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Rick Santorum: Top 7 culture war moments

As a senator, Rick Santorum was one of the Republican Party's best-known culture warriors. Now, as a surging presidential contender, Mr. Santorum is still leading the charge, and facing questions about some of his old, and not so old, comments. Here is a sample.

5. On giving welfare to black people – or did he say 'blah' people?

AP Photo/David Goldman
Kenneth Dansby, center, of Greenville, S.C., confronts Rick Santorum at a January campaign event over his comment about black people that was criticized as being racially insensitive.

  • By Linda Feldmann Staff writer

Santorum is proud of his role in helping to enact welfare reform when he was a senator in the 1990s. Today, he says, more needs to be done to get people off public assistance and into the world of work. But in a speech in January, he seemed to frame the issue in racial terms – or did he?

Here’s what he appeared to say: "I don't want to make black people's lives better by giving them somebody else's money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money and provide for themselves and their families.”

When asked later on Fox News about the comment, he said he had been misunderstood.

“If you look at it, what I started to say is a word and then sort of changed and ‘blah’ came out,” Santorum said. “And people said I said ‘black.' I didn't. I said ‘blah.' "

He defended himself further from any suggestion of racism by saying that he had helped black colleges to get federal funding when he was a senator. Plus, he said, he doesn’t usually say “black.”

“I use the term ‘African American’ more than I use ‘black,’” he said.

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

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