Here are some of the week’s most notable quotes culled from news reports from across Texas, and beyond.
Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum, in an interview with conservative radio host Glenn Beck.
I understand why Barack Obama wants to send every kid to college, because of their indoctrination mills, absolutely. The indoctrination that is going on at the university level is a harm to our country.
————————————
U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, addressing questions about the morality of contraception at Wednesday night’s Republican presidential debate in Arizona.
Along the line of the pills creating immorality, I don’t see it that way. I think the immorality creates the problem of wanting to use the pills. So you don’t blame the pills.
————————————
Franklin Graham, the evangelist and son of Billy Graham, saying in an interview he cannot say for sure that President Obama is a Christian. Later in the same interview Graham said he is certain that Republican presidential contender Rick Santorum is a Christian.
You have to ask him. I cannot answer that question for anybody … He has said he’s a Christian, so I just have to assume that he is.
————————————
Rick Santorum, a Republican presidential contender, in a speech at Ave Maria University in August 2008. He is now having to explain those comments.
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? 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.
————————————
Mackenzie Massey, president of the Texas Freedom Network student chapter at the University of Texas, during a student-organized rally in support of reforms intended to increase women’s access to birth control.
For a long time now the religious right has tried to restrict women’s access to freedom for our reproductive health. Increasingly that agenda threatens our access to contraceptives. That is unacceptable.
Santorum is getting even more frightening than Perry. Perhaps if Santorum and Romney become running mates they can quibble over whose god is better, Santorum’s or Romney’s. It leaves little doubt that both want women unducated, barefoot and pregnant. Both are misogynist.
One thing they both agree upon is their belief that God, be it Christian or LDS, is a republican. NOT! Let’s hope that the crazier this wing nut looney tune gets, the more the American people will realize if we elect InSaneatorum we would have a Western version of Ahmadinejad with Pope Benedict XVI as the new Ayotollah Khomeini. And should Romney get the nod from Faux News, then he would be a somewhat milder version of Ahmadinejad, with Gordon B. Hinckley assuming the role of Khomeini.
It begs the question: Are these two yahoos the best the GOP can come up with?
If either win, it’s goodbye States and hello Canada, not only for the path these two crazies would lead us down, but I can’t fathom living in a country where 51% of the voting public is that stupid and ill-informed.
Am i the only person here who, while equally despising the Republican candidates, finds the above comment as bigoted and stupid as something from the anti-Al Smith campaign of 1928. I left Catholicism over fifty years ago and am a proud atheist, but the above comments are nonsense — particularly in regards to Santorum. If Pope Benedict were the “Ayatollah” we might have ugly policies on ‘social issues’ — policies which most Catholics reject in their own lives — but we’d also have no Gitmo or torture, no death penalty, and a much stronger pro-labor President than any of the current contenders, including Obama.
I’m less forgiving of the Mormons, but see Romney’s Mormonism to be as phony as everything else about him. Rather than taking his ‘orders’ from the Church, he doesn’t take orders — or suggestions — from anyone. If he did, the average High School Freshman running for Class president could teach him to avoid the mistakes he is constantly making.