This is exactly why a lot of folks love Rick Santorum and why many fear he’s too honest to be a succesful presidential candidate.

Rick Santorum on Sunday said President Kennedy’s famous 1960 speech pledging to keep Pope and politics separate “makes me want to throw up.”

He said on “This Week” yesterday in defense of his critique of President Kennedy’s famous (or infamous) faith speech:

“To say that people of faith have no role in the public square? You bet that makes you throw up. What kind of country do we live that says only people of non-faith can come into the public square and make their case? That makes me throw up.”

Here’s the thing -Rick Santorum is absolutely right. Kennedy’s speech makes no sense whatsoever. You can’t separate morality from politics, can you? Of course not. From where does morality derive? Religion.

Even Barack Obama makes connections between Christianity and his economic plans quite often, even when he’s asking Georgetown to cover up the cross. (Only room for one God on the stage at a time, I guess.)

Santorum is absolutely right. The separation of church and state has been bastardized beyond all original meaning. And we’re seeing the consequences of this bastardization right now with the HHS contraceptive mandate.

The end goal of this for the left is that rights no longer derive from our Creator but from the federal government. And I know the federal government doesn’t like to cut much, but they seem more than willing to cut rights.

The problem Santorum faces is that although he’s absolutely right, it’s not something that can be explained to folks in ten second sound bytes. So his words are taken out of context and shown in the worst possible light. Seems to me, Santorum has to get better at ten second sound bytes or raise a lot more money so he can take his case straight to the American people. Trying to cram his message through the media filter in ten seconds or less is the surest way to lose.