Raising Satan against Santorum

(Jay Westcott/POLITICO)

Matt Drudge has led his site for several hours with a speech Rick Santorum gave in 2008 at Ave Maria University in Florida, in which he talked about Satan having his "sights on" the United States.

It's a familiar speech for longtime Santorum-watchers, and it popped up a bit on the Web last week before Drudge's posting. It's a piece of information that will be used to fill in the blanks on Santorum for a nation of voters that knows him mostly for old culture war headlines and little else, and at a time when he's surging in polls as the last real Mitt Romney alternative standing in the GOP field.

Per ABC News, the full quotes came in a speech in which Santorum said that the issue of denying communion to politicians supporting abortion rights related to a "spiritual war:"

“While we all see all this as a great political conflict in warfare between the Obama camp and the McCain camp and culture wars, what Bishop Aquila put his finger on and what I think, I suspect those of you who are here understand, this is not a political war at all. This is not a cultural war. This is a spiritual war,” Santorum said.

“And the Father of Lies has his sights on what you would think the Father of Lies would have his sights on: a good, decent, powerful, influential country, the United States of America. If you were Satan, who would you attack in this day and age. There is no one else to go after other than the United States and that has been the case now for almost 200 years, once America’s preeminence was sown by our great Founding Fathers.”

Rush Limbaugh talked about it on his show, saying the former senator is going to have to explain it: "That stuff is out there. It's headlined on Drudge and the left has it, and Santorum will have to deal with it. He'll have to answer it. I don't know. It's just not the kind of stuff you hear a presidential candidate talk about. It's not ordinary in that sense."

I've emailed a Santorum spokesman and haven't heard back.

Maggie Haberman is senior political reporter for Politico.