So Rick Santorum made his usual weekly appearance on Hugh Hewitt today, and Hewitt asked questions about where we went Saturday. Here is the pertinent portion of the transcript:
HH: Rick Santorum, then, let’s turn to a couple of controversial stories that are dogging you. You appeared on Bryan Fischer’s American Family Association radio. He does have some very radical views. Why give him the platform that you bring?
RS: Well, American Family Radio is a staple of, you know, the Wildmon’s have been folks who have done tremendous work in the Evangelical community, and I’ve gone on several American Family Radio shows. And these are folks that again, are, you know, Tony Perkins co-hosts a show on that network. And so I appear on a variety of different shows on that network.
HH: What about Bryan Fischer, though? Obviously, Tony is a wonderful guy, and everyone should be on Tony’s show. But do you think it made sense to appear with Bryan?
RS: Again, I mean, you know, I look at it as appearing on the network. And they have different people on that network. And you know, American Family and Don Wildmon has been a staunch and wonderful conservative leader. Tim, his son, is the one that’s following up with American Family Radio, same thing. And this is out of respect for the Wildmon’s that I do the shows on their network.
HH: All right, now the Reverend O’Neal Dozier, who’s the senior pastor of the Worldwide Christian Center in Pompano Beach, Florida, says he’s a Rick Santorum supporter, and he also calls on Mitt Romney to renounce his affiliation with the LDS Church. What do you make of that?
RS: Well, just because I have a supporter who’s saying things that I don’t agree with, doesn’t mean that I agree with him, obviously. You know, he’s entitled to his opinions. And I know he’s been outspoken on this issue, and I disagree with him. I don’t think anybody should renounce their faith, period.
HH: Do you think that that kind of politics, I’ve had you on, actually. I know what you think about this. Would you speak out against people using that kind of rhetoric in the presidential campaign?
RS: Absolutely. I mean, this is inappropriate. I mean, there is no religious test, nor should there be. It’s very clear in the Constitution what the role is of religion in public life. There should be no religious test. People should be able to practice their faith, whatever that faith is, and people should make judgments about them based on what their public policy pronouncements are, and who they are, and what they believe in, and what their record is.
HH: Now you have appeared with him before. Did you take the opportunity when you appeared with Dozier to say you’ve got to knock this stuff off?
RS: Again, I mean, I appeared with him way back in the Florida primaries. I wasn’t aware that he had said things like this to Governor Romney in the past. At least I wasn’t aware he had. I know that he is, has been very outspoken on a lot of issues, but to my knowledge, that was not something that I’d heard.
HH: Were you aware he was the honorary chairman of your Florida campaign?
RS: I think we had a lot of honorary chairmen of our Florida campaign.
HH: That’s what I thought, too. You know, I just think it’s…I know what you think about this, and you don’t have any truck with religious bigotry at all, but…
RS: Oh, my gosh. No, I mean, I wear a bracelet that talks, that the whole point of the bracelet is about religious liberty. I chaired a caucus in the United States Senate that talked about religious liberty, not just outside of America, which we worked on a lot with religious liberty issues all over the world, but also in this country to make sure that we were tolerant of all religions. And we had people showing up that were Zoroastrians to Scientologists to 7th Day Adventists to Catholics to you name it. You name any kind of religion, you know, mainline Protestant organizations, Evangelical groups, you name it. They were all there. And we accepted them, and wanted them to be there – Sikhs who were being persecuted in different aspects…a lot of obviously people from the Orthodox Jewish community and other Jewish groups. It was a broad-based coalition of folks saying we need to respect people’s right to practice their faith. Folks in the LDS community were, I don’t know, I’m trying to remember whether they were there. They certainly were invited. Everybody was invited to come. Every denomination that we could think of that was represented by people in town in Washington, D.C., and we asked them to participate and work with us to you know, to defend each other’s right to practice their faith.
So, what do you think dear reader? Are we seeing prevarication here, or does Santorum really have this little control over his own campaign? More importantly, does the answer to my question really matter? Let’s remember how I concluded on Saturday:
But at a time when religious freedom is directly under attack, the candidate that such people coalesce around cannot afford to embrace their support and defend religious freedom at the same time. I am left with no choice but to question the sincerity of Rick Santorum’s defense of religious liberty. And when such a question arises, it ceases to be a question of better versus best concerning the candidates. When such a question arises, Santorum clearly disqualifies himself from serious consideration.
I am not asking if Santorum is a bigot – I am asking if he can effectively defend religious liberty. It seems quite clear to me that he cannot. Whether through intent or simple lack of control of his own organization he lends the prestige of his campaign to people that are clearly bigots.
He claims he did not know about O’Neal Dozier in Florida. Fair enough. He claims he does not know all his state co-chairs. Fair enough. But now that this particular state co-chair has been brought to his attention for crimes truly heinous, is he denounced? – Denied sorta, maybe, but denounced? See, a guy like Dozier ought be given his money back and his name removed from all campaign literature. Anything else and Santorum still appears to support such bigotry.
And then this “It’s not about Fischer it’s about the network?” Just search Wildmon on our blog. There has always been a taint there without any actually stink. There may be some deniability here, but this still strikes me as wallowing in the pigsty to get the pigs votes. Then there what Santorum said just before the section quoted above:
Well, if you look at the map going forward, it actually favors us a lot more than the map of the past. And that’s what people aren’t writing about. The New England states are by and large in. The Mountain West states and Hawaii, which as you know are heavily populated, disproportionately populated with the Mormon population, which is favorable to Governor Romney, those states are now by and large in. And now you’re going to look at the areas of the country where we can do well.
That is a fascinating shot given that Santorum is not pulling the Catholic votes. Not to mention that Romney has won 14 states and three territories in comparison to Santorum’s 8 states. Of the 14 states Romney has won, only three (Idaho, Nevada, and Arizona) could reasonably be described as in the Jello Belt. If we take them out of the equation, Romney is still beating the heck out of Santorum! But more interestingly making that crack demonstrates that religious affiliation is deeply on Santorum’s mind.
It seems clear to me that Santorum is walking a tight rope here. He is no bigot and he is a defender of religious liberty – but the only reason he is getting any air at this point in the campaign is because of the “Stop Romney group” (featuring Donald Wildmon) that formed early in this campaign – a group that has a very difficult time making the case that their opposition has nothing to do with religion. His supporters are whispering religious affiliation in his ear daily, and so it is on his mind.
But the bottom line remains this – by being affiliated with such people, not to mention his extraordinary lack of organization and management skill, Rick Santorum is seriously compromising that which he claims to hold most dear – religious liberty and its defense. Effectiveness is what matters, and Santorum has sacrificed effectiveness. If he cannot deal with this, can he possibly be expected to deal with issues far greater that come with the office he seeks? No don’t answer, it answers itself.
Addendum: Ran into this piece by Michael Gerson about Sanotrum’s “shoot from the hip” style of public address. Gerson attacks the lack of discipline evident in such an approach:
Conservatives generally assert that discipline and preparation reveal authentic commitments, not discredit them.
In thinking about that it occurs to me that in regards to Dozier, Sanotrum’s argument is essentially, “What?! you expect me to be responsible for everything that goes on in my campaign?” To which I must respond, “Yes Senator, you are asking us to hire you to be responsible for everything that goes on in the executive branch of government. Being responsible for your campaign is a good demonstration of that capability.”
When you add to this the fact that Santorum’s stated strategy is now not to win the primary campaign himself, but simply to keep Romney from doing so and then bet on the convention, you get a very ugly picture of what is going on inside Team Santorum.
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