Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum encouraged viewers to Google him in Thursday’s undercard Republican presidential debate, an unfortunate choice of words that reminded many of his search engine woes fueled by sex columnist Dan Savage.
“Go and Google Rick Santorum and Hillary Clinton you’ll see a five-minute debate. I’ll let you decide who won the debate,” he said during his closing statement. “I’ll tell you who won, I know I’m out of time, I’m going to take some of Rand Paul’s time here for a second.”
The prompt recalled sex columnist Dan Savage’s retribution campaign against Santorum for his anti-gay remarks, when Savage asked readers to come up with an alternate definition for “santorum.” A highly NSFW entry rose to the top and has for years plagued top search engine results for Santorum’s name across sites.
Plenty of debate watchers were quick to point out that you should Google “santorum” at your own peril:
People who should never say “Google me” -Rick Santorum, and well, me. ?
— Sydney Leathers (@sydneyelainexo) January 15, 2016
“Hi, I’m Rick Santorum. Please don’t Google me.”
— Andrew Katz (@katz) September 16, 2015
“Go and Google Rick Santorum” — nooooooooooooo
— Brett LoGiurato (@BrettLoGiurato) January 14, 2016
DO NOT GOOGLE SANTORUM
— T. Becket Adams (@BecketAdams) January 14, 2016
Hi I’m Rick Santorum. I don’t need to introduce myself. Just google me. Just make sure your kids aren’t in the room.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaIdTromp) September 16, 2015
