Former Senator Rick Santorum gave an interview to the Iowa Republican blog last Friday, and said the reason why President Obama “doesn’t connect” with ordinary Americans is that he isn’t really an American.

Obama is detached form the American experience.  He just doesn’t identify with the average American because of his own background.  Indonesia and Hawaii.  His view is from the viewpoint of academics and the halls of the Ivy league schools that he went to and it’s not a love of this country and an understanding of the basic values and wants and desires of it’s people.  And as a result of that, he doesn’t connect with people at that level.

It’s not Birtherism, exactly, but it smells a lot like it — and that’s the point. Far right politicians like Santorum know how to use the phrases that will encourage the kooks, but still allow them to deny they’re encouraging the kooks. And the notion that Obama isn’t really an American plays right into the Birther craziness.

Santorum, of course, is also famous for being in the pocket of the creationist “think tank” known as the Discovery Institute, and worked hard while he was in Washington to sneak creationism into public school science classes under the “intelligent design” disguise.

But he isn’t just a religious fanatic, a creationist, and a far right panderer to Birthers; he is also a deeply weird human being.

Karen Santorum wrote a book about the experience: Letters to Gabriel: The True Story of Gabriel Michael Santorum.[11] In it, she writes that the couple brought the deceased infant home from the hospital and introduced the dead child to their living children as “your brother Gabriel” and slept with the body overnight before returning it to the hospital. The anecdote was also written about by Michael Sokolove in a 2005 New York Times Magazine story on Santorum.[1] Karen is also the author of a book on etiquette for children.

This is the guy who’s criticizing President Obama for not being an “average American.”

(Hat tip: Iowa Independent.)