Santorum Walks Out on Reporter Asking About Priest Sex Abuse Scandal

Rick Santorum, riding his razor-thin loss to Mitt Romney in Iowa, nevertheless has experienced a somewhat different reception in New Hampshire ahead of the state's first-in-the-nation primary Tuesday.

After getting booed during a town hall Thursday for his answer to a gay marriage question, Santorum later walked out on a reporter asking him about past comments he's made regarding the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal.

Boston CBS affiliate WBZ-TV:

[W]e wondered: What would New Hampshire think of Santorum’s decade-old claim that Boston-style liberalism, “lies at the center of the Catholic priest sex-abuse scandal?”

“I’ve already answered this question a hundred times,” said Santorum. “Come on, what games are you guys playing? I’ve answered that question a hundred times.”

And sure enough, he has recently reaffirmed that position, without explaining how the 14 priests from the Manchester, New Hampshire diocese accused of abuse were also infected with that alleged liberal poison.

In his original comments, Santorum argued that priests are not immune to popular culture, that seminaries had been contaminated by cultural permissiveness, and that, “when the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected.”

Watch the exchange below, via WBZ-TV:

On Friday, a group of protesters were escorted out of a Santorum campaign stop after they disrupted the proceedings. According to the Washington Post, the demonstrators appeared to be a combination of gay rights activists, Ron Paul supporters and Occupy Wall Street protesters.