When Piers Morgan interviewed the Rick Santorum family in late January, Karen Santorum’s graciousness and warmth transcended the camera — and I couldn’t help but wonder why she hadn’t had a more prominent role in his campaign.

Now, as criticisms mount that he’s out of touch with women, she has begun to appear more frequently. Most recently, she granted an interview to Glenn Beck, in which she said she didn’t always like the idea of her husband running for president, but, after praying on the matter, concluded that it was “God’s Will“:

“I did always feel in my heart that God had big plans for Rick. Eventually it was there, tugging at my heart,” she said. “When Obamacare passed, that was it. That put the fire in my belly.” …

She turned up on Beck’s Internet television show toward the end of a more extensive interview that began with Rick Santorum saying that his wife loves the talk-show host – “loves you more than me sometimes,” he joked.

Karen Santorum also defended her husband’s performance in Wednesday’s debate, saying that he was right to admit to having made mistakes while in Congress. She said it is inevitable to sometimes lose one’s way in Washington. “You really have to keep your prayer life in order,” she said, “and really keep faith and family the top priority always. And keep your feet on the ground. Because you can get lost.”

Like the comments made to this effect by the Perrys and the Bachmanns, these remarks will be interpreted according to the religious overtones of the listener. Those to whom routine prayer and discernment are familiar will find these comments comforting, a reassurance that Karen Santorum consulted more than just campaign advisers and friends as she made her decision to support her husband’s bid for president. Those to whom routine prayer and discernment are foreign will find these comments offputting, a suggest that Karen Santorum thinks her husband’s presidential bid was somehow preordained and, though she didn’t say this, destined to end well. If Santorum doesn’t win the nomination or if he does but fails to win the presidency, ridiculers will recycle these remarks to suggest Karen Santorum didn’t “hear” God properly or misunderstood God’s will.

Either way, that Karen Santorum is comfortable with sharing her faith on camera says something about the strength of it and suggests to me that Santorum, should he become president, would have a stalwart supporter for hard-and-principled decision-making in the White House.