http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=BD4A0773-BFB7-4477-ACD7-45042CAF38E6Limbaugh on Santorum and Satan
By: Mackenzie Weinger
February 21, 2012 05:37 PM EST
Rush Limbaugh said on his radio show Tuesday that Rick Santorum will have to explain his warning that “Satan has his sights on the United States of America.”
“It’s part of the predictable attempt to impugn Santorum as an absolute religious nut and wacko,” Limbaugh said. “But he did say these things and he’ll have to have an answer for these things when queried.”
The speech Santorum made at Ave Maria University in 2008 in which he said Satan has set his sights on the United States exploded across the Web and headlined the Drudge Report on Tuesday.
“This is a spiritual war. And the Father of Lies has his sights on what you would think the Father of Lies would have his sights on: a good, decent, powerful, influential country — the United States of America. If you were Satan, who would you attack in this day and age,” the Republican presidential contender said in August 2008. “He attacks all of us and he attacks all of our institutions.”
“Satan is attacking the great institutions of America, using those great vices of pride, vanity and sensuality as the root to attack all of these strong plants that have so deeply rooted in the American tradition,” Santorum added.
Limbaugh, who said the focus on Santorum’s speech shows that a “double standard does exist,” added that the former Pennsylvania senator’s comments are “not the kind of stuff you hear a presidential candidate talk about.”
“That stuff is out there,” Limbaugh said, according to a transcript of the show. “It’s headlined on Drudge and the left has it, and Santorum will have to deal with it. He’ll have to answer it. I don’t know. It’s just not the kind of stuff you hear a presidential candidate talk about. It’s not ordinary in that sense.”
In the speech, Santorum also said Satan was “the most and first successful” in conquering academia, which he said “a long time ago fell.”
The next, Santorum said, “was the church.”
“We look at the shape of mainline Protestantism in this country, and it is in shambles. It is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it,” Santorum said.
