*GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum said Monday he doesn’t feel the need to correct voters who misidentify President Obama as a Muslim.
At a forum, a woman critical of Obama told Santorum, “I never refer to Obama as President Obama because legally he is not. He constantly says that our constitution is passé, and he ignores it as you know and does what he darn well pleases. He is an avowed Muslim and my question is, why isn’t something being done to get him out of government? He has no legal right to be calling himself president.”
Rather than disagreeing with the questioner or correcting her assertion by reminding her that President Obama is in fact a Christian, Santorum ignored the more controversial parts of her question.
“Well look, I’m doing my best to get him out of the government right now,” Santorum said. “And you’re right about how he uniformly ignores the constitution. He did this with these appointments over the recess that was not a recess, and if I was in the United States Senate I would be drawing the line.” [Scroll down to watch clip.]
The former Pennsylvania senator defended his approach to reporters afterward.
“I don’t feel it’s my obligation every time someone says something I don’t agree with to contradict them, and the President’s a big boy, he can defend himself and his record and I’m going to go out and talk about the issues that the President and I disagree on and try to defeat him because I think that’s the best thing that we can do for the future of our country,” Santorum told CNN’s John King.
The issue has surfaced with GOP audiences in the past. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Republican John McCain answered a question who pejoratively described Mr. Obama as an “Arab” by saying: “No, ma’am. He’s a decent family man … [a] citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues.”
Also at Monday’s event, two Occupy Tampa protestors were dragged out for interrupting the event after they shouted “stop the hate!” and tossed glitter toward Santorum. (There were three protesters total, but one went quietly.) All three protestors were cited for trespassing and detained until the event was over.
Santorum told reporters the Occupy members have a right to protest, but that he hopes they can be “respectful.”
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