Rick Santorum: It Should Be Illegal To Read Off A Teleprompter

Rick Santorum, March 12, 2012:

I always believed that when you run for president of the United States, it should be illegal to read off a teleprompter. Because all you’re doing is reading someone else’s words to people.

When you’re running for president people should know, not what someone’s writing for you after they’ve had pollsters and speechwriters test, focus group it, and all this kind of stuff, but you’re voting for someone who is going to be the leader of our government. Not of our country, but of our government. And it’s important for you to understand who that person is in their own words, see them, look them in the eye. Have a chance, as I’ve done, get around and talk to people. Get a chance to see what’s there and hear what’s on my heart and in my mind. Have a chance to answer questions as several of you did.

That’s what it’s supposed to be about. You’re choosing a leader. A leader isn’t just about what’s written on a piece of paper, or on a website, or what 30 second TV ad they can run. You’re trying to get a judgement of who that person is.

Rick Santorum's Teleprompters

Michael Gerson, Chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush, on speechwriting:

“It is a process in which a leader refines his own thoughts, invites suggestions by trusted advisers and welcomes the contributions of literary craft to political communication. […] It is actually a form of pride — in a politician or anyone else — to believe that every thought produced by the firing of one’s neurons is immediately fit for public consumption.”

The idiotic statement by Rick Santorum above is one of the best arguments for Teleprompters you will ever hear. Setting aside his embarrassing self-contradiction, the statement is full of stupid grammatical errors and ludicrous elocution (the leader of the government, not the country?). Based on his demonstrated inarticulateness, I certainly hope that Santorum refrains from using a Teleprompter for the rest of the campaign, but I would bet Mitt Romney’s $10,000 that he won’t.

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5 thoughts on “Rick Santorum: It Should Be Illegal To Read Off A Teleprompter

  1. Santorum is a fucking idiot, as demonstrated in his commentary, quoted here. He is a monumental dufus and moron. Not only that but he is an embarrassment to all americans whether they know it or not. He is a laughing stock!!!

  2. I got to add one more thing to Santorum’s idiotic comments. We all know his teleprompter remarks are aimed at President Obama, because of the phony story put forth by Fox a couple years ago that Obama uses a teleprompter and that is somehow scandalous. Oh my! What a scandal! Obama uses a teleprompter like every President before him going back to before their heroe Ronald Reagan. Even that moron Palin criticized him for it. WTF! These loons do know that without a teleprompter their buffoon hero Reagan couldn’t have uttered more than two sentences at a time.

    • After all, do you *really* want an elected official to spend hours on memorizing something (even what s/he wrote — yes, you *do* have to do that to make it flow easily), or those hours solving the nation’s *problems*?!?!

  3. Too bad Santorum wasn’t using a teleprompter when he said “John Kennedy’s speech made me want to throw up” or “Obama is a snob because he wants people to go to college”. That left a bad taste in many mouths.

    Rick isn’t quite as articulate as his wife & his ego tell him he is. He’s wearing thin & the General hasn’t even begun.

  4. He also has a nasty habit of pulling things out of his ass, all the time.

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