SANTORUM ISN'T CONDEMNING LIMBAUGH -- THAT'S A DOG WHISTLE

OK, maybe it's an inadvertent dog whistle. In any case, it's not condemnation:

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum labeled Rush Limbaugh "absurd" over disparaging remarks from the radio talk show host directed at a law student who testified before a House panel in support of access to contraceptives.

"He's being absurd, but that's you know, an entertainer can be absurd," Santorum told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Friday. "He's in a very different business than I am."

The key word here is "absurd," because it's a word Limbaugh proudly uses. For years he's described what he does as "demonstrating absurdity by being absurd" -- in fact, the title of a chapter in his first book was "People: Think for Yourselves, Or Demonstrating Absurdity By Being Absurd." In fact, just today he described his sex-video remark about Sandra Fluke as "illustrating absurdity here by being absurd."

Either Santorum knows all this (and as a card-carrying movement conservative, he presumably would) or Santorum in understands that saying this is an easy way to attack Limbaugh without actually attacking him.

Oh, and Limbaugh's an "entertainer," so it's silly for anyone to care, right? (Funny, back in January, when Santorum said "we've lost, unfortunately, our entertainment industry" to "the left," he seemed to regard entertainment as a lot more relevant to politics.)