(Sarah Conard/Reuters)
When last we checked up on GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum, the semi-popular Sinclair Lewis character was threatening to upset Mitt Romney in the Michigan primary, primarily on the strength of his spectacular Dana Carveyesque Church Lady impressions. He has compared the Obama presidency to
the conditions of the French Revolution, and compared the current GOP attempts to unseat Obama to
the Allies' battle to defeat Hitler. Rick Santorum is not, in other words, a subtle guy. All those sweatervests he wears? They used to be sweaters, but his sleeves couldn't take his crap anymore.
You might think that Rick Santorum couldn't possibly top that sort of rhetoric. It turns out, of course, that he has, and right now official GOP establishment leak-outlet Drudge and others are making particular note of Rick's 2008 speech in which he said America was under attack from, I don't know, who could it be ... SATAN???
This is not a political war at all. This is not a cultural war. This is a spiritual war. And the Father of Lies has his sights on what you would think the Father of Lies would have his sights on: a good, decent, powerful, influential country - the United States of America. 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 has been the case now for almost two hundred years, once America's preeminence 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 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 as the root to attack all of the strong plants that has so deeply rooted in the American tradition.
Well, I guess in the hierarchy of scary threats to America, Satan trumps Hitler any day of the week.
As Santorum repeats endlessly, now, he's very put out with the media trying to paint him as a one-trick pony of religious social conservatism. He often points this out before or after his incessant speeches to churches and other religious institutions (go figure), so we can count "irony" as yet another one of the words Rick Santorum does not understand.
It turns out 2008 was a banner year for asinine Rick Santorum quotes. During the constant battles on whether or not Barack Obama was a "true Christian," an ongoing discussion that tells you all you need to know about the wasteland of modern conservatism, Santorum wasn't content with just debating Obama's own faith. No, according to Rick Santorum, any expression of faith that isn't his own isn't "true" Christianity. Via BuzzFeed:
Again, yes, it goes to the larger question of whether I could buy that overall from that point of view. But is there such thing as a sincere liberal Christian, which says that we basically take this document and re-write it ourselves? Is that really Christian? That’s a bigger question for me. And the answer is, no, it’s not. I don’t think there is such a thing. To take what is plainly written and say that I don’t agree with that, therefore, I don’t have to pay attention to it, means you’re not what you say you are. You’re a liberal something, but you’re not a Christian. That’s sort of how I look at it.
Not paying attention to things you don't agree with, eh? Hmm, I wonder how Rick Santorum's stance on climate change, immigration, the death penalty and other issues square with those of his church.
For that matter, it'd be interesting to hear what opinions Rick Santorum has that he holds nearly as dear as his opinions on what other people's theology should entail. But if he has any, his campaign hasn't done much to elucidate them yet.
