Rick Santorum, GOP savior?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I'm with Creature. If Rick Santorum wants to run for president, more power to him. Given the current state of the Republican Party, and of its right-wing base, there may be no more suitable person to lead it further into oblivion. He's the right sort of extremist for an increasingly extreme party, though his theocratic absolutism may be a bit too much even for a party that welcomes so much theocracy. Yes, yes, this is the party that fell in love with Palin, but she had a certain appeal -- even I can see that -- that Santorum lacks. Surely the Republican establishment, right-wing though it may be, would reject him. Or perhaps not. No, it wouldn't surprise me if it didn't. Certain elements of the conservative punditocracy would recoil, perhaps, but not so much the base, and, of course, it is the base to which much of the establishment panders these days.

Still, crazy... right?

Well, crazy or not, Santorum is eyeing 2012. He's "thinking about it," says LifeSiteNews.com, a crazy website of the theocratic right, and asking for prayers.

Pray for him, if you want. Actually, pray for him to run. And to win the nomination.

This is a man, after all, who was thoroughly rejected by his home state of Pennsylvania in 2006. He'd make a fine challenger for Obama, a sort of Republican reductio ad absurdum rivalled only by Palin herself.