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Final results: Summary results | Town resultsThe BasicsThe New Hampshire primary is a mainstay in American electoral politics. Every four years, voters gather to help determine the Republican and/or Democratic nominee for President. While the state only has 12 electoral votes in 2012 (normally it’s 24, but the Republican National Committee penalized the state party for moving up the event date), the primary’s position as one of the earliest contests gives the state out-sized influence over the nomination process.Only the Iowa caucuses come before New Hampshire’s primary. Traditionally, New Hampshire’s broad-based primary contest has been seen as a counter-weight to Iowa’s more drawn-out caucus process, which tends to draw a smaller core of party faithful. In the case of the 2012 Republican race, New Hampshire’s electorate is seen to represent the more libertarian-leaning, fiscally conservative wing of the party, while Iowa voters are seen as representing the socially conservative wing of the GOP base.N.H. Primary summary provided by StateImpact - NH reporter, Amanda Loder

Santorum Explains His Comments About Black People And Entitlements

Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum speaks during a campaign event at the Pizza Ranch restaurant in Boone, Iowa, on Monday.
Jewel Samad
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AFP/Getty Images
Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum speaks during a campaign event at the Pizza Ranch restaurant in Boone, Iowa, on Monday.

If you were listening carefully to NPR's Ted Robbins' report on Rick Santorum on Morning Edition yesterday, you heard some pretty controversial comments from the Republican presidential candidate.

At a campaign stop over the weekend, Santorum was asked about foreign influence on the U.S., but the former Pennsylvania senator went on a tangent about entitlement programs and appeared to tell a mostly white crowd that he did not want to "make black people's lives better by giving them somebody else's money."

That's what Ted reported, yesterday, and whatCBS News reported later in the day.

Now, late yesterday, the comments started receiving some heat, though a lot less intense than the scrutiny the name of Rick Perry's ranch gotand the notice the content of Ron Paul's newsletters have gotten.

The conservative site Hot Air posted a piece on Santorum's comments, today, questioning whether he said "black people" at all. They say Santorum mumbled and in the context of the rest of his answer saying "black people" doesn't make sense.

Santorum went on Fox News, last night, and did not deny he referenced black people. Instead he said he had "not heard it" and didn't know the context in which it was said.

Here's a longer version of Santorum's answer as reported by CBS:

"It just keeps expanding — I was in Indianola a few months ago and I was talking to someone who works in the department of public welfare here, and she told me that the state of Iowa is going to get fined if they don't sign up more people under the Medicaid program," Santorum said. "They're just pushing harder and harder to get more and more of you dependent upon them so they can get your vote. That's what the bottom line is."

And here's CBS News' video of his answer:

In his interview with Sean Hannity, Santorum also noted that he had done more than anyone to bring African Americans into the GOP.

"All I can say is that I don't single out any group of people," Santorum told Fox. "That's one thing I don't do. I don't divide people by group race and class. I condemn all forms of racism

"This is just someone trying to cause trouble."

The Grio, which has a longish piece on the comments, says one thing that is important to point out is that the majority of welfare recipients are not black.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Eyder Peralta is NPR's East Africa correspondent based in Nairobi, Kenya.
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