Really, Republicans? Rick Santorum?

When I was a teenager, I took the city bus to school almost every day. All of us who rode the bus knew that if we were last to climb aboard, we’d likely have to sit next to the “CIA Lady,” so named because she habitually nuzzled up to whoever her unlucky chairmate was that day and, in conspiratorial sotto voce tones, told him all about the CIA’s ongoing and poisonous plot against her.

Sadly, the CIA Lady and I lost touch over the years, but that doesn’t mean I forgot her, and I fully anticipate, in precisely a fortnight, to hear that she is now the GOP presidential frontrunner as a result of her unexpectedly strong showing in the Michigan and Arizona primaries.

Seriously, Republicans. Rick Santorum? You’re really going to let him back in the race? Did you vote for him because you couldn’t find that delightful young man from your latest Tanqueray and Ambien hallucination on the ballot? The GOP has now flirted with Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul, Herman Cain, Donald Trump, and Rick Santorum. Between them, you could pretty much wear out a standard yellow highlighter while casually paging through the DSM-IV.

Meanwhile, the distastefully sane Mitt Romney, who just wants to be loved, can’t seem to finish off the crazies. What’s wrong with Romney? He doesn’t want to shut down all our military bases and run the federal government from a basement office next door to a Kinko’s, like Ron Paul. He doesn’t want to spend his hard-earned political capital ensuring that destitute people pay federal income taxes and everyone else go back to using energy-inefficient light bulbs, like Michele Bachmann. He doesn’t want to base our tax system on an arbitrary sequence of numbers that could have as easily come from Son of Sam’s dog as from a reputable economist, like Herman Cain.

And he’s not Rick Santorum.

Even by the standards of the crazy train that is the 2012 GOP presidential primary field, Rick Santorum is off the rails.

Newt Gingrich, whom I briefly thought was sane, wants to attack our spiraling national debt by building a friggin’ lunar base – presumably so that when the Chinese come to collect their money, they’ll be given a forwarding address on the moon.

How hard do you have to work in order to seem crazier than the guy who wants to live on the moon? Not very, if you’re Rick Santorum.

Rick Santorum is a virulent homophobe. Rick Santorum would love to see birth control banned. Rick Santorum believes that libertine progressives caused the Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal. In short, Rick Santorum is nuts.

Canada’s a big country, but it doesn’t have nearly enough hoarfrost-covered tundra to accommodate the refugee camps that will need to be built if Rick Santorum is elected president.

To prove my point, here’s just a small sampling of Santorum’s greatest hits:

A chicken in every pot, and a fetus in every womb: “One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country. It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”

Or woman on howler monkey, for that matter: “ [I]f the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [gay] sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. … In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be.”

God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Australopithecus afarensis: “If Gov. Huntsman wants to believe that he is the descendant of a monkey, then he has the right to believe that – but I disagree with him on this and the many other liberal beliefs he shares with Democrats.”

A kinder, gentler medieval genocide: “The idea that the Crusades and the fight of Christendom against Islam is somehow an aggression on our part is absolutely anti-historical.”

Okay, never mind then:“[W]e have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq ….”

So then who’s to blame for Mel Gibson?: “Priests, like all of us, are affected by culture. When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected. While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political, and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm.”

And the Battle of Iwo Jima was really about forcing Obama to release his long-form birth certificate: “Almost 60,000 average Americans had the courage to go out and charge those beaches on Normandy, to drop out of airplanes who knows where, and take on the battle for freedom. Average Americans, the very Americans that our government now, and this president, does not trust to make a decision on your health care plan. Those Americans risked everything so they could make that decision on their health care plan.”

And the sanest thing Rick Santorum has ever said: “If Darwin is right, I have organized my life around an illusion.”

I didn’t even include the craziest thing Santorum has ever said because, frankly, it’s too weird and gross. And this is coming from a longtime weird- and gross-monger. But if you’re interested, Google “Rick Santorum” and “crazy,” and you’re sure to find it before long.

Please, Republicans, nominate Mitt Romney. I can live with Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney is perfectly sane. And nice. Doesn’t he seem nice? I’ll even accept Gingrich. That’s what it’s come to, guys. Your game of electoral brinkmanship actually has me begging you to vote for Newt Gingrich. I give up. You win.

Remember, we all have to live on this planet. My greatest fear is that, in the event of a Rick Santorum presidency, we won’t even have a moon colony to move to.

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