Far right cheer as candidiate launches attack on 'anachronism' of public schooling.
Rick Santorum, whose shoestring campaign for the
Republican nomination for president continues to gain momentum, has launched a
broadside against public education, saying it would be better if parents taught
their children at home than send them to "factory schools".
Speaking to the Ohio Christian Alliance at the weekend,
he said the idea that governments should run schools was a relic of the
Industrial Revolution and an "anachronism". The former Senator for
Pennsylvania is among the less than 3 per cent of American parents who
home-school their children for religious reasons, and his decision to put the
issue on the election agenda raised cheers from the Republican party's
religious right.
Mr Santorum accompanied his comments with an attack on
President Barack Obama for peddling "phony theology" and policies
that were not rooted in the Bible – an attack that Democrats said echoed the
conspiracy theories on the far right that the president was a secret Muslim.
The rise of Mr Santorum, plus a string of political
controversies over gay marriage and contraception in recent weeks, has sharply
shifted the focus of the presidential campaign away from economic issues and
back to the social divisions that dominated the past decade.
Mr Santorum beat the Republican frontrunner, the former
Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, in the Iowa caucus this year in part
because of grassroots support from home-schoolers in the state. Although he has
not previously made education a plank of his campaign, it is well known that he
and his wife, both staunch Catholics, teach their seven children at home and he
has written before about the "weird socialisation" of public schools.
Mr Santorum said at the weekend that for the first 150
years after Independence most US presidents home-schooled their children.
"Where did they come up that public education and bigger education
bureaucracies was the rule in America? Parents educated their children, because
it's their responsibility to educate their children," he said.
Mr Santorum leads Mr Romney by 34 per cent to 30 per cent
in polls in the next state to vote, Michigan, where Mr Romney grew up. He had
been expected to win comfortably, but if the state falls to Mr Santorum, the
air of invincibility around Mr Romney could be shattered for good.
Mr Santorum's religious conservatism has excited
Republicans in a way that Mr Romney's cool managerial style has not.
But Republican leaders fear the consequences of an
election campaign that appeals only to the hardcore of the party, particularly
when polls say the economy is still the No 1 issue for voters.
In a sign of what could come if Mr Santorum faces Mr
Obama in November, the former Pennsylvania Senator accused the President on
Saturday of "oppressing religious freedom" for proposing that
Catholic organisations must include contraception in healthcare insurance for
employees. He denied that calling Mr Obama's views a "phony theology"
amounted to questioning his religion, saying: "If the president says he's
a Christian he's a Christian."
Michigan Republicans go to the polls next Tuesday, along
with those Arizona, where Mr Romney's campaign suffered a setback yesterday.
The co-chairman of the Romney campaign there, a county sheriff who made
national headlines for his tough stance on illegal immigration, resigned after
a newspaper published allegations that he threatened to deport a former
boyfriend, a Mexican, when the man refused to keep quiet about their
relationship.