Saturday Night Live Transcripts
Season 37: Episode 11
11k: Charles Barkley / Kelly Clarkson
A Message from Rick Santorum
Rick Santorum…..Andy Samberg
[ open on title card ]
Announcer: A message from Rick Santorum.
[ dissolve to Rick Santorum ]
Rick Santorum: Hello. I’m Rick Santorum, Republican candidate for President of the United States. A few nights ago, the people of Iowa sent the rest of country a message, when they came within a few votes of making me the winner of their first-in-the-nation presidential caucus. In fact, had it not been for my opponents enormous financial advantage — and the usual Mormon trickery — we would surely have won outright.
Over the last two years, as the only candidate to visit ALL of the state’s 99 counties, I’ve gotten to know the people of Iowa well. And the experiences we’ve shared have been unforgettable. In Polk County, I met with a group of fifty newly sworn-in citizens. In Cass County, I spoke at an event with only one person in the audience. In Humboldt County, I accidentally wandered into a cornfield seven feet high, became lost for more than eighteen hours, sobbing uncontrollably and crying for help. I screamed until my voice gave out, and was finally able to light a fire to signal the police helicopter search crews as they passed overhead. At the Tama County Fair, I sampled a local dessert speciality: a 3-pound stick of butter coated with Crisco, then deep-fried, dipped into a mixture of olive oil and Ranch dressing and covered with butterscotch frosting. Only later did I learn that this was not an Iowa delicacy, and that I had been the victim of a prank by a local branch of the College Democrats. Still, even as I lay on a cot in a first aid tent, vomiting convulsively, I had to say to myself: “I wouldn’t trade this for the world.”
And now the campaign moves on — New Hampshire, South Carolina, and the rest of the nation. And what is this campaign about? Two things really: 1. Making the family once again the center of our nations public policy; and 2. Starting a war with Iran… as a favor to Israel. Whether Israel asks us to or not. Of course, I don’t have my opponent’s money. But what I lack in fat-cat contributors, I’ll make up in hard work. Just as I did in Iowa, I’m going to skip the slick TV ads and take my case directly to the people. This is a big country, with 50 states and 3,141 counties. But tonight, I make this pledge: Between now and the Republican Convention in August, I intend to campaign in every one of those counties. I know this won’t be easy. Some of those counties are quite dangerous.
Alaska’s Denali County, for example, has the nations largest stock of grizzly bears, and only five year-round residents. But I’ll be there, going door-to-door.
Monroe County, Tennesee is an islated backwoods region, with a heavily-armed population and a long tradition of hostility to outsiders. It was the inspiration for the film “Deliverance”. Ill be there, too.
New Mexico’s Otero County is an active testing site for nuclear missles. Count me in.
And San Francisco County, California is home to literally THOUSANDS of angry pillow biters and donut buffers. Enough said.
Frankly, in this campaign, money is going to be tight. I will often ask voters to open their homes to me. and transportation will be by trailways, bus, borrowed car, or hitchhiking. If there is no budget for food, I may sometimes have to live off the land, shooting or trapping small game in the woods, sifting through dumpsters, and occasionally swiping a mincemeat pie that has been set to cool on some unsuspecting housewife’s kitchen windowsill. And some nights — many nights, perhaps — I may even go to bed hungry.
Will I make mistakes? Sure. I may, from time to time, run afoul of local loitering statutes. And it’s probably inevitable that, at some point, I will cross the U.S. border by mistake, spemding precious days pointlessly campaigning in southern Quebec or Mexico. In fact, it’s possible I won’t even live to see the end of this campaign. If the lesbians dont get me, the Mormon death squads probably will.
But in the end, what happens to me isnt important. This is about the country. A country that has given so much to me, and to which I want to give something in return. So that maybe one day, long after Im gone, my grandchildren can look me up on Google and find there something… you know — different from whats there now.
Thank you, and “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!”
