Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum renewed his attacks on President Obama's signature health care legislation on Thursday, telling a large crowd in Huntsville, Alabama that "Obamacare is, in fact, the death knell for freedom, and that's why it must be repealed."
The comments about Obama's Affordable Care Act, signed into law in March 2010, come just days before the state's March 13 GOP primary. Santorum sought to link his opponent to the president's trademark law, referencing similar health care legislation signed into law by GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney back when he served as governor of Massachusetts.
Santorum said Obama's health care law is a "linchpin, if you will, that would tip the scales toward a country that would no longer be free," adding that Romney "is singularly the worst person to make that case," according to reporting from The Huntsville Times.
The former senator from Pennsylvania lauded what he described as the Founding Fathers' vision for America -- one that he said emphasizes personal freedoms and limited government -- painting Obama as the antithesis of those principles.
"He takes more and more freedom from you, takes more and more money from you and believes, as he's doing so, that he's making your life better," Santorum told a crowd of hundreds in his speech before the U.S. Space & Rocket Center. Rather it is "a welfare state he's growing here in America."