Once again Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum continues to distance himself further and further away from the right to the extreme right.
Santorum said on Sunday that President Kennedy’s famous 1960 speech pledging to keep Pope and politics separate “makes me want to throw up.”
He spoke about the importance of political leaders respecting people of faith — then slammed President Obama for apologizing for the accidental burning of Korans at an American military base.
Santorum told ABC:
“I think it shows weakness I don’t believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute. To say that people of faith have no role in the public square? You bet that makes me want to throw up.”
Not staying on one station, Santorum then said on NBC:
“This idea that we need to segregate faith is a dangerous idea, and we’re seeing the Obama administration not only segregating faith but imposing the state’s values.”
Santorum’s statements about faith struck some as contradictory.
Answering Santorum’s claims, Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations said:
“It seems (candidates like Santorum) are not really opposed to the separation of church and state — as long as it’s their church.”
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ABOVE: Then-Sen. John F. Kennedy speaks to Ministers’ Association of Greater Houston on Sept. 12, 1960, when he told clergy, and the nation, that he would not be taking orders from the Pope if elected President and believed in the separation of church and state.
