Reply #2: No need to be charitable to Rick Santorum.

[saltpoint]

He is a Machiavellian prick, a provocateur for the Far Right, and miserably overconfident to boot.

He's running for re-election in Pennsylvania and has his eye on leading the Senate after the Cat Butcher steps aside to run for the White House. That would put his extreme moralistic personal agenda in the office of the Majority Leader of the United States Senate.

I consider Santorum to be the closest thing to a nihilist the Senate has ever umbrella'd in my lifetime.