Republican presidential candidates Rick
Santorum and Bobby Jindal on Wednesday strongly defended Kentucky
clerk Kim Davis, while George Pataki said that he would fire her.
The candidates were part of CNN's
undercard debate.
When Jindal, the governor of Louisiana,
randomly held up Davis – who served 5 days in jail for refusing to
issue marriage licenses to gay couples – as an example of
Christians being persecuted in America, Santorum, a former senator,
quickly seized on the opportunity to rail against the Supremacy
Clause.
“We need as a president who's going
to fight a court that is abusive, that has superseded their
authority. Judicial supremacy is not in the constitution. And we
need a president and a Congress to stand up to a court when it
exceeds its constitutional authority,” Santorum said, referring to
the Supreme Court's June ruling which struck down gay marriage bans
nationwide.
“My response is kinda wow,” Pataki,
a former New York governor, responded. “We're going to have a
president who defies the Supreme Court?”
“I hope so. If they're wrong,”
Santorum interrupted.
“Then you don't have the rule of law.
The elected representatives of the people always have the
opportunity to change that law. The Supreme Court makes a
determination but it's ultimately the elected officials who decide
whether or not that would be accepted.”
“When you're an elected official and
you take an oath of office to uphold the law, all the laws, you
cannot pick and choose, or you no longer have a society that depends
on the rule of law,” Pataki added, echoing to an earlier exchange
where he said that he would fire Davis if she worked for him.
Santorum responded that the Supreme
Court's ruling went against “God's law” and therefore should be
ignored.