The Republiclown's
"bullshit" saga continues ... with
more from Rick Santorum:
A defiant Rick Santorum on Monday defended his weekend attacks on both Mitt Romney over health care and on a New York Times reporter, saying, “If you haven’t cursed out a New York Times reporter during the course of a campaign, you’re not really a real Republican.”
“I just said OK, I’ve had enough of this you-know-what,” Santorum said on “Fox & Friends,” referring to why on Sunday he accused reporter Jeff Zeleny of “bulls——”. “And so that’s what I did and you know, look, we’re out there slugging away … and we’re mixing it up.”
Santorum wasn't the only one standing by his words—
New York Times reporter Jeff Zeleny did as well.
“He said in his speech, to a room full of supporters, that he believes Mitt Romney is the worst Republican in the country. Health care was not attached to that sentence in his sound bite there, so simply asking him for clarification. And he did, in fact, explain in full there that health care is what he was talking about.”
But
as I said earlier, health care was fully attached to the context in which Santorum is speaking. Only someone who hadn't listened to
what Santorum actually said could have believed Santorum was talking about anything but health care reform. That's not to say Santorum's response was anything but a calculated attempt at picking fight with the media, but Zeleny did give him the opening by framing the question in such a way to suggest that there was ambiguity. Maybe the lesson is this: next time, don't frame the question. Just ask it.