GO, RICK SANTORUM, GO!

I'm in sympathy with Kos's suggestion that Michigan Democrats cross over to the GOP race to vote for Mitt Romney (although somebody needs to tell Kos that it's hard to do something like this surreptitiously when you announce it in a public forum to 800,000 readers).

I like the idea not because I enjoy pranks or want to sow confusion in the GOP, but because, if John McCain wins Michigan, he may be on a glide path to the Republican nomination -- he's also leading in South Carolina, and if he wins both those states, his apparent momentum will probably mean the GOP race is over. (UPDATE: SurveyUSA says he's leading in Florida by 8 points.) I'm with Steve Benen and Tom Hilton: I worry about McCain more than any other Republican candidate. If you look at head-to-head matchups, he beats Clinton and is tied with Obama. No other Republican does as well against the Democrats.

So I'm delighted to read what Rick Santorum said to Hugh Hewitt in an interview a couple of days ago:

You know, I think right now, we're looking at the media trying to make Barack Obama the president, and make John McCain the shill for him. And I don't see, I think they know that John McCain can't win this election, and they know…it's probably the best chance for them to do it.

...John McCain will not get the base of the Republican Party. I mean, there was a reason John McCain collapsed last year, and it's because he was the frontrunner, and everybody in the Republican Party got a chance to look at him. And when they looked at him, they wait well, wait a minute, he's not with us on almost all of the core issues of...on the economic side, he was against the President's tax cuts, he was bad on immigration. On the environment, he's absolutely terrible. He buys into the complete left wing environmentalist movement in this country. He is for bigger government on a whole laundry list of issues. He was…I mean, on medical care, I mean, he was for re-importation of drugs. I mean, you can go on down the list. I mean, this is a guy who on a lot of the core economic issues, is not even close to being a moderate, in my opinion. And then on the issue of, on social conservative issues, you point to me one time John McCain every took the floor of the United States Senate to talk about a social conservative issue. It never happened.

... John McCain looks at things through the eyes, on these kind of domestic policy issues, looks at it through the eyes of the New York Times editorial board, and accepts that predisposition that if you are not, if you stand for conservative principles, there’s some genetic defect.

Ouch -- that last one's really gotta hurt.

This isn't coded criticism by a political midlister known only to insiders and mavens -- it's a full-on assault by a nationally known figure.

More like this, please. (And so what if he's dead wrong about McCain's general-election chances? I'd love for him to mislead Republican voters that way.)

I want to see Rick Santorum on every Sunday talk show and prime-time cable news program in America. I want him to get a massive op-ed in a big-circulation newspaper. If I were a millionaire, I'd want to buy full-page ads in The New York Times and USA Today to spread his message.

It's pathetic. In every election cycle, Republicans eviscerate Democrats; in most election cycles --like the one we're going through now -- Democrats eviscerate Democrats. But no one ever seems to lay a glove on Republicans (well, maybe in 2006), and no Democrat even seems to be trying to criticize McCain -- a guy we know the press worships.

Sow confusion among Republicans? I want the Republicans to do that to themselves.