Rick Santorum: another slip of the tongue but was it the 'N-word'? I don't think Santorum meant to use a racial slur against Obama. But the wider context is a GOP campaign rife with ugly rhetoric
Did Rick Santorum really just come within a few micro-seconds of calling America's first ever black president a "nigger"?
Of course not, comes the rational response. Apart from the fact that it would instantly be a campaign-killing gaffe, it would be in direct opposition to the Santorum image we have seen now for months. This is the man who is almost two goody-two-shoes to be real. He has a large and loving family. He may be ultra-conservative, but he also appears to be the sort of suburban dad who would be more likely to say "Aw, shucks" and "Jeepers creepers" rather than deploy the most offensive word in the English language. He wears sweater vests!
But about that video. What is going on there?
Santorum was speaking at a rally in Janesville, Wisconsin, still locked in the ferocious nomination battle with Mitt Romney and still desperate to become the true conservative standard-bearer of the Republican party.
"We know the candidate Barack Obama, what he was like – the anti-war government nig …" he seems to say, then suddenly stopping, and changing tack to add: "America was a source for division around the world, that what we were doing was wrong."