Media Cherry Pick 41-Minute Santorum Speech to Misrepresent Obama's ‘Phony Theology’

By now you’ve likely read or seen Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum talking about Barack Obama’s “phony theology.”

Unfortunately, in their attempt to accuse the former Pennsylvania Senator of impugning the President’s religious beliefs, America's media collectively cherry-picked from a 41 minute speech to completely misrepresent what Santorum actually said (video follows with transcript and commentary):

For instance, here’s how CBS’s Bob Schieffer framed it on Sunday’s Face the Nation:

BOB SCHIEFFER, HOST: Welcome, senator. You are the leader in the polls this morning. And I have to say you were very busy yesterday.

The Associated Press led its story of your appearance in Columbus, Ohio by saying, quote, "Rick Santorum questioned Barack Obama`s Christian values. That was after you lashed out at the president’s proposal on energy of all things when you said this."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SANTORUM: It’ not about you. It’s not about you. It’s not about your quality of life. It’s not about your job. It’s about some phony ideal, some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible, a different theology.

(APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHIEFFER: So, Senator, I`ve got to ask you: What in the world were you talking about, sir?

Maybe Schieffer and his viewers would have known what in the world Santorum was talking about if he had the decency of showing a longer clip from the former Pennsylvania Senator’s speech to the Columbus Tea Party Saturday:

SANTORUM: The price of fuel right now, they’re talking maybe by the summer we’re looking at $5 a gallon. Why? Why? Because this president systematically is doing everything he can to raise the price of energy in this country. He’s shutting down all sorts of opportunities for us to drill for oil. He’s now trying to infuse not science when it comes to the environment, not environmental science when it comes to drilling wells for oil and gas in Pennsylvania and North Dakota and other places that use hydraulic fracking.

He’s trying to do again what he tried to do with global warming. Instead of using climate science or global science he uses political science. And political science in this case is suggesting that a technology that has been successfully used to drill hundreds of thousands of wells in this country, hundreds of thousands of oil and gas wells, all of a sudden now that’s a dangerous technology. Why? Because it could lead to lower energy prices. That’s the dangerousness of this technology. It doesn’t fit his pattern of trying to drive down consumption, driving to drive up your cost of transportation to accomplish his political science goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

This is what the president’s agenda is. It’s not about you. It’s not about you. It’s not about your quality of life. It’s not about your jobs. It’s about some phony ideal, some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible, a different theology.

That's a far cry from what Schieffer and virtually every media member in the nation has depicted about Santorum’s phrase “phony theology.”

The reality is that folks on the right for years have referred to environmentalism as being a religion, and believing anthropogenic carbon dioxide is responsible for the planet’s recent warming is similarly so.

In this context, there was absolutely nothing wrong with what Santorum said Saturday.

Quite contrary to the media meme, he was not talking about the president’s religious beliefs. He was talking about the president’s blind adherence to a different calling – from radical environmentalists who use junk science to advance their economically damaging agenda.

But folks in the media didn’t want to portray that. They’d rather cherry-pick six sentences out of a 41 minute speech to depict Santorum as impugning the president’s faith.

And this is what they’re willing to do to get Barack Obama reelected.

For the next eight-plus months, Santorum and his fellow presidential candidates are going to continually have sentences cherry-picked from speeches to radically change their meaning and assist the current White House resident to retain his position.

We've been predicting this for months and sadly believe you ain't seen nothin' yet!

For those interested, here is Santorum’s entire Tea Party address Saturday:

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