Santorum's tongue twisted moment

We all have inarticulate moments where words come out in an incoherent jumble.  And I can't imagine being under constant scrutiny over every word the way political candidates are.  Needing to be able to answer questions with no prep time must be exasperating if the topic is in an area of weakness.  Crafting a perfect statement that can't be twisted in some way or used out of context must be difficult.  Rick Santorum was accused of saying that Mitt Romney was the "worst Republican" when his point had been very clear in saying that Romney was the worst to combat "Obamacare," since Romney had invented it.

But then there's the self-moderator that kicks in when we're mid-speech and realize we're about to say something we don't  mean to say in the current company.  Here, Santorum needs a bit closer scrutiny.  He's already had one of these moments when he said either "I don't want to make black people's lives better by giving them someone else's money" or, as he says, "blah people."   He definitely did not say "black people," but it was very suspicious that he truncated the word "black" and tried to hide it.  Blah people?  There was considerable scrutiny and Santorum was called a racist.  It was certainly not definitive, but didn't really surprise anyone.

Now, he's done it again, and this time it seems that it will be a bit harder to defend.  While describing President Obama, he says, "We know what the candidate Barack Obama was like, anti-war government nig.. uh, the America was the source for division around the world...."  So, give it a listen yourself, and then please read on below.  Does he definitively say "nigger?" No.  But just what was he saying if not?

The most careful will (and have already) stated that he could have been saying almost anything else, like "negotiator" or (my favorite tongue-in-cheek suggestion) "Nickleback fan" or who knows what.  And, only Rick really knows.  Like last time, I'm sure he'll do the analysis for us, and prove that this was not what he said.

The most compelling argument seems to be that the term "government nigger" is part of the lexicon already.  This is disturbing, but not shocking.  It suggests (yes, I know, only suggests) that this might be a term that Mr. Santorum uses more readily in the "right" company...

A highly un-scientific google search using "government nigger" -Santorum came up with too many examples to make me think this is not a term in common use in... certain circles.

The links below are from a mix of some decidedly racist sites and some sites using the term in dialog.  The first, of course, makes the case pretty strongly on its own.  All of these are from posts from before Rick's incident.

http://americangovernmentniggers.com/against-fascist-usa.html
http://www.chimpout.com/forum/showthread.php?162719-Government-niggers-we-re-fucked
http://boyohboylan.tumblr.com/post/20164279958/tsar-of-the-beta-males-government-nigger-a
http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&d=EP19000825.2.38&l=mi&e=-------10--1----2--
http://downloadpolitics.com/showthread.php?3131-Pranknet-teases-some-nigger-woman-in-a-hotel/page2
http://eliasinfinity.blogspot.com/2006_05_01_archive.html