Did Santorum just (almost) call Obama a “government nigger”?

While I’m all for granting the benefit of the doubt to virtually anyone, I don’t see many other ways how this double-take and quick change of course could possibly be interpreted:

My transcript: (click the [+/-] to open/close →)

[+]

RICK SANTORUM: We know, we know that Candidate Barack Obama, what he was like – the anti-war, government nig— guh, uh, the – America was a source for division around the world.

I’m seeing some in the YouTube comments wonder whether he might have said some other, less intelligible term, like “nik” for “peacenik”, but I don’t buy it. It’s pretty clear that Mr. Goody Christianist here just had himself a little Freudian slip, much as with his previous faux-pas about not wanting government financial assistance to help make “blah(ck) people’s lives better”. Let’s see if his eventual excuse for (nearly) calling the President a “nigger” on camera is more or less amusingly pathetic as the one he gave that last time.

(via On Knees for Jesus)

Tags: Rick Santorum • Barack Obama • nigger • racism