Rick Santorum is one of the candidates trying to secure the Republican nomination for the 2012 Presidential election.  His performance in last night’s debate on national security was largely unremarkable (if you go by post-debate media coverage), except for two statements he made.  One of those statements was to support racial profiling of Muslims:

“Obviously Muslims would be someone you’d look at, absolutely,” Santorum said. “Those are the folks who … the radical Muslims are the people that are committing these crimes by and large, as well as younger males.”

Herman Cain, another candidate in the Republican field, took a more nuanced approach but supported profiling on a more “targeted” level, while candidate Ron Paul opposed denying civil liberties from innocent people in the name of security.

As a member of a subset of the American public that is often profiled and faces discrimination based on appearance, Santorum’s comment obviously gave me pause. While neither Santorum nor Cain (nor Paul, for that matter) are considered likely to win the nomination, the open endorsement of racial profiling by these candidates (one of which belongs to a visible minority himself) legitimizes limiting civil liberties of innocent people based on their religion or appearance.

Interestingly, while Santorum’s endorsement of racial profiling is objectionable, I learned that he also supports workplace religious freedom, as he (along with Senator John Kerry) was a sponsor of the federal Workplace Religious Freedom Act in 2005 (which didn’t pass that year, nor when it was re-introduced in 2010).

It’s an interesting combination: pro-profiling and pro-religious freedom.  Perhaps the connector of both of these is related to Santorum being a staunch Christian conservative.

Santorum’s other noteworthy statement, by the way, was his assertion of a dangerous emerging Islamic terrorist alliance with leftist extremists in Central or South America.