Rick Santorum pivots to national security in Alabama

Rick Santorum sought to broaden his pitch to Alabama and Mississippi Republicans beyond his conservative stands on social issues Friday with scathing attacks on President Obama over national security, energy and global warming.

At the same time, with the twin Deep South primaries now four days away, the former Pennsylvania senator kept up his religious appeals at a morning rally here at a museum for the Alabama battleship.

Santorum described himself as “someone who understands the centrality of the family.” He also drew an implicit contrast with rival Newt Gingrich’s messy marital history when he castigated the former House speaker for sitting on a sofa next to his Democratic successor, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, in a TV ad calling for steps to address climate change.

“I didn’t sit on the couch with anybody,” Santorum said. “I would only sit on the couch with my wife. Period. No other women – particularly not Nancy Pelosi.”

On Thursday night, Santorum reminded an Alabama dinner crowd that he and his wife had been married 21 years and home-schooled their seven children, then renewed his criticism of President John F. Kennedy for supporting an absolute separation of church and state.

On Friday, though, Santorum’s main focus was national security, particularly Iran. Surrounded by vintage warplanes and military choppers in a vast hangar, he told a few dozen supporters that Iran was “developing a nuclear weapon, and yet this president and his people deny that.”

Santorum criticized not just Obama, but also the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey. He ridiculed Dempsey’s statement that Iran did not yet possess a nuclear weapon and could be dissuaded from building one.

“Oh really,” Santorum said in a tone thick with sarcasm.

He went on to accuse Obama of turning his back on Israel by agreeing this week – along with Britain, China, France, Russia and Germany – to negotiate on its nuclear program.

“This is weakness in the face of hostility,” Santorum said.

Obama, who has denied weakening the U.S. alliance with Israel, criticized GOP presidential candidates Tuesday for what he called their “bluster” on Iran and urged them to explain any rationale they have for going to war, along with the likely consequences.

Santorum also ridiculed Obama for supporting measures to address climate change, saying the administration had defined carbon dioxide as a toxin.

“Tell that to a plant,” he said, drawing chuckles from the crowd. “We’re all breathing out toxins right now, polluting by breathing.”

Santorum, who echoed Gingrich’s call for reducing gasoline prices by increasing domestic energy production, lashed out at another rival, Mitt Romney, for supporting measures against global warming when he was governor of Massachusetts.

Unlike Romney, he said, “I stood tall and said this climate science of man-made global warming was not climate science, it was political science.”

Original source: Rick Santorum pivots to national security in Alabama