Bill Maher Smears Rick Santorum as Saying: 'I Will Take My Marching Orders from the Pope!'

CHRIS MATTHEWS: He got bin Laden. They got him killed in the action, which is the neatest way to do it, if you're honest about it. His family is picture perfect. His daughters are right out of Tricia Nixon. They don't do anything wrong. They turned themselves out perfectly. They act like, almost, a royal family in a good democratic way. Everything his wife does seems perfect. It's about obesity, things everybody knows is a problem in this country. What more do they want from this guy as a human being? We do have a number that's out, by the way, that we're going to show later in the show where something like 75 percent of the country says they like the guy personally.

BILL MAHER: Well, Chris, first of all, you're using reason, which as we know is a faulty way to derive at any sort of truth. Rick Santorum will tell you- it's probably, Chris, because you went to college. And people who go to college, they are the types who are suspect to this virus of reason. And that's probably why you're thinking the way you are, logically. No. What Rick Santorum would tell you is home school your kids, stay away from college, because people who go to college want to be like Obama. You know, successful. We don't want that here in America.

MATTHEWS: [Laughs] Well, what did you think about going to war with Jack Kennedy? Here's a guy who is trying to get the Reagan Democrats, eventually Santorum, because they are the ones that decide elections. Conservative Democrats, Irish, Italian. People that generally are more conservative than most Democrats. But they are still Democrats, but you try to grab them if you're a Republican because that's how you win. Trashes Kennedy. I guess I don't get it. I don't know who he's trying to win over. He trashes the college people, which is a lot of people. Almost everybody who comes here as an immigrant wants their kid to go to college. They do most of the time. He trashes the, sort of, conservative Catholics, who still treasure Kennedy. African-Americans still treasure Kennedy. Who is he looking for not in those groups of either college or ethnically conservative Democrats? Who's he after?

MAHER: I don't know. [Laughs] I mean, you're asking the wrong guy, because I really can't see into this guy's mind. I never thought anyone in American politics would come out against college. I can't- I can't even write this stuff. In fact, with all the material that Rick Santorum is giving me, I should write him a check for a million dollars. But I think what's interesting about the Kennedy thing is that Kennedy in 1960, of course, had to make a speech that said "I'm not going to be taking my marching orders from the Pope." Here we are in 2012, and it's almost the opposite. Rick Santorum is throwing up because the President is sort of not saying the reverse. "Yes, I will take my marching orders from the Pope!"

MATTHEWS: [Laughs] Ha! Exactly! That's what he's saying!         

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MATTHEWS: You're the best. You're the funniest, smartest guy around.

-- Scott Whitlock is the senior news analyst for the Media Research Center. Click here to follow him on Twitter.