GLENN: Rick Santorum in the hot seat. Why were they putting their hands all over you yesterday? Rick Santorum, a bunch of pastors, what is up with that?

SANTORUM: You know, it's ‑‑ I know this sounds very foreign to some people but it's called prayer.

PAT: Oh, wow. What about the separation of church and state? Wow.

GLENN: So Rick Santorum, you're admitting that you're in some sort of prayer cult.

SANTORUM: Yeah, believe it or not, I do, in fact, pray and I actually, you know, asked people to pray for me.

PAT: So how about ‑‑ I mean, obviously we've been praying for you and I've been rooting for you the whole time and something good happened the other day. Uh, you just came out of the blue and wrecked the field.

GLENN: How do you explain that? Explain yourself, Rick Santorum.

PAT: Back on the hot seat now.

SANTORUM: Well, you know, the message began ‑‑ was resonating. I mean, we went out to try to, not to spend the money at the time in the states where the campaigns have been, you know, really locked down for a long time in Nevada and Florida and we went out to the place where, you know, you didn't have these millions of dollars being spent tearing candidates apart and we went to the folks in Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado and delivered a message and the response was just awesome. You know, people realize that we need a candidate that's going to make Barack Obama the issue in this campaign, and Gingrich and Romney tearing each other are apart, not talking about the issues. And the reason they don't talk about the issues, people began to figure it out, is because on the big issues of the day, they don't actually disagree with each other or Obama. And that's the problem.

GLENN: So Rick, where do you ‑‑ where are you going from here? What ‑‑ what do the polls look like for, is Super Tuesday is the next event, isn't it?

SANTORUM: Well, no. There's Michigan and Arizona coming up at the end of the month and then the following week there is Super Tuesday. I went to Texas yesterday and had a great day there. Big rally, you know, thousands of people. I just came, just walked out of a rally in Oklahoma City here. I don't know how many thousand people were there but it was ‑‑ it was a great venue. We feel very, very good. We're on our way to Tulsa. And Oklahoma is a Super Tuesday state and we believe that this will be a state we will do very, very well in and, in fact, I believe this is a state we can win and we're going to put a lot of effort here.

GLENN: Give me the ‑‑ your take. I don't think we've talked to you since the Catholic church has come under attack and you're the biggest Papist we know. I mean, this is not an attack on life.

SANTORUM: No.

GLENN: This is not an attack on the Catholic church. What is this an attack on?

SANTORUM: This is an attack on the First Amendment, this is an attack on religious liberty, this is an attack on freedom of speech. I was just out with the military, he said the U.S. Army made them stop them from talking to their chaplains talking to their people in the pews and made them ‑‑ ended a message that they called seditious from the Catholic church. I mean, this is ‑‑ what I've been saying and you've been saying, Glenn, for a long time. This is not just about our economic freedom, and ObamaCare and Dodd/Frank and all those government takeovers from the different sectors of our economy. When government says that they can create a right from you, for you, then the government can tell you how to exercise that right and if you don't do it, they'll punish you. Catholic charities, I was told if they don't do and provide that service for the ‑‑ for their people which is specifically against the teachings of the church, they will be fined $150 million. That's $150 million from people who would otherwise be given care by Catholic charities and in their mission work who are getting, now are going to pay tribute to Barack Obama. You say this all the time and you are so right. The real intolerance, the real intolerance in America are those on the left, those who say that you will do what you are told to do, there is no freedom. Look, the First Amendment came about because we are a Judeo‑Christian country and we believe the dignity of every person and that person has the right to have free exercise of basic God‑given rights. The left doesn't believe in God‑given rights. They believe in their right to tell you what to do.

GLENN: This to me is the Niemöller moment. This is the moment where first they came for whomever and I didn't say anything.

SANTORUM: Yeah. Yeah.

GLENN: Do you believe that? Because that's quite a charge to make.

SANTORUM: No, it is, it is ‑‑ I mean, I wish you'd have heard my speech here in Oklahoma City. That's exactly what I said, that this is not a Catholic issue. This is not a religious issue. This is not a faith issue. This is an issue of the role and the power of government over the people to command them to think the way the government tells you to think and to be what the government tells you to do, which is against your conscience, which is against your right of speech. This is not just about economic freedom anymore. This is about government and its power and control over its people.

GLENN: The federal government is now saying that if you are ‑‑ if you are involved in ministry at all, if you went to school and you're a priest or a pastor or anything and you have federal loans and you are in ministry at all, you don't get the federal pass that they're offering to everybody else. Why do you suppose they're doing that, Rick?

SANTORUM: Well, probably the same reason they tried to eliminate the deductions for charitable organizations. You know, this is an attack, Glenn, and I know you talk about this. In my book it takes a family, I talk a lot about something called mediating institutions in our society. I talk about the importance of having these civic and community and faith organizations, the family itself. As organizations that are in and around the individual, that help the individual buffer from the effect of government and help the individual to be able to live and solve and work and solve the problems at a level that is closest to the individual and so it creates this opportunity to build a great society from the bottom up because you have all of these little, you know, little mediating groups that help you to be able to be free and to pursue your dreams and provide for yourself and your family. The government sees these as problems in our society because they have values that don't comport with the government's values and so they systematically try to eliminate them. And that's faith and family and civic organizations. This is ‑‑ these are the problems in society, from the standpoint of the left. And what you see is it's nothing more than an attempt to hollow out the public square, hollow out the entities between the all‑powerful state and the individual. And the more direct reliance upon the state that the individual has, of course, the more power the state has.

