Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum said Thursday that if President Obama is reelected for another four years, the United States will lose its "very essence."
"I think this country would be fundamentally different at that point," Santorum said on Glenn Beck's subscriber-based online show. "I think we will have lost the very essence of what America is about."
When asked to clarify his meaning of "what America is about," Santorum said, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. That idea that we are free people and that government is limited to protect those rights — that's what the Constitution is there for, to protect those rights.
"The president is using the Constitution in many respects like the French use the French constitution, which is to wield it and impose their will on the public," he added.
The former Pennsylvania senator told Beck that he believes the country is moving toward "European socialism, at a minimum."
He also slammed the media, accusing reporters of focusing on his views on contraception, rather than the economy, in recent weeks and during Wednesday's Republican debate.
"It is frustrating," he said. "They are trying to spin a narrative. They don't want talk about Obama's record of jobs. They don't want to talk about what he's doing to destroy the fiscal condition of this country. They don't want to talk about his record of destroying every alliance we have in the world, while at the same time trying to appease every enemy in the world.
"They don't want to talk about any of that stuff, they just want to talk about things — they know divide, divide, divide," Santorum said.
Santorum has been a strong critic of the Obama administration's rule requiring
insurance companies — including for certain religious organizations — to
provide birth control for those organizations' employees.
He also came under scrutiny last week when a top donor to super-PACs supporting his campaign made controversial remarks about contraception.
"This contraceptive thing, my gosh,
it's so inexpensive. You know, back in my days, they used Bayer aspirin
for contraception," Foster Friess, the major donor behind the
pro-Santorum Red, White and Blue Fund super-PAC, said on MSNBC last Thursday. "The gals
put it between their knees, and it wasn't that costly."
Santorum disassociated himself from the comments and Friess later apologized, but it caused a firestorm of media inquiries and political attacks.
