(Newser) – Bill O'Reilly and Rick Santorum each managed to produce grist for the outrage mill in the space of less than two minutes last night, while discussing the recently departed Nelson Mandela. First O'Reilly described Mandela thusly: "He was a communist, this man. He was a communist, all right? But he was a great man! What he did for his people was stunning! … But he was a communist!" O'Reilly's point was that Republicans needed to be able to respect people despite their ideology.

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But the soundbite was wild enough to land him on Mediaite—and from there the outrage cycle started right up again, when Dave Weigel pointed out that Santorum's response essentially likened apartheid to ObamaCare. "Nelson Mandela stood up against a great injustice … that's the reason he's mourned today," Santorum said. "And I would make the argument that we have a great injustice going on right now in this country with the ever-increasing size of government … and ObamaCare is front and center in that." (Read more Rick Santorum stories.)

