Santorum on Satan Speech: ‘I Will Defend Everything I Say’ - East Idaho News
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Santorum on Satan Speech: ‘I Will Defend Everything I Say’

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GETTY P 060611 RickSantorumSpeaking?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1329902762366Steve Pope/Getty Images(PHOENIX) — Rick Santorum made a veiled mention Tuesday evening of a controversy that bubbled up after audio of a speech the candidate gave in 2008 in which he said Satan was attacking U.S. institutions in government and religion made its way around the Internet.

“I think the reason we are doing so well is because we are available to the American public, no teleprompters, no speeches … sometimes, I’ve been told that when you don’t read off a teleprompter, they may find a thing or two and say, ‘Oh, he said this and he might mean this,’” Santorum said at a rally in Phoenix.

“And the media complains so much about these structured candidates and how they are all so robotic,” he said.  “And then of course when they have a candidate that doesn’t do any of those things they say, ‘Oh he’s really out there, you have to worry about what he says.’  No you don’t, because I will defend everything I say.”

In the 2008 speech at the conservative Catholic Ave Maria University in Florida, Santorum praised the Catholic Bishop Samuel Aquila for pledging to deny communion to politicians who support abortion rights and said the matter went beyond politics and was a symptom of Satan’s reach in U.S. society.

The story was the lead item on the Drudge Report Tuesday and the candidate was asked about it after the address to about 250 people.

“These are questions that are not relevant to what is being discussed in America today; what we are talking about in America today is trying to get America going,” Santorum said on Tuesday.  “That’s what my speech is about, that’s what we have been talking about in this campaign.  If you want to dig up old speeches of me talking to a religious group, then go right ahead and do so, but I’m going to stay on message and I’m going to talk about things that Americans want to talk about: creating jobs, making our country safe and secure and, yeah, taking on the forces around this world that want to do harm to America.”

Santorum again seemed to mention the issue when he said to the crowd that his campaign “has been about very simple things” and America is a country “that when someone is in trouble, and forces of evil are moving, America would stand up and call evil by its name.”

“Ronald Reagan did that.  He called the Soviet Union an evil empire and the media went wild.  How dare you describe terms like good and evil to regimes?  Because Ronald Reagan told the truth, he didn’t sugarcoat it,” Santorum said.

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