GLENN: Rick, I ‑‑ we were just talking about this the other day and I said, I'm not sure if I've had an in‑depth conversation with you on, you know, the Tides Foundation and, you know, the role that George Soros is playing and I have had one with Romney and he just doesn't go there. And he's like, I don't know. He doesn't necessarily, at least it is my feeling that he doesn't believe that the, you know, these radicals in our universities and around the White House, that they're actually communist revolutionaries that do want to destroy America. He pretty much dismisses them. Where do you stand on that?

SANTORUM: Well, look. I mean, I'm going to try to be as neutral on this as possible. They want to change America. They want to change America from its founding principles. They want to change America to a statist model. They believe that Europe has it right, that as you heard Justice Ginsburg the other day speak and talk about how no country that's establishing a constitution right now should have the ‑‑ should model themselves after the American Constitution, it's an antiquated document. You know, go to the South African Constitution. That's how the left looks at it, that the United States is sort of a, you know, it's ‑‑

GLENN: So you're ‑‑ I don't mean to interrupt you. So you're ‑‑ what you're saying is that you don't believe that these are dangerous revolutionaries; they are people that we disagree with ‑‑

STU: Yeah, and you're not talking about Barack Obama. You're not ‑‑

GLENN: Yeah, I'm talking about the Bill Ayers of the people.

SANTORUM: Oh, no. If you're talking about Bill Ayers and George Soros, they're radicals. These are folks who fundamentally want to ‑‑ want to change America to a country that is ‑‑ that is nothing like what America was built upon because they think it's foundationally flawed and they want to destroy the very premise of this country.

GLENN: And Barack Obama is different how?

SANTORUM: Barack Obama is different in my opinion in approach and degree.

GLENN: Okay.

STU: Mmm‑hmmm.

GLENN: All right. Rick, the best of luck to you and I think you're doing a ‑‑ I mean, that was a ‑‑ I think that was a miracle. I mean, you know, what was it? Four months ago you had 1% approval rating.

SANTORUM: Yeah.

GLENN: And now you're doing this. I think it's ‑‑ I think it speaks highly of the message and also the American people that they are saying, you know what? I think I want somebody who is plain spoken and will just tell me the truth and tell me how he feels and ‑‑

STU: How do you see this internally, Rick? Is it something where you see for a long time there's been this debate about electability or some political calculation with everyone's vote. Are you seeing now that you think that maybe messages is trumping that, or are they just seeing you now all of a sudden as someone who can actually beat Barack Obama?

SANTORUM: I think it's a combination of both because the message is what's going to beat Barack Obama.

PAT: Yeah.

SANTORUM: You know, Mitt Romney's whole claim to fame was I've got the most money and therefore I'm going to win and so you should be for me. And, of course, you're not going to have the most money against Barack Obama. He's not going to be able to outspend his opponent five to one and beat their brains in and, you know, the questions I gave to reporters in the last 24 hours, Glenn, you know what they are? You know, are you ready for the attack dogs? It's not on policy. It's like, you know, Romney's going to destroy you. Wow. I mean, that's the best that Mitt Romney has. I'm going to go out and tear you apart. And, you know, whoever's in my way. Well, guess what. When it comes to Barack Obama, he's not going to have the resources to tear Barack Obama apart. Obama's going to have more resources than he is, and they're going to have the ‑‑ they're going to have the national media on their side and we'd better have the issues on our side. We'd better have a vision for this country that motivates the Republican base and gets the independents to believe that there's a better future than Barack Obama. We don't need a technocrat manager. We need someone with a vision and that's not Romney.

GLENN: Let me ‑‑ I'm going to give you a second to say your website because you always do anyway. So I'm going to invite you to say it here in a second.

SANTORUM: RickSantorum.com.

GLENN: Let me just ask you this because I know you won't answer it the other way. So let me rephrase it this way. Would you ‑‑ in the end if it was politically the best thing to do, would you accept Mitt Romney as your vice presidential candidate?

SANTORUM: Uh, what I'm going to do with my vice presidential candidate, because I'm not going to count on any names, I'm going to put the person in there who I believe so ‑‑

GLENN: Yeah, I know you will. Yeah, I know you will, yeah, blah, blah‑blah. But what I'm asking you ‑‑

SANTORUM: Blah, blah, blah, wait a minute.

GLENN: I'm asking you, is there so much bad blood between you, is there bad blood between you?

SANTORUM: I'm not going to talk about names. I'm going to talk about who, the person who would do what I ‑‑ who would follow through with what I believe, what I told the American public I would do. That's what ‑‑

GLENN: So you're saying Mitt Romney won't do that?

STU: (Laughing.)

GLENN: When did you stop beating your wife?

SANTORUM: I love you, Glenn. I love you, Glenn.

GLENN: All right. Go ahead. Say your website.

SANTORUM: All right. RickSantorum.com. Thank you. And by the way, one of the reasons we've done so well is because we've had folks like you out here on the radio, you know, preparing the battlefield for us. And I really mean that.

GLENN: Well ‑‑

SANTORUM: I just, I thank you so much for being out there and ‑‑

GLENN: We just ‑‑

SANTORUM: You know, letting ‑‑ planting the seeds out there. We're trying to germinate them.

GLENN: If you become president, all we need is, you know, special, you know, healthcare exceptions and things like that. That's all we ‑‑

STU: I would really like to be ambassador to Bermuda.

SANTORUM: You'll be one of the elites that I take care of.

GLENN: Oh, good. I just want to be a czar of some sort.

SANTORUM: Whatever you call it, whatever you want.

GLENN: Rick, appreciate it. Thanks so much. RickSantorum.com.