Graham Not Sold on Obama's Christianity, Santorum Warned of Satan in 2008

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The 2012 race turned to God, Satan and religion when Franklin Graham said he's surer that Rick Santorum is a Christian than President Obama and a 2008 Santorum speech surfaced in which the top GOP candidate told a religious audience that Satan is attacking U.S. institutions.

Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham, said on MSNBC Tuesday that he could not verify that President Obama is a Christian. "I just have to assume that he is," Graham said.

But he has no question about Rick Santorum. "His values are so clear on moral issues. No question about it. … I think he's a man of faith."

Santorum's faith was in the news for another reason, too. The Pennsylvania Republican said in 2008, two years after losing his Senate seat and four years before seeking the presidency, that Satan was attacking U.S. institutions in government and religion.

The comments, not before mentioned during the 2012 election cycle, were the lead item on the Drudge Report Tuesday. Santorum has surged to even or even ahead of Mitt Romney in opinion polls, including in Romney's home state of Michigan, where Republican voters cast their preference for the GOP nominee next Tuesday.

Santorum, speaking at the conservative Catholic Ave Maria University in Florida, praised the Catholic Bishop Samuel Aquila for pledging to deny communion to politicians who support abortion rights and said the matter went beyond politics and was a symptom of Satan's reach in U.S. society.

"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 in August of 2008.

"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."

Santorum said Satan's reach in U.S. society has grown.

"He didn't have much success in the early days. Our foundation was very strong, in fact, is very strong. But over time, that great, acidic quality of time corrodes even the strongest foundations. And Satan has done so by attacking the great institutions of America, using those great vices of pride, vanity, and sensuality as the root to attack all of the strong plants that has so deeply rooted in the American tradition."

The Republican presidential contest that has so far focused on the economy has taken a definitive swing toward social issues with the emergency of Santorum as a major contender. And where Republicans and candidates had attacked President Obama for his stewardship of the economy, they today are focusing more on his social positions and even the religious underpinnings of his policy.

Even Mitt Romney, the Mormon front-runner, who has by and large shied away from including religion in his campaign, today argued that Obama has a " secular agenda."

Santorum has never been shy about his faith and its effect on his policy.

Rick Santorum went after President Obama in Ohio last week for "exercising his values and trumping the values of the Church," but less than two years ago, the candidate wasn't so opposed to letting theology into the presidency.

During a speech at American University in November 2010, Santorum told the College Republicans , "I don't believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute."

Santorum went on to say, "It has allowed politicians to say, 'I am privately this way, but publicly that way.' "

Santorum spoke last week in regard to the president's controversial mandate requiring employers to provide insurance that offers co-pay-free birth control. Santorum argued that this imposed a way of thinking on religious people that ran counter to their beliefs.

Santorum continued on that vein this weekend , saying, "It is imposing his ideology on a group of people expressing their theology, their moral code, and saying the government will force you to do what your faith says is gravely wrong."

There have been exceptions to the rule.

Santorum has said that while he personally opposes contraception and believes that it contributes to societal degradation and "the whole sexual libertine idea," he would not seek to outlaw it as a policy matter. And he pledged in 2006 not to curb access to contraception.

Likewise with homosexuality, he has said he would not vote for a law to outlaw homosexual behavior. But Santorum opposes  the landmark Supreme Court decisions that overturned such laws on contraception in 1965 and homosexual behavior in 2003.

ABC's Sarah Parnass contributed to this report.

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McCain and Graham Plan U.S. Help to Syria Rebels

The senators, John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, both Republicans, laid out a series of diplomatic, humanitarian and military aid proposals that would put the United States squarely behind the effort to topple President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. The senators, both of whom are on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that rebel fighters deserved to be armed and that helping them take on the Syrian government would aid Washington’s effort to weaken Iran.

Syria relies on Iran for financial and military support, and the governments in Damascus and Tehran have sectarian ties as well: Iran has strongly backed the Syrian Shiite minority and the offshoot Alawite sect that makes up Syria’s ruling class.

“I believe there are ways to get weapons to the opposition without direct United States involvement,” Mr. McCain said. “The Iranians and the Russians are providing Bashar Assad with weapons. People that are being massacred deserve to have the ability to defend themselves.”

“So I am not only not opposed,” he said, “but I am in favor of weapons being obtained by the opposition.”

Syria’s crackdown continued on Sunday, including action near the heart of Damascus, in the Mezze neighborhood near the presidential palace. A day after security forces opened fire on a large demonstration there, killing at least one person, residents reported a heavy concentration of troops throughout the city, apparently sent to head off another protest.

At least 14 people were reported killed around the country, some by the government and some by armed opposition forces, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition group that operates out of Britain.

The Syrian state news media said that three people — a senior prosecutor, a judge and their driver — were killed by an “armed terrorist group” in Idlib Province. Idlib has seen heavy fighting between government forces and an armed network of military defectors, Turkish-based opposition forces and local rebels loosely organized under the banner of the Syrian Free Army.

Egypt on Sunday became the latest Arab country to withdraw its diplomatic mission to Syria. Egyptian state news media said that the nation’s ambassador would leave in answer to a call by the Arab League for its members to break ties with Damascus. The Syrian Embassy in Cairo has been vacant since it was ransacked by a largely Syrian crowd two weeks ago, leaving it battered and burned.

The detail in the American senators’ comments, made at a news conference during their visit to the Afghan capital, Kabul, appeared to signal that these were themes they would address when they arrived in Cairo, their next stop. The senators are leading a bipartisan delegation that stopped in Kabul to meet with military officials, diplomats and President Hamid Karzai.

The senators’ statements supporting arming the opposition went beyond the Obama administration’s public comments about Syria. After Russia and China vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution on Syria this month, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that the United States would continue to “support the opposition’s peaceful political plans for change,” but then added: “Many Syrians, under attack from their own government, are moving to defend themselves, which is to be expected.”

Still, the administration has made a point of working through the Arab League and the United Nations rather than giving the appearance that the United States is trying to intervene in Syria, in part to avoid giving Iran any excuse to get involved on behalf of its regional ally, analysts say.

The senators, on the other hand, cited Iran as a major reason for action in Syria, even if only indirectly.

Mr. McCain said the United States would not have to send weapons directly to the opposition but could work through “third-world countries” and the Arab League.

Mr. Graham also endorsed arming those who are fighting Mr. Assad, and he suggested that the Arab League, which has called for Mr. Assad’s departure, could be a conduit. A byproduct of a more interventionist policy would be to weaken Iran.

“Breaking Syria apart from Iran could be as important to containing a nuclear Iran as sanctions,” Mr. Graham said. “If the Syrian regime is replaced with another form of government that doesn’t tie its future to the Iranians, the world is a better place.”

Reporting was contributed by Neil MacFarquhar from Beirut, Lebanon, Helene Cooper from Washington, Liam Stack from Cairo, and an employee of The New York Times from Damascus, Syria.

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