Former Sen. Rick Santorum says President Barack Obama has turned into a tyrant with his use of executive privilege and thinks he is "above the Congress and above the law.
"I mean his attitude is . . . if you don't get out of the way, I'm going to do it myself, and this is what tyrants are made of. This is what autocrats are made of," Santorum told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.
"The president believes he is above the Congress and above the law, and that should scare everybody in America."
Santorum, a Pennsylvanian who sought the GOP presidential nomination in 2012 and is now CEO of EchoLight Studios, says Obama's agenda is socialism.
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"There isn't much to the socialist handbook, and it's pretty much [that] government will do everything for you," he said.
"Once you've laid that out, all you can do is reiterate what the plan is, which is how government's going to take care of your healthcare and government's going to take care of education and government's going to take care of this, and pretty soon it becomes, well, repetitive after a while, and that's what you're seeing."
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Santorum says Republicans have been ineffective in bringing their message to Americans — such as making a bigger deal of the fact that Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who is battling cancer, has learned that his oncologist isn't covered under the Affordable Care Act.
"We aren't very good at telling stories that grip the American public. It's one of the real tragedies of the Republican side of the aisle," he said.
"If you don't do that, if you don't provide real-world and real-life examples and tell a story that can bring you in and make you understand on a human level the impact of these policy changes, then we're just talking numbers and people's eyes glaze over and they turn the channel."
Santorum said the GOP must be a party that "communicates with the average person" who is being affected adversely by Obama's policies.
Santorum said he agreed with former Arkansas Gov.
Mike Huckabee's remark that the Democrats are too concerned about the libidos of women in their accusation that Republicans are waging "a war on women."
But he says Huckabee used the wrong choice of words.
"The point that Mike Huckabee was making, of course, was taken completely out of context. He was talking about how Democrats see women," Santorum said.
"In fact, if you read the whole statement, he was talking about how women have done amazing things and have made tremendous progress . . . It was a full-throttle support, really, of feminism, to be honest with you. I'm not going to defend his choice of words. It was not a smart choice of words."
But Santorum says Republican National Chairman Reince Priebus should not have rebuked Huckabee.
"The idea that we need to pile onto Mike because he made a poor choice of words is the wrong thing to do," Santorum said.
"You need to focus on the point he was trying to make and stand by that point, which is, we don't see women as helpless and in need of the government's help to be able to survive."
Santorum's latest movie at EchoLight Studios is the coming drama "Hoovey," starring Patrick Warburton and Lauren Holly.
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