Is former Sen. Rick Santorum running for President or clock setter — backwards? Now you can his desire to go back before JFK’s speech on separation of church and state to the growing list of items that suggest he is far more conservative than Barry Goldwater and is basically a radical conservative outside of America’s mainstream. To wit:
Presidential candidate Rick Santorum said Sunday that the notion of religion not playing role in politics “makes me want to throw up.”
“To say that people of faith have no role in the public square? You bet that makes me want to throw up. What kind of country do we live in where only people of non-faith can come in the public square and make their case? That makes me throw up. And that should make every American [throw up],” said Santorum on ABC’s “This Week.”
The former Pennsylvania senator was referring to John F. Kennedy’s famous 1963 speech that argued religion should be separate from politics.
Some thoughts:
UPDATE: There is now a lot of weblog comment on Santorum’s wanting to puke when he thinks about JFK’s speech — which most historians and politicians of both parties have not seriously questioned until Santorum did. Most applauded it. I’ll be interesting to see Santorum’s numbers with independent voters as time goes on.
Here’s the interview clip:
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.