COMMENTARY | The Blaze reports the Internet was abuzz Friday after a video of Rick Santorum surfaced in which it sounds like he almost called President Barack Obama the “n-word.” Santorum was speaking to a crowd in Jamesville, Wis., ahead of the state’s primary April 3.
Santorum was going on about Obama’s war stance when he said the unthinkable. “We know the candidate Barack Obama what he was like: anti-war government ni… the uh, America was a source for division around the world.”
Santorum’s sudden change of course in the middle of a sentence made no sense whatsoever. The complete sentence he said was completely different from the time it started to the end. Why would Santorum stumble over his own words? Was he reciting something from memory or was the speech written down?
Giving the candidate the benefit of the doubt, Santorum was probably tired. The campaign trail has been long and arduous. He faces an uphill battle to defeat front-runner Mitt Romney. Santorum hasn’t even had the benefit of a big victory in his home state of Pennsylvania yet. Santorum might have just lost his place on the page.
Yet he somehow felt he needed to switch gears in the middle of a spoken sentence. The actual sentence make no grammatical sense. Santorum wasn’t even getting excited about what he was talking about. The actual thing he was saying ahead of the alleged misstep was monotonous. Santorum was droning on about foreign policy at a time in the campaign during which everyone wants to hear about solutions to economic problems. No one wants to hear about a ware that is nearing completion.
Raw Story reports Santorum denied uttering the word. Santorum claims he “started to say a word and then it sort of changed.”
Changed to what? Changed from what? If Santorum is so familiar with his speech patterns, perhaps he can recall from his memory exactly what was written down so he could re-phrase it in a clearer version. That would end any argument about what was going to be said versus what actually came out of his mouth.
Second-place Santorum should simply pack it in. Romney was a candidate in 2008 who came in third place. Four years later, he’s the front-runner. Santorum can do the same thing. He’s young enough to have enough energy to be in the race in 2016 as long as he keeps name recognition going. If Santorum doesn’t run in four years, the Republican Party may have a hard time finding a candidate to win the election for the White House in 2016.
If Santorum runs again, hardly any Republican will remember that it sounded like he almost uttered a horrible racial slur when referring to the president of the United States in the 2012 campaign. Democrats will have a field day with everything Santorum uttered during the current fight for the GOP nomination.
