Rick Santorum isn't backing a campaign
slogan if it came from gay, black, liberal poet Langston Hughes.
The former Pennsylvania senator is
forging ahead with a run at the White House as Republican despite his
“Google
problem” which elevates an unflattering redefinition of “santorum”
to the top of the search giant's results.
And while Santorum has denied he's
homophobic – I
have gay friends, he said in February – he remains plenty
uncomfortable with the notion that his campaign slogan is being
attributed to Hughes, who probably was gay, but certainly wasn't
conservative.
Progressives have suggested that
Santorum's slogan Fighting to Make America America
Again is awfully similar to
Hughes' poem Let America Be America Again.
At a
campaign stop in Henniker, New Hampshire, Santorum was asked about
the similarity by a college student, the
Union
Leader reported.
“No
I had nothing to do with that,” Santorum said. “I didn't know
that. And the folks who worked on that slogan for me didn't inform
me that it came from that, if it in fact came from that.”
Santorum
also denied the slogan, which is also printed on the campaign
literature handed out before the speech, was his: “I'm not too sure
that's my campaign slogan, I think it's on a web site.”
It's
on the Rick Santorum presidential exploratory committee web site.