Santorum: God is at the heart of American exceptionalism (AUDIO)

Santorum talks core values to Lexington crowd

Presidential candidate Rick Santorum, without script or teleprompter, spoke for an hour and a half to  a crowd of about 250 supporters outside of Columbia on Wednesday night, underscoring why his campaign is called “Faith, Family and Freedom.” 

The bulk of his speech centered on the U.S. returning to its God-centered roots.

 ”What is America? What is at the heart of American exceptionalism…We are the first and only country that say rights come to us from the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that was the God. In that Declaration of Independence, God in one form or another, four different times God is mentioned in four different ways. We understood where our rights came from, they came from a loving God,” said the former Pennsylvania senator.

AUDIO: God-given rights at the heart of American exceptionalism (1:55)

AUDIO: Santorum on creating jobs, cutting back on regulation and government (24:00)

He took questions for about forty minutes but refused to criticize other candidates, instead focusing on the current president’s policies, charging that Barack Obama doesn’t understand what America should be.

After the interview, he told Ashley Byrd of South Carolina Radio Network that the turnaround for him, beginning with Iowa is that “Voters have started voting, not national polls, but people who are actually paying attention to the record of the candidates and we are doing really well.”

Santorum came in a close second in the Iowa Caucuses and fifth in New Hampshire.

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