Last week, Rick Santorum was a guest on Ed Gordon's NPR radio program. Gordon asked Santorum about Affirmative Action and the Republican Party's perceived hostility towards it. Rick claimed that "Affirmative Action is an old battle, it's on its way out in most areas." Santorum then characterized Affirmative Action as "a government set-aside program for 5% of contracts."

Gordon suggested that African-Americans view Affirmative Action as a much broader issue than a set-aside program. To which, Santorum laughed dismissively and said "Yeah, I know it is to some African-Americans."

During the interview, Rick also made the claim that "more Republicans, by the way, voted for the Voting Rights Act, voted for the Civil Rights Act than Democrats did." Sorry Rick, that's just plain wrong. You can find vote totals by party at the bottom of this post.

Here's the audio of that segment of the interview.

After Rick's appearance, Ed Gordon held a roundtable discussion with participants whose opinions on Affirmative Action all differed dramatically from Rick's. Gordon's guests were George Curry, editor-in-chief of the National Newspaper Publishers Association News Service; Laura Washington, Chicago Sun-Times columnist; and Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco, co-director of immigration studies at New York University.

Click here to hear the roundtable.