Rick Santorum: JFK Religion Pledge "Makes Me Want to Throw Up"
Rick Santorum, well known for his pragmatism and measured rhetoric, recently addressed a pressing issue at a campaign rally in Michigan: 50-year-old speeches about the Pope.
Ever the diplomat, Santorum told the modest crowd that President John F. Kennedy's famous 1960 speech pledging to keep religion out of politics "makes [him] want to throw up."
George Stephanopoulos confronted the GOP Presidential hopeful with video of the speech and gave him the opportunity to backtrack, but Santorum decided to double down.
"I think it shows weakness," the former Pennsylvania Senator told ABC News. "I don't believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute. To say that people of faith have no role in the public square? You bet that makes me want to throw up."
In the rest of the interview, Santorum played a veritable greatest-hits compilation of the intemperate remarks he has made on the campaign trail during his latest quest for the GOP nomination. In one, 15-minute Q&A session Santorum railed against Kennedy, apologies and college education.
In 1960, President Kennedy's now famous speech on religion was hailed as a political success. Then-candidate Kennedy had to reassure a nervous electorate that the nation's first Catholic President wouldn't be beholden to the will of a foreign Pope. Santorum seems to be taking a slightly different tack, implicitly promising papal involvement in almost every level of executive policy-making.
The hyperbolic rhetoric is red meat for the Republican primary electorate, but it doesn't play well with independents and even moderate Republicans. It's statements like this one that make GOP elders nervous about Santorum's prominence in the current field of nominees. He's like Sarah Palin with a better vocabulary.
Just to make sure no one missed his point, Santorum went on NBC to reiterate that "This idea that we need to segregate faith is a dangerous idea, and we're seeing the Obama administration not only segregating faith but imposing the state's values."
Whatever that means.
Santorum's views on the separation of church and state are odd enough on their own, but they are also strangely discordant with the Islamophobic themes he trumpets on the stump. When you synthesize the former senator's positions on religion in politics and the danger of Sharia law infecting our court system you begin to realize that Santorum doesn't want religion in government - he wants his religion in government.
Watch him try to explain to George Stephanopoulos why apologizing to Muslims is out of line, college is for elitists and JFK hated God.
Ladies and gentlemen, your GOP frontrunner.
Sign up for the OV Daily Newsletter
Sign-Up Now for the Opposing Views Daily Newsletter
Sign up for the OV Daily Newsletter
"Like a Sarah Palin with a better vocabulary", now I'm scared. A frightening man to hold a position of such power . . .
Free Samples
Rick Santorum makes me want to throw up.
Chuck
He should reconsider his opinion in that speech. Without that speech (or possibly a similar speech by a later Catholic politician) he would have no chance at the presidency. Americans don't want theocratic rule and they don't want a foreigner to run their affairs. That's why Americans were concerned about a Catholic president. Catholic doctrine says that Catholics need to follow the decrees of the pope. JFK had to make that speech to show that he wasn't just going to be a puppet regime for the pope.
Santorum has repeatedly shown that he has every intent to be a puppet regime for the pope.
LMAO @ Santorum.
Chuck
I love this part here: "Rick Santorum, well known for his pragmatism and measured rhetoric,....." Well reasoned and pragmatic?? Santorum?? Really???
I guess that this man, who is NOT a constitutional scholar and has clearly not read even the superficial public statements made by John Adams and Benjamin Franklin (both Christians), who professed the there must be a "necessary wall of separation between church and state.", seems to think that he knows the intent of our founding fathers better than they do.
The problem is not that his kind should be barred from the political arena (more's the pity in this case), but that politics should NEVER have religion mixed into it. The last time that happened, not only were people burned at the stake, but Christians were killing each other because the other Christians weren't the "right kind" of Christian, we had slavery and subjugation of foreign nationals all because "the Bible says so". Sorry, but NOTHING justifies prejudice against a group under the guise of religion; particularly when that religion went from a good concept to being ruled by false prophets that ONLY care about their own power.
And Santorum, along with the rest of the sycophants in the GOP are toadying up to the Christo-fascists, all hoping to turn this Secular democratic republic into a Christian nation, just like what happened to Rome, immediately before it began to decline and fall. Why is it that those kinds of Christians never learn from history?
The insanity principle is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results. The far right, the far left, vegans, creationists and other extremists believe in the insanity principle, religiously.
If something makes Santorum want to throw up, it makes me support that thing 100 times more. In my view it isn't possible to make the wall of separation between church and government too strong - I don't want someone with his radical religious views to be establishing rules to govern how I live my life, especially since my religious beliefs state that every one of Santorum's is wrong.
First of all, Santorum is an example of why Americans are now held in disdain and contempt by rational people around the world.
As far as apologizing for burning the Koran, the president, as Commander-in-Chief, is ultimately responsible for the actions of the military. "The buck stops here."
If muslim troops had burned bibles, and their commander apologized for those actions as being unwarranted and unauthorized, would that have been acceptable? Arrogant christians like Rabid Rick demand respect for their delusions but refuse to give it to anyone else.
The man is the worst possible example of a politician. If the Republicans nominate him, they deserve to lose and lose big. People might give lips service to populist posturing, but, in the voting booth, many are overtaken by fits of rational thinking.
If freedom means anything, it is the liberty to tell others what they do not want to hear.
Hmm.... how many idiotic statements can the man make in one speech?
JFK was answering critics who were worried that the US would be an extension of the papacy. College earns people over $1M in gross income over their lifetime. Apologizing to an irate group for burning a holy book is not necessarily a bad thing.
Santorum is showing he would have benefited from a little more time in college.