Rick SantorumGage Skidmore/Flickr
Rick Santorum attracted a mob of supporters, reporters, and Occupy protesters at a small general store and deli in the small town of Amherst this afternoon. Later, after shooting a segment on Mike Huckabee’s Fox News show, Santorum took a question on whether he supported a constitutional amendment aimed at rolling back the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision that tore down limits on corporate political spending and paved the way for super-PACs, the independent groups that can raise and spend unlimited amounts of cash.
“I think it’s horrible,” Santorum said. “I think it would be against the right to petition your government.” Asked whether corporations should have the kind of influence they do now, Santorum replied, “Everybody should have an opportunity, who are affected by government, to participate in the activities of the government. No one should be disenfranchised.”
Santorum is far from the only Republican to dismiss the idea of a constitutional amendment targeting Citizens United. On Friday, at a firearms factory in Newport, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich similarly dissed a Citizens United, in response to a question from a factory worker. Instead, Gingrich said, the nation’s campaign finance laws should be changed so that outside groups—like the pro-Romney super-PAC Restore Our Future that hammered Gingrich in Iowa—are marginalized and more funds go to a candidate’s actual campaign.
As for Mitt Romney, the front-runner here in New Hampshire, he’s criticized super-PACs on several occasions. But, in reality, there’s no doubt where he stands. As he said last August at the Iowa State Fair, “Corporations are people, my friend.”
