Campaigning here Saturday, Santorum said Obama’s focus on higher education constitutes “indoctrination” into the president’s way of thinking.
“President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob,” said the former senator from Pennsylvania. “There are good, decent men and women who go out and work hard every day and put their skills to test that aren’t taught by some liberal college professor to try to indoctrinate them. Oh, I understand why he wants you to go to college. He wants to remake you in his image.”
Santorum’s main argument to conservative Republican voters is that he is the anti-Obama, a cultural warrior for the right who can draw a clear contrast and ignite passion and excitement for the conservative cause in a way that rival Mitt Romney cannot.
Santorum’s strident rhetoric comes as his advantages in the polls, both in Michigan and nationally, have shrunk and his argument that he is the only “full-spectrum conservative” in the race has been challenged by Romney and damaged by Santorum’s own admission that he backed No Child Left Behind, a George W. Bush administration school reform initiative, even though he didn’t believe in it.
Santorum pulled out a narrow, surprise win in Iowa by emphasizing his faith, and in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri, social conservatives helped deliver a string of victories this month that propelled him to the top of the polls.
After trying to differentiate himself as a blue-collar conservative on economic issues, Santorum appears to be going back to his earlier playbook, mixing faith and politics, while Romney tries to focus the debate of on jobs and the economy.
Polls show that Romney continues to struggle with evangelicals, social conservatives and working-class Republicans and to have trouble connecting with ordinary voters.
The former Massachusetts governor’s offhand comment last week that his wife has a “couple of Cadillacs” underscored his inability to connect with the type of blue-collar workers that Santorum is aiming to reach.
Asked Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” how his faith fits in with his ideas about governing, Santorum said he disagreed with the “absolute separation” between church and state outlined by Kennedy in a 1960 speech.
Santorum said reading the speech made him want to “throw up.”
“I don’t believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute,” he said. “The idea that the church can have no influence or no involvement in the operation of the state is absolutely antithetical to the objectives and vision of our country.”
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