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Santorum Targets Obama’s Religion, Worldview With Mixed Results

(Republican presidential candidate, former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum speaks at a news conference on February 17, 2012 in Columbus, Ohio.)

Photo by Jay LaPrete/Getty Images

As a new possible Republican front-runner, conservative Rick Santorum is targeting President Obama—with mixed results.

Over the weekend, the GOP candidate said that the president’s worldview “elevates the Earth above man.” and accused the president of having an agenda based on “phony theology, not a theology based on the Bible.” He even seemed to compare Obama and Hitler while making a stump speech. 

But the former Pennsylvania senator and his team are already qualifying their statements in the mainstream media. 

Speaking on MSNBC, campaign spokesperson Alice Stewart called the president’s environmental policies “radical Islamic policies,” then said off the air that she “misspoke.” Santorum himself walked back his weekend comments on Sunday political talk shows, saying he believed the president was a Christian and that the apparent Hitler comparison was actually a “World War II metaphor.”

Whether or not he’s trying to earn the loyalty of the religious right, the candidate may have to wait a bit before pulling out the big guns—it’s a long way till November.