Santorum: Obama leading Christians to the 'guillotine'

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum warned on Wednesday that President Barack Obama and other liberals are leading people of faith down a path that ends at the guillotine.

During a campaign event in Plano, Texas, the candidate charged Obama had an "overt hostility to faith."

"When you look and see what the left is trying to do in America today, progressives are trying to shutter faith, privatize it, push it out of the public square, oppress people of faith, strip their charitable deductions away from them, trying to weaken them, churches -- trying to say that anyone who believes in the value of Judeo-Christian principles," Santorum explained.

"As we saw in the Ninth Circuit just this week, that if you believe that [same sex marriage is wrong] -- this is what the court said -- that if believe that, if believe what's taught in Genesis, if you believe what's practiced Biblically and a generation since then you are irrational. The only possible reason you could believe this, according to the Ninth Circuit, is that you are a bigot and that you are a hater."

He continued: "They are taking faith and crushing it. Why? When you marginalize faith in America, when you remove the pillar of God-given rights then what's left is the French Revolution. What's left is a government that gives you rights. What's left are no unalienable rights. What's left is a government that will tell you who you are, what you'll do and when you'll do it. What's left in France became the the guillotine."

Santorum admitted that the U.S. was "a long way from that," but if Obama had his way then "we are headed down that road," citing the Obama administration's decision to require nearly all private health insurance policies to cover family planning, including female contraceptives.

"Now is the time for America to rise up and say enough!" the GOP hopeful exclaimed.

Watch this video from CNN, broadcast Feb. 7, 2012