Did Santorum almost call Obama the N word?

[DianaG]

@The_Second_Stone

I had no idea that “government nigger” was a right wing catch phrase. With that being established in the link, it is now very clear that is what he was almost going to say in that context.

Whoa. I didn’t know that either, and watching the video again, I’m definitely seeing it in a new light. I wasn’t sure it was possible to revise my opinion of Santorum downward, but here he goes reminding me again that there’s always a lower place.

[Kaio]

Yeah, you know, I’ve listened to the video clip four times in a row and I do not hear “governmentnik.” Whatever the “nik” / “neg” / “nig” sound is, it is not a complete word. He cuts himself off, there’s no pause at all between (let’s call it) “nik” and the verbal blundering. And then he pauses and reorients – wherever he was going, he abandoned it for a new direction.

If he’d said a complete word, e.g. “governmentnik,” there would have been a pause immediately after the word, where he reorients and picks a new direction.

[Faruiza]

Knowing that the phrase in question is common in the south, I’m voting racist scumbag all the way. Santorum is a dick.

[Omega_Glory]

@Baz744

The syntax makes plenty of sense.

Compare:

“He’s an antiwar government n****r.”

“He’s a cowardly welfare mooch.”
For those of you who think this was completely innocent, and can’t figure out what he was about to say, here’s the key thing for you to know:

This wasn’t an accident. This was a political “dog whistle.” What is a dog whistle? It’s a whistle that blows at a sound frequency outside the range of normal human hearing.

Similarly, a political “dog whistle” is a kind of rhetoric that speaks to an unpopular constituency a politician wants votes from, but can’t openly solicit. The politician therefore speaks in a kind of “code” that the constituency will understand, but that most other voters won’t hear as an appeal to that constituency. Both sides do it. The Republicans have been doing it with racist voters for decades now.

Here’s what you, as a presumably decent person, should dislike the most about Republican racist dog whistling: it depends on people like you to work. Conservative racists got Santorum’s message just fine. Your unwillingness to admit that 1) racism is still a problem in America, and 2) it is concentrated most heavily on the right wing of American politics, is the sort of denial Republicans exploit to win the votes of racist scum without taking a political hit for it.

A willingness to give other people the benefit of the doubt in a situation like this is not the same as being unwilling to admit that racism exists in America.

The syntax still sounds off to my ears, but after learning that people have been going around saying that phrase makes it more believable that this wasn’t a case of Santorum stumbling over his words.

[Nametag]

I’m inclined to believe that it was an almost-averted slip of the tongue. The usual litany against Obama includes the phrases “big government” and “neighborhood activist.” If you start out to call some one a “big-government, neighborhood activist, so-and-so,” and leave out the “big”, then unwittingly try to slip it in afterward, simultaneously articulating “big” and “neighborhood,” and you end up with “government nig-” [Crap, that’s not where I want to take this, let’s take it from “neighborhood”] “ni-… uh…” [Crap! I can’t say it! Give it up, Rick! What’s the next line? Apologizing for America? Right!]
I think if he’d wanted to say nigger, he’d have said it, and if he’d been dog-whistling intentionally, he’d have done it far more smoothly, using an actual code phrase like, well, “neighborhood activist.”