At least one potential Republican presidential candidate is squarely taking Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s side, saying that President Obama should not have sacked the general and should have instead taken responsibility for the insults coming from the general and his top aides.
Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) told the Quad-City Times in Iowa that McChrystal’s comments did not merit replacing him. Santorum said that if he had been president in that situation, he would have felt “chastened” that his hand-picked general had said such things. “I would think, you know, I bear some of the responsibility and I would act differently,” said Santorum.
Also while making the rounds in Iowa this past weekend, Santorum did an interview with The Iowa Republican website. Santorum declared that Obama’s background makes him “detached from the American experience,” citing Obama’s youth in Indonesia and Hawaii — the latter of which is America’s 50th state.
“Obama is detached from the American experience. He just doesn’t identify with the average American because of his own background. Indonesia and Hawaii,” said Santorum. “His view is from the viewpoint of academics and the halls of the Ivy league schools that he went to and it’s not a love of this country and an understanding of the basic values and wants and desires of its people. And as a result of that, he doesn’t connect with people at that level.”
