in good and evil is a disqualifier for president, we’re going to have a very small pool of candidates who can run for president,” Santorum said.
Santorum said questioning whether he believed Satan was attacking America was “not relevant.”
“Look, guys, these are questions that are not relevant to what’s — what’s being discussed in America today. What we’re talking about in America today is trying to get America growing. That’s what my speeches are about, that’s what we’re going to talk about in this campaign,” Santorum said.
“If they want to dig up old speeches of talking to [a] religious group, they can go ahead and do so, but I’m going to stay on message and I’m going to talk about things that Americans want to talk about, which is creating jobs, making our country more secure, and yeah, taking on the forces around his world who want to do harm to America, and you bet I will take them on.”
While Santorum’s past remarks are facing renewed scrutiny now, they aren’t atypical for him. The former Pennsylvania senator often paints a portrait of an America in peril, led by a president who does not believe in American exceptionalism and greatness.
The Satan remarks re-emerged Tuesday on the political landscape thanks to a banner headline on the Drudge Report, with quotes from the 2008 speech but no link to a news article. The headline was accompanied by a black-and-white photo of Santorum at a pulpit with a cross on it.
In Phoenix, Santorum stuck to his traditional stump speech — embracing the values of “small-town America” and promoting the rebirth of U.S. manufacturing — but he seemed miffed about the reaction to the use of terms like good and evil from his 2008 speech.
“Ronald Reagan did it. He called the Soviet Union an evil empire and the media went wild,” he said. “How dare you, how dare you ascribe terms like good and evil to regimes? Because Ronald Reagan told the truth, he didn’t sugarcoat it. He went out and called it the way it was. He went out and promoted the values of our country.”
© 2012 POLITICO LLC
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0212/73149.html [with comments]
===
The Real Problem with Rick Santorum's "Satan" Remarks
Rick Santorum
(Image via Wikipedia)
Josh Barro
Washington | 2/21/2012 @ 4:51PM
In 2008, Rick Santorum gave a talk [ http://mrctv.org/audio/santorum-2008-satan-systematically-destroying-america ("UPDATE: Sarah Palin says "lamestream media" are "all wee-weed up" about Santorum's Satan remark", http://www.mrctv.org/videos/sarah-palin-lamestream-media-are-all-wee-weed-about-santorums-satan-remark { http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=32639759 and preceding and following})] at Ave Maria University about Satan’s efforts to undermine America. A lot of attention has focused on Santorum’s comments on mainline Protestant churches—but that’s not the really notable part of this speech. Here’s how Santorum opened his discussion of Satan in America (emphasis mine):
“If you were Satan, who would you attack, in this day and age? There is no one else to go after, other than the United States. And that’s been the case for now almost 200 years, once America’s pre-eminence was sown by our great Founding Fathers. He didn’t have much success in the early days—our foundation was very strong, in fact, is very strong. But over time, that great, acidic quality of time corrodes away even the strongest foundations. And Satan has done so, by attacking the great institutions of America, using those great vices of pride, vanity and sensuality…
Let’s think back to what America was like almost 200 years ago. Slavery was legal, indeed enshrined in our Constitution by our Founding Fathers. The federal government was forcibly removing American Indians from their lands, leading to thousands of deaths. Women couldn’t vote and were limited in their rights to own property. And yet, Santorum sees Satan wielding more influence and having more success in America today than he did then.
The issue is not that Santorum favors slavery or Indian removal—if prompted, I’m sure he would agree strongly that these were great evils. But how does somebody look at the history of American society and see a country that was more Godly under Andrew Jackson than it is today? The answer is by focusing only on the rights and treatment of white, Christian men. When some conservatives and libertarians make paeans to a lost period of American greatness, they are treating the perspectives of women and minorities as if they don’t exist, or don’t count.
Two years ago, David Boaz wrote a great piece for Reason called “Up from Slavery [ http://reason.com/archives/2010/04/06/up-from-slavery/singlepage ].” You should read the whole thing, but the subhead is a good summary: “There’s no such thing as a golden age of lost liberty.” Of course, Boaz is a libertarian and Santorum is not, but the distinction shouldn’t matter here: both Boaz and Santorum subscribe to value systems that should treat slavery and Indian removal as two of the greatest injustices in American history.
By contending that America has fallen from grace relative to 200 years ago, Santorum shows a major blind spot for injustices committed against out-groups. That, not his take on mainline Protestants, is the really troubling component of his remarks at Ave Maria.
Copyright 2012 Forbes.com LLC™ (emphasis in original)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/joshbarro/2012/02/21/the-real-problem-with-rick-santorums-satan-remarks/ [with comments]
===
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Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790
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