Jim Rosica
Hours after the terrorist attacks in Paris, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum told a Sunshine Summit crowd on Saturday that the U.S. was “on the verge of a global war.”
“The world is on fire,” he said. “You’re going to be electing a wartime president … We better elect someone with experience, (not) someone who isn’t ready.”
Santorum, a former U.S. senator for Pennsylvania, served on the Armed Services committee, supported the Iraq War and backed Iranian sanctions.
He blamed the soft foreign policy of President Barack Obama and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, formerly Obama’s secretary of state, for abandoning Iraq “against all the generals’ recommendations.”
Santorum said of Parisians, “We will stand with them, pray with them and — if we had better leadership — help them.”
He angrily mocked Obama’s concern of carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming, being a greater threat than Islamic extremists. The terror attacks in Paris that claimed over 100 victims were claimed by Islamic State, the Mideast jihadist organization.
“Hold your breath, otherwise you’re going to destroy the world,” Santorum said.
Islamic State wants to rule under a 7th century form of Islam, he said, and he’d “bomb them back to the 7th century.”
He reminded the audience of what he called the other threat in the region, Iran, which he said is still on the path of developing weapons despite a nuclear deal.
“Iran with a nuclear weapon is a threat to every man and woman in this country,” he told the audience. The next president needs to be more like Ronald Reagan, someone that “the other side, the enemy, knows who they’re dealing with.”
Santorum is at 0.8 percent in the polls, according to the latest average calculated by The Huffington Post. He’s a devout Catholic and social conservative known for his stands against gay marriage and abortion.
Santorum also pushed an amendment to the No Child Left Behind Act while in the U.S. Senate that called for the teaching of intelligent design, the view that an “intelligent cause” is responsible for changes in nature, not Darwinian natural selection.
The 57-year-old ran for president in 2012, when his rise in popularity peaked with his win of the Iowa caucuses — though by a slim 34 votes. He went on to win several more primaries before taking a dive in the polls and ending his campaign that April.
One comment
@patriotmom61
November 16, 2015 at 4:58 pm
Good article but Santorum did not take a dive in the polls that led to his suspension of his campaign in 2012. It was a 24/7 barrage of negativity that he was causing “damage” to party unity for being in the race and that voters needed to coalesce around Romney to have a “strong” candidate against Obama in the general. Every pundit and host on Fox News aided the Romney campaign with this mantra and enough voters began to buy it and Santorum’s support started eroding. He has the 6th highest vote and state tally in political history for a runner up to his party’s nomination having won 11 states and more counties than the entire GOP field combined by the time he was forced to suspend. He also was polling at 2% nationally when he won the Iowa Caucus.
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