Anti-Rick Santorum bloggers are going a bit crazy this morning. A clip from the candidate's Janesville, Wisconsin, speech from Tuesday night is starting to go viral. What's driving the activity? One clip from a speech where some suggest he catches himself from saying the n-word.
The candidate spoke to a friendly crowd at the Janesville Armory. During his speech, Santorum told cheering supporters, "This race is about who we are."
And then he said something that has the web whirring:
Did Santorum actually say something so out of character and patently offensive? A slew of websites (especially those that are anti-Santorum) seem to think so.
The Left-leaning blogosphere is jumping on it, along with the Twitterverse:
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santorum tweet
We've listened to it several times, and we're skeptical. Why? Take a look at the sentence:
"We know-- we know the candidate Barack Obama what he was like: anti-war government ni--[uninteligible] the, uh, America was a source for division around the world."
Would the n-word make sense there?* In addition, to get the proper context of that moment, we watched all of the speech. And you should too. Santorum's portion begins at the 22:00 mark. At about 34 minutes into the tape, you will hear the comment in question, which comes as he's talking about Obama's stance on defense.
We asked if Santorum campaign if there was a text copy of the speech that Santorum gave to the Janesville audience and were told that the speech was not scripted and that the candidate's remarks were "off the cuff."
Santorum Campaign senior strategist John Brabender spoke with The Blaze this morning and denied it was anything:
"We are not going to dignify any question on this matter. It is such an absurdity for anyone to try and bring race into this campaign. Anyone who does, should be ashamed of themselves."
This isn't the first time Santorum has faced questions about catching himself during a speech. In January, many accused him using the term "black" in a blanket manner in a speech about welfare recipients. Back then, he said "I was starting to say one word and I sort of came up with a different word and then moved on.”
Do you really think Santorum almost used the n-word?*As one commenter points out, there are several words that start with a "neg-" sound:
Words starting with negWords Found
negate negated negation negative negatively
negativism negativistic negativity neglect neglected
neglectful neglectfully neglectfulness negligee negligence
negligent negligently negligible negligibly negotiable
negotiate negotiating negotiation negotiations negotiator
There's no saying that any of these words would make sense in the context of the sentence, but as we asked earlier, does the n-word?
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