As presidential candidates go, Rick Santorum is quite an excitable guy. More so than most, the former senator is prone to delve into all kinds of bizarre, almost hysterical, ideas that he's only too eager to share with the public.
Just over the past couple of days, Santorum argued that evidence from climate scientists are an elaborate "hoax"; he said President Obama may force Roman Catholic churches to hire women priests; and he argued gas prices "caused the housing bubble to burst." Santorum's ideas are an unsettling combination of wrong and nutty.
But to appreciate just how unhinged this Republican presidential candidate can be, consider this clip aired on msnbc's "Morning Joe" earlier today.
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For those who can't watch clips online, here's what Santorum had to say during a town-hall meeting in Texas last night:
"They are taking faith and crushing it. Why? Why? When you marginalize faith in America, when you remove the pillar of God-given rights, then what's left is the French Revolution. What's left is the government that gives you rights. What's left are no unalienable rights. What's left is a government that will tell you who you are, what you'll do and when you'll do it. What's left in France became the guillotine. Ladies and gentlemen, we're a long way from that, but if we do and follow the path of President Obama and his overt hostility to faith in America, then we are headed down that road."
It's hard to know how to respond to such nonsense, but I'll just say this: if Rick Santorum seriously believes the president is hostile towards religion, and genuinely believes we're headed towards public guillotines along the lines of 18th-century France, then maybe Mitt Romney isn't this guy's biggest problem